Heads Down, Wearing Beige

Scene One: Good Friday morning.  There they are, the apostles, or at least the ones who did not betray Him.  We call them saints, don’t you know:  Saint Peter, Saint Andrew, Saint James, Saint John, Saint Philip, Saint Bartholomew, Saint Thomas, Saint Matthew Saint James, Saint Thaddeus, Saint Simon.

It's good that you should know what they’re wearing.  They’re dressed like mothers of the groom.  Mothers of the bride, in the movies, are the ones in charge (to the dismay of their daughter who is merely the bride).  Mothers of the groom, meanwhile, are bit players without speaking lines.  Now, if we were to give IQ tests to mothers of the bride and mothers of the groom, there would be no significant differences in their native intelligence; ditto for education, languages spoken, projects undertaken and completed, weight, height, and circumference of the widest part of the skull.

Because of this consistent lack of innate difference between the mother of the groom and the mother of the bride, the mother of the groom needs to be coached in remembering she’s not in charge.  There’s a specific piece of advice that’s passed down from mother of the groom to mother of the groom: Keep your head down and wear beige!”  While it’s possible that women might benefit from such a rule of not ruling, the behavior seems to come natural to men, or at least these 11…and me.  We tend to hide when we’re not in control.

Good Friday morning.  Peter, you know, the one who Jesus puts in charge, takes the lead in denying that he even knows Jesus.  But they’re all, for all we know, keeping their heads down.  So this morning, as I make an effort to put myself in the story, I find myself one of them.  The fire that we huddled around last night is smoking ashes, and my eye sockets feel as dry.  I’m sitting slumped over, my shame and my fear rooting my rear end to the dust on the side of the road where we sit.  We don’t even want to look at each other.

...

Scene Two: some days later.  It has taken a number of appearances from the dead and risen Jesus to get them beyond their shame, and even with their shortcomings we 2000 years later wake up and know it’s Good Friday.

So, we’re out of control.  So, we hide.  He will show up, again and again, and every time he’ll greet us as the angel Gabriel, as the Prodigal’s Father: Don’t be afraid.  I’m with you.  I find two messages in this.  In a world beyond our control, we need to learn together how to live and act and respond regardless of our lack of control.  Second, this song that sings itself in me from our years in Gesu Church in Detroit.

Even these eleven sinners became saints.  Let’s get over ourselves and focus not on our fear and lack of control, but on the hope that Goodness and Love is in charge, and we need to keep our eyes on that truth.

Get up!

Open Up in the Name of the Lawd

In the old cops and robbers movies, the cops would come to the door in their tight uniforms and lean in toward the door of the robber’s apartment.  ‘Open up in the name of the law!” they’d shout (usually in an Irish brogue).  If their command was not enough to motivate the robbers, the biggest among them would put his shoulder to the door and they’d all follow him in like water rushing down a drain. 

Revelation 3:20 takes a slightly different approach.  “Behold, I stand at your door and knock.”  And unlike the cops and robbers, the open or not is up to us.

Knock, Knock.  It’s Holy Week.  It roared in last night with howling winds and late snow.  I awakened a number of times with the ominous sound of it, chilling the air and frosting the ground after two weeks of warm spring weather.  And I thought of the verses of today’s long Gospel referring to the moments after Christ died on the cross, that the old movies showed with such an ominous change in the sky, its portents clear:

And behold, the veil of the sanctuary
was torn in two from top to bottom.
The earth quaked, rocks were split, tombs were opened,
and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised.

The opening of the graves generally struck me in the past as, well, ghoulish, like a scene out of “Night of the Living Dead”.  But this year I recognized something different and encouraging

Open up, Jesus has said for the past three weeks in the Gospels.  Open up, woman!  Open your mind to the possibilities of living water instead of daily self-defense.  Open up, blind man, and see.  Open up, Lazarus, and come alive.  It was up to them to tear it down, the door that had become a wall, the closed mind, the closed eyes, the lost hope. And those three “Open up” calls seem to be ratcheted up in today’s Gospel.  As the ultimate act of sacrifice is finished, Matthew draws from the orchestra a crescendo that would make Mahler blush.  The curtain is torn in the Temple of Jerusalem, and now the door to God is eternally open.  The tombs open us and we are free to remember, to heal and be healed in memory, to again be accompanied by the blessed spirits of our own histories. 

The Grand Opening is announced: our own opening to all that God is all around us, and can be within us.  Seven days to prepare.

Tomorrow – handling mystery