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!

Going, Returning, Remaining

A final word on today’s Gospel, the raising of Lazarus.  In the final line of the scene, with Lazarus having emerged from the tomb wrapped in his burial shroud, Jesus says, “Unbind him and let him go.”  When I was perhaps eight years old, a friend of my parents gave us a dog, which my brother and I named Poochie.  It is only vaguely that I remember his physical characteristics - a lean white shorthaired mutt; what I recall viscerally, even after more than 50 years, is that he would run away if we let him go.  I suspected then, as I do now, that it was my mother’s severe punishment of him when he eventually returned that reinforced his bolting when he could.  But I do remember how he would bolt as soon as he could break free from his leash.   

I felt akin to Poochie, weeping with him as he shivered after a beating.  The same strap or hairbrush that had been used on him had been used on my brother and me, and the same frustrated shrieks of anger had come from our mother as she had swung it with her wiry, muscular arm.  I would hear the train whistle from the track a half mile away at night and wonder what it would be like to bolt.

So somehow this closing line seems odd to me, that Lazarus, so loved that he would be brought back to life would be let…GO; I imagine him bolting, pulling himself from the restraints of their loving arms. When Poochie came back, he looked like hell.  He was filthy, thin, and cold.  While the Prodigal Son returned in hope of being forgiven or at least fed, this poor beast came back knowing he’d be beaten.  What was it, I wondered (and wonder still) that made him come back all those times until he eventually did not return at all? I think of Peter’s words when Jesus asked him if he would leave.  “Lord”, he said in John 6:68, “to whom would we go?”

I’ve found an image that brings harmonizes this bolting escape of Lazarus with Peter’s truth that lets me accept Jesus’ words, “Let him go.”  A vehicle stops by an open field or a beach and a dog and its master emerge.  The master puts the dog on a leash and walks with it to the field or the beach.  The dog’s feet dancing, the master bends down to disconnect the leash, and off the dog runs, free, free, free!  It runs back and forth, away from and back toward (but not to) the master again and again, until it tires and trots back, wagging its tail.

Perhaps the most precious freedom is to freely follow, even in our animal nature, is the instinct to return, to remain. 

My mother was not an ogress, but a woman beyond her capacity to bear gracefully the demands of that period of her life.  Unlike Poochie, she could not run away from us.  I am consoled that as the demands of poverty and childrearing eased, she mellowed.  She often asked for forgiveness from us for those times when she acted out of anger.  I hope that as she died she felt the forgiveness.  I hope that she knew that when she returned to her God, there would be no belt or hairbrush in sight, but a nice dry towel, and a dish with fresh water, and another with her favorite food.  Oh, my, I hope she is OK with this image of her as Poochie in heaven! 

Here we are in this Lenten season, asked again to return, to remain.