Musings

He Gets Us Doesn't Get Him

 

On the TV coverage of the upcoming Super Bowl on 2/12, there will be a major ad for the "He Gets Us" campaign, which is also showing up on billboards, etc, all over the country.  It is a hundred-million-dollar ad campaign funded by the likes of the Green family, the owners of Hobby Lobby - major right-wing political and "culture warrior" donors.  And the campaign website funnels readers into the fundamentalist media universe.  (See a piece about this ad campaign on NPR here.)  It is an effort to make Jesus look good - funded by the same fundamentalists who have trashed his reputation.  HeGetsUs doesn't get him!

Let's take advantage of this campaign to earn some attention for our progressive Christian movement.  Let's flip their narrative.

Use the meme above freely in your social media - and make up your own.  Put signs in front of your churches - here are some suggestions:

HE GETS US - to stand up for women's right to choose
HE GETS US - to celebrate same-sex marriages
HE GETS US - to welcome immigrants
HE GETS US - to save the earth from human-caused climate change
HE GETS US - to embrace other religions
HE GETS US - to end systemic racism
HE GETS US - to resist the right-wing agenda of the funders of HeGetsUs.com.

Let your local press know when you've put up your signs.   Send me your memes and pictures of your signs and I'll spread them far and wide in the progressive Christian movement. 

Also, register your church with HeGetsUs.com so that at least some of the churches it funnels folks into will be progressive ones.

This is a great opportunity for us to be creative and get the word out about what makes us and our churches different than the narrative that HeGetsUs.com is pushing.  Let's make the most of it!

A Reckoning With Racism

What would it mean for you and me to “end systemic racism” in America?

I’ve been pondering deeply the fact that the five police officers accused of the recent pointless, needless killing of a man in Memphis, Tyre Nichols, were of the same race as the victim.  Some folks will seize on this fact to argue that police killings of civilians are not racially motivated.  That would fit neatly with the agenda of right-wing propagandists in America who are pushing the narrative that making a big deal about racism is un-patriotic.  They’re trying to un-write the history of this country, to downplay the devastating effects of racism from 1619, when slavery began in America, through the present day.  Conservative “snowflakes” are afraid of making white people today feel guilty about an old problem that they didn’t create. 

But anti-racism isn’t about making anybody feel bad or embarrassed.  It is a movement aimed at healing a wound, inflicted long ago, that festers to this day – among us all, and within us all.   Let’s be brave Americans and deal with it, as we’ve dealt with so many other huge challenges in our history!

Our country is going through a fresh and very messy reckoning with racism from the past that pervades our present moment.  Racism is what St Paul called a “power and a principality” – a force that infects individuals, but is at the same time pervades whole societies and social structures.  It’s airborne, like a virus. You can’t see it, but you can definitely see its devastating effects.  It infects us all, including those police officers in Memphis.  It is personal because it is systemic, and it is systemic because it is personal.  It exists within us, and shapes our behavior, without any conscious malicious intention by us as individuals.  Few of us intend to be racist.  Few of us have any overt desire to think or act in a racist manner. 

Years ago, I worked for a majority Black nonprofit in a majority Black community.  And there I learned a lot about myself.  I thought of myself as a good liberal, part of the struggle for civil rights and equality.  But in that job and in that community, I was forced to face the racism that lurked within myself.  And that at some level, still lurks within me.  That experience awakened me to the reality that intimate exposure to people of races other than one’s own is not necessarily the cure to racism – it can just as well entrench racist attitudes.  And the only way to change it is to see how it lives in us now, so that we can boldly, steadily, patiently root it out from within us and also root it out from social and economic and political structures. 

There is no utility in wallowing in guilt and self-blame about it.  Ron DeSantis and his ilk would have us believe this whole anti-racism movement is aimed at making all white people, including young kids at school, blame themselves for the problem.  That’s just nonsense.  Literally a cop-out!  A wimpy way to avoid the subject.  There may be a few folks out there in the anti-racism movement who do want all white people to squirm in discomfort and shame.  But that’s not typical of most folks involved in this work.

It is not a blame game.  It is rather the work of carefully diagnosing the problem, understanding its perniciously subtle nature, and then engaging at both personal and systematic levels to heal from it.  We need to think of it as a depth-psychological, spiritual public health problem.  Those words might seem strange to string together in one sentence.  But I think they point us in the right direction.  Public health is not about blaming any individual for the problem.  It is about harm reduction for everyone.  Racism is a very deeply-ingrained set of habits of mind.  It is a cluster of entrained neural pathways that connect our natural systems of response to fear and disgust with certain culturally-derived perceptions.  In most cases, these pathways activate without our conscious awareness.  Most of us sincerely intend not only to treat all others equally and without prejudice regarding race or ethnicity, but also intend to do our part in opposing systemic, organized racism.  But vestiges of racism against Black, brown, Asian, and other people remain in us all – no matter our race nor our ethnicity.  It is no use to beat ourselves up about this fact.  Nor to perform some kind of exorcism on ourselves or each other.  What we need to do is recognize that racism continues to be present within us, coloring the way we see others, and thus ultimately how we treat them.  Even if it might take very subtle and indirect forms – like looking twice at a person while out at night, feeling ever so slightly more threatened by that person than by other strangers.  Again, no need to feel bad or guilty about this.  That’s useless.  Our task in fighting racism starts with a clear-eyed, honest awareness of its presence deep within us all – even if it manifests only in fleeting ways. 

How does Christianity fit into the struggle against racism?  Part of our work is to recognize how Christianity has contributed to the problem.  One way it makes racism worse is the historic dogma of the faith that suggests that everybody is a hopeless sinner, condemned to eternal punishment unless they assent to a particular religious doctrine.  It is an outdated and spiritually useless and downright harmful belief.  Yes, we sin – we do things and think thoughts that we should not do or think.  And yes, by following Jesus we wake up to our sins and work to rectify them.  But we’re not hopeless sinners.  Instead of feeling guilty and fearing punishment, we can open our eyes to our sins and take forthright action to make things right.  That’s what Jesus gets us to do!  Ron DeSantis describes the movement against racism as one that paints white people as hopeless sinners who deserve punishment.  Ironically, he’s fitting it in to the frame of fundamentalist Christian thinking.  But to fight racism, we use progressive Christian thinking, which follows Jesus in recognizing our wrongs and making them right.

That includes inner spiritual work as well as civic activism.  We need to enact the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, to end gerrymandering and voter suppression that has been aimed at disenfranchising Black people in particular.  We need to change fundamentally the way we train and deploy police.  We need to take seriously the need for economic reparations for our country’s history of slavery and racism.  And this can be done in a way that benefits everyone significantly, but will benefit racial minorities, particularly Black folks, disproportionately to their circumstances.  Taking the next steps beyond Obamacare to create a truly universal, guaranteed high-quality health care system will be good for all Americans, but will disproportionately benefit minorities.  Same with universal guaranteed child care and sick leave and reducing mass incarceration.  Same with the proposal for a guaranteed income – an idea first proposed by a notable leader of the American revolution – Tom Paine.  It doesn’t get more red, white, and blue than that!  These are practical ways to help make right the wrong that started in 1619 – ways that are fair and beneficial to everyone.

Another way that Christianity has contributed to racism is its historic pattern of “othering” groups of people – starting with separating Christians from non-Christians.  Either you’re in or you’re out.  If you’re in, you are saved, if you are out, you are damned.  It’s hard to exaggerate how toxic this belief system has become.  It distorts and poisons the relationships between evangelical Christians and everyone else.  And then there is the anti-Semitism baked right into the New Testament, in which the Jews are blamed for Jesus’ death… which is false on the face of it, because he was executed by the Romans.  In this country, millions upon millions of people have been trained by fundamentalist preachers to see people as either “in” or “out”, and that way of seeing the world is racism’s kissing cousin.  But today, following the trajectory that Jesus set for his church, he gets us to see everybody as “in” – everybody is worthy of the unconditional love that is God.  If we are all one, as Jesus prayed we’d be, then there is no category of “other” in which to separate and isolate people by religion, race, or anything else.  This inclusive kind of Christianity is a force for healing the wound of racism in our hearts and in our society.

A mindful, progressive Christianity helps us see what is, with clear eyes – even if it is hard.  And then our faith gives us inner strength to change those hard things – within ourselves, over time with spiritual practice, and in society, through voting and active civic participation – including participating in the life of our church, which is a vital building-block of democracy.    What makes America great is patriotic Americans putting 2023’s rights to 1619’s wrongs.  To love our country is to address actively its present reality of racism.  And Christianity has much to contribute to this cause.  Our work is to see, pray, and act! 

A few years ago I was riding the LA Metro and a woman got onto the train and went from seat to seat, begging for money.  She was big, she smelled terrible, her clothes were rags – and she was Black.  She went up the aisle and into the next train car.  Near me on another seat I saw a Black woman who was shaking her head, visibly saddened, grieving aloud to herself after seeing the beggar: “My people.  My people.” Her words hit me hard; I felt tears well up in my eyes.  It seemed to me that she was upset that the people on the train would think that this begging woman was a typical Black person, representing her people.  And I think she was absolutely right to worry that the sight of that begging woman would harden the deep-seated racism of the people in that train car.  Myself included.  She was grieving the whole weight, the whole burden, of racism’s consequences since 1619.  Let us not allow this woman to grieve alone.  Let us be in solidarity with her.  And with the woman who was begging, as well.  Who knows what events in her life resulted in her condition?  We need to grieve for “Our people.  Our people.”  Grieving for all of us, Black, Asian American, Native American, white, Latino/Latina – because all of us bear this weight and burden of racism even today.  With faith in the unconditional, boundary-free love who is God, let us lift that burden together and put it behind us forever. Amen!

A Progressive Christian Response to Tim Keller

“There is no more urgent question for American Christians than this: What’s wrong with the American church and how can its life and ministry be renewed? Virtually everyone agrees something is radically wrong with the church… We must find a new way forward—to spiritual, theological, and institutional renewal—until the Christian church is thriving again, until it’s growing by appealing to and reaching people with truth and serving and changing people with love.”  So writes Tim Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in New York, and an important leader in evangelical Christianity.  It begins a piece by him,  “The Decline and Renewal of the American Church,” that is getting wide distribution lately. 

It is an in-depth piece, reflecting his status as one of the relatively rare intellectuals in the evangelical world.  As such, I think it deserves a response – in particular because he blames the decline of the American church, as a whole, on progressive Christians.  His is the old and tired argument that by reconciling our faith with science and social progress, we deprived Christianity of its distinctiveness, thus making it indistinguishable from the wider culture and thus irrelevant.  He also argues that by doing so, we deprived America of any kind of foundation for moral order.  It’s the old circular argument that the Bible must be literally true because we need it to be literally true - so that we’ll have a basis for our ethics and laws and culture.  Meanwhile, current advances in biology show that basic morality is a byproduct of evolution – in the animal world, as well as in the human, it has survival value.  And among those discoveries is the fact that a certain amount of homoerotic behavior in animal populations has survival value, as well.  And then there’s the obvious problem of basing our behavior today on some of the very problematic precepts we find in the Judeo-Christian scriptures.

It is only at the end of his piece that he obliquely recognizes that conservative Protestants might share a bit of the blame for the decline of the church in America:

“The progressive mainline Protestantism still in existence is no real way forward for the American church.   However, because of the reassertion of fundamentalism within American evangelicalism and the consequent exodus of many young adults from the churches of their youth, many are pointing to mainline, progressive Christianity as the place for them to go. There may indeed be some influx into mainline churches, especially in urban areas, of young “ex-evangelicals” who are “deconstructing their faith.” But the overall project of mainline Protestantism has failed. It overadapted to Western secular culture and can’t offer our society an alternative or counterpoint to what the dominant culture already offers.  It also doesn’t appear to be able to grow the way the church has historically grown in every culture—by evangelism and church planting. Can it lead secular people into life-transforming conversion?”

Thank you, Tim Keller!  Like other panicked evangelical leaders are doing lately, by dissing our movement as the cause of their own problems, they give us the best possible publicity. 

He only grudgingly – and very briefly - admits that young evangelicals are leaving evangelical-world because of evangelicalism.  And he’s right that many are exploring progressive Christianity.  But he’s wrong that our project has failed, wrong that it does not offer an alternative to dominant culture, and wrong that it cannot be transformative. 

And he’s way off the mark in his claim that the road to renewal is paved with the same dead dogma and regressive social values that led them into their cul-de-sac.  Evangelicals had their moment, and it was a long and notable one.  Now their movement is rapidly shrinking, and one would think that a person of Keller’s stature would turn his gaze inward to diagnose carefully what it did wrong, and propose a real change of direction.  But no. 

Keller apparently has no awareness of the spiritual renewal going on right now in progressive Christian churches that embrace the contemplative, mystical tradition of the faith, which evangelicals would do well to discover and practice if they’re interested in renewal.  He shows no interest in exploring what is distinctive about the progressive Christian churches that are growing and thriving as they hoover-up young ex-vangelicals.  Nor does he get it that progressive churches are far more of an “alternative or counterpoint to what the dominant culture already offers”.  As if evangelical churches, on the whole, aren’t the Republican Party at prayer?  As if they don’t offer artisan coffee after worship in their huge, fancy, mall-style church buildings?  If you are looking for a critique of the dominant culture, which is capitalism run amok, you’ll go to a progressive congregation.  If you’re looking for communities that are actively practicing alternatives to the cultural norms of rampant consumerism and personal greed, you’ll go to progressive churches.

Sure, he’s upset that the evangelical worldview has become a minority perspective in America.  All religious people are minority voices in America today, and the country is none the worse for this diversity and divergence of expression.  He says that, while once the voices of the non-religious were suppressed, “today in the secular society mainline Protestantism helped bring about, it’s religious voices that are precluded.”  That, of course, is nonsense.  Hello, Tim Keller!  We need look no farther than the front page of the newspaper to see how un-precluded those voices are, as they call for banning abortion, demonizing LGBTQ+ people, and attacking the rights of trans people.  Progressive Christians have neither undertaken to preclude evangelical voices nor succeeded yet in out-voicing them.  Religious freedom in America is as alive and well as it ever has been, for religious and non-religious people alike.  And any claim to the contrary is a dangerous lie.

Progressive Christianity today is exactly the “spiritual, theological, and institutional renewal” that Tim Keller hopes will sweep through the church.  If you’re reading this, Tim, count it as an invitation to set your prejudices aside for a while, visit our thriving churches, and get to know us for who we really are.

Fat Tuesday Word Jazz 2023

 

Twixt twelve and thirty years, who was Jesus, we ask?

The Bible says nothing worth taking to task.

A square or a rounder? - we’re all left to wonder

How hearty he partied, how much did he blunder?

 

‘Twas the night before forty long days and dark nights

When Jesus went wandering way out of sight

The children of Bethlehem all tucked in their beds

But Jesus’ buddies came over and said

“Dude, it’s past time that we tore up the town

Put on your sandals - let’s knock a few down!”

“Why not?” Jesus asked himself, ready to roll

And so they took off in the gloom and the cold.

 

On Mardi Gras night in a funky old hut

They tippled until the tavern was shut

Then they stumbled and wobbled

Down the streets that were cobbled

Laughing and singing

Roaring and swinging

Donging and dinging

Joking and poking

Till they fell in a heap

And drifted to sleep

‘Neath a sycamore tree.

 

Head leaning against the trunk,

Tongue lolling out of his mouth,

Jesus dreamed a wondrous dream.

 

And you and I were in it

Our world and all that’s in it

Now in twenty twenty three

All was plain for him to see.

Ahh, the wonders that played

Like Fat Tuesday’s parade!

With people in costumes that he’d never seen

Zooming along in their gleaming machines

On roads wide and smooth

And in skies where they flew

Markets as big as the temple’s grand square

And glittering lights were festooned everywhere

Bewildering devices

Incomparable spices

Unimaginable prices.

Houses as big as an Israeli town

With perfect pastures all around

But no sheep to be seen

On the neatly-trimmed green…

 

Jesus dreamed all this and more

He saw the rich, and he saw the poor

The ones in the Teslas, the ones in the tents

The ones who paid and collected the rents

Crypto billionaires gaming the system

Fake-tanned demagogue blaming the victim

A blizzard of words in a torrent of tweets

Lies spreading faster than folks can delete

Corrosive opinions promoted as facts

Conspiracy theories churned out to the max.

 

The mental health crisis came into his view

Millions of people lost deep in the blues

Eating to work and working to eat

Meeting to work and working to meet

Lonely souls on busy streets

Friendship faked on hand-held screens

Till no one knows what friendship means

 

He was blown away by the contradiction

Misery and wealth in juxtaposition

Food in abundance

Clothes in redundance

Want it you get it

Sky’s not the limit

So why all the sadness?

And why all the badness?

 

He rose from his slumber as dawn brightly came

But still in his soul those hard questions remained

With his buddies on Tuesday he got himself bent

But now it was Wednesday, beginning of Lent.

 

“I’ll go to the desert and sort it all through;

I won’t come back till I know what to do.”

 

Forty days and forty nights

Forty darks and forty lights

Hunger, pain, and cold and heat

Look within, and then repeat

See what’s real and see what’s not

What you lack and what you’ve got

Who you aren’t and who you are

Where to go and just how far.

 

And when he was done he saw what to do.

Discovered his mission - and it is ours, too.

Know the divine at the core of our being

Open our eyes and really start seeing

Speak out the truth to the powers that be

Stand up for justice for you and for me

 

Tuesday’s upon us, so let’s start the party

Swinging our beads and singing out hearty

Howl an incantation

To all of creation

Vent our frustration

At higher inflation

Lift a libation

And make an oration

To change the narration

Of pointless placation

And take a vacation

From all our vexation

‘Cause Wednesday will follow

As sure as tomorrow

And then we’ll seek the mission

That we’ll bring to fruition –

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Let the good times roll!

 

 

Box Spring Mountain

 

(This one's from the "vault" - I wrote it in 2012, after a hike up the mountain behind the University of California, Riverside, where I graduated in 1975.  It was a nostalgic ascent, bringing to mind and heart the many climbs I made of it when I was a student there - and recalling my sentiments in that era...)

Climbing
the stupendous weight of possibilities,
toward the brooding glint of any-time-now,
into the outrageous orange glow
of setting smoggy sun
sizzling on a stony mountain,
sending shadows eastward
toward nada-land.
My thoughts boiled off
into the invisible aether
interbeing everything around me
as I ascended the steep thrust
of bouldered granite.
A cityscape crystallized below.
Ravens squawked above,
gyring over their roosts.
Sycamores, drunk with vehicular CO2,
clung to the crotches of mountain ravines.
Unwritten books bubbled in the bottom of my mind.
Possible poetry oozed from the subtle glands of my spirit.
My testicles composed an invisible testament
of will to exist beyond myself in union with Her.
University courses decomposed
in the compost heap of my consciousness.
Literature metabolized in the liver of my mind.
Calculus and anthropology stewed in the slow-cooker of my soul.
The crunch of decomposed granite under my bootsteps,
The lightness of my skinny body, nearly effortless
in its bounding up and down and around the what-the-hell mountain
piled high with edible tomorrows and delicious somedays.
I ate the idea of a Joshua tree
and then picked my teeth with the sliver moon.
I'd rather be writing this now than then:
I couldn't have predicted the aftertaste.
Actualized yearnings, undertaken urges, dreamed deeds done.
And still the staggering mountain beckons me up,
giddy with gravity's goofiness,
delirious with the synchronicity of then and now.

.

 

14 Questions for Lent

 

For Lent 2023 at my church, UCC Simi Valley, I'm inviting folks to engage with 14 of the questions that Jesus asked his followers during his ministry.  From Ash Wednesday, 2/22, through Easter, they will be on display in 14 "stations" on the front patio of the church.   Participants can take slips of paper and write responses to the questions, and put them in the boxes at each station, as they choose.  In 10 am Easter Sunday worship, 4/9/23, we will display these responses on the wall inside the sanctuary. 

This selection of questions of Jesus is intended for open-ended, contemplative, prayerful personal meditation and group conversation.  Here, the questions are presented out of their contexts in the gospel narratives.  Those contexts are well-worthy of study and consideration.  But here, you can fit Jesus' questions into your own contexts, imagining how they address or challenge your own life-experience.  The questions are presented here as "koans" - spiritual "monkey-wrenches" -  tossed into our minds to break us loose from habits that get in the way of Divine Love. There are no right answers.  It may be enough to mindfully contemplate the questions rather than trying to answer them!  How can these questions bring us closer to the true Divine Nature within, and draw us closer in loving community?  After each question, I offer some prompts for reflection and response.

Also included below are my interpretations of the 14 Stations of the Cross - which participants also can choose to engage and respond.

Copy and use freely, with attribution!
 

14 Questions of Jesus

1. 
   And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? (Matt 6:27-28) (What are your worries?  When and how do they arise?  How do they manifest physically?) 
   
   2. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? (Matt 7:2) (What are the logs in your own eyes?  What prejudices and assumptions and judgments get in the way of your ability to see things as they are, on their own terms?  How clearly can you see these "logs"?)
   
   3.  Why are you afraid, you of little faith? (Matt 8:26)  (What are you afraid of?  What is the root of your fear?  When/how do these fears arise?  How do these fears affect your life and the lives of others?  How do your fears manifest in your body?)
   
   4.  Do you believe that I am able to do this? (Matt 9:28)  (What do you need to do?  Do you believe you can do it?  Examine your beliefs about what you can and cannot accomplish.)
   
   5.  How many loaves have you? (Matt 15:34) (What do you have to work with - what are your resources to deal with the challenges before you?  Are they sufficient? Can you "make do"?)
   
   6.  But who do you say that I am? (Matt 16:15) - What is your name? (Luke 8:30) (Who are you, in your essence?  If you lovingly observe yourself in prayerful, mindful contemplation, who/what is it that is doing the observing?)
   
   7.  What do you want me to do for you? (Matt 20:32)  (What kind of help do you need?  Are you willing to ask for it?)
   
   8.  So, could you not stay awake with me one hour? (Matt 26:40) - Simon, are you asleep? (Mark 14:37) - Why are you sleeping? (Luke 22:46) (In what ways are you "asleep", spiritually/emotionally/mentally/socially/politically?  What would help you come "awake"?)
   
   9.  My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me? (Matt 27:46)  (Is there any part of you in despair?  What is the root of that despair?)
   
   10.  Can you see anything? (Mark 8:23)  (In what ways are you blind - unable to "see" important aspects of life within and around you?)
   
   11.  For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? (Luke 22:27)  (In what ways are you a servant, and in what ways are you a master?  What is it like to be in each of those roles?  Are there situations in which those roles should be reversed for you? How can you be more of service to your community, country, and the world?)
   
   12. What are you discussing as you walk along? (Luke 24:17)  (What chatter is going on in your mind right now?  What are you thinking right now?  What kind of inner dialogue is going on in you right now?)
   
   13.  What are you looking for? (John 1:38)  (What do you want?  Is anything missing in your life?  What do you want to do about it?  What are you willing to do about it?)
   
   14.  Do you want to be made well? (John 5:6)  (In what ways are you not well?  What is your level of desire to become well?  What difference might it make if your desire was stronger?)
   
   You can also engage with the Stations by contemplating them as Stations of the Cross.  And you can write your reflections on them on the slips and put them in the boxes, as you choose.  Here is my contemporary interpretation of the Stations:
    

STATIONS of the CROSS – Via Dolorosa — Via Crucis — Way of the Cross

The practice of contemplating the Stations of the Cross, depicting the final hours of Jesus’ life, is a very old one.  They are based on the New Testament stories of the moments leading to his crucifixion, with additions from medieval legends.  Many Catholic churches have gardens or sanctuaries in which the stations are situated.  Each of the 14 stations marks a point along the way to Jesus’ death.

The Roman cross was a sign of the Empire’s power to torture its subjects into submission, but its brutality contributed to its moral decay and eventual collapse.  The early Christians turned the Empire’s intended meaning of the cross upside down and inside out, making it the symbol of transformation from the way of death to the way of life, from hatred and violence to kindness and compassion, from retribution to forgiveness.
 
“…as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up…” (John 3: 14)   In the gospel of John, the cross is described as the homeopathic remedy for the human condition of suffering. 
 
In ancient times, homeopathy – the principle that “a dose of that which ails you is the cure” – was the dominant form of medicine. The cross is the central symbol of the Christian religion; it confronts its viewers with suffering, and it is through this homeopathic encounter that suffering is transcended.  Buddha’s first step on his path to enlightenment, known as the First Noble Truth, is that life is suffering.  Only by facing this truth can one begin to get relief from it.  The first and most deeply paradoxical of the Twelve Steps toward recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous is to admit that one is powerless over alcohol.  It is by facing what crucifies us that we begin the process of resurrection into action for healing, recovery, forgiveness, reconciliation, repentance, and renewal.
 
The passage from John refers to a passage from the Hebrew Scriptures (Numbers 21:9): “ So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”  The people of Israel, wandering in their desert exodus, began to despair and were then punished for it with a plague of snakes that bit them and killed some of them.  Moses cried out to God for help, and God told him to put up a bronze serpent on a pole and have the people gaze at it, and thus be healed of the snakebites. (The image of the serpent on a pole, the caduceus, is the symbol of medicine.) The gospel of John says that likewise, Jesus was lifted up on the cross before us.  By squarely gazing at our brokenness, we can begin to resurrect into wholeness. 

These interpretations of the Stations invite you to contemplate the cross from both a personal and a social viewpoint.  What cross do you bear, and what cross bears you?  What social and economic and political structures have crucified us and others?  What resurrection awaits us, personally and collectively, on the other side of the cross? 

1. Jesus is condemned to death
The Romans condemned Jesus to death on a cross as a rabble-rouser, a supposed threat to the “Pax Romana”.  The cross was a symbol of Roman state terror, meant to frighten its subjects into submission.  A few hundred years later, the Roman Empire was gone – but the cross still stood: no longer the symbol of Roman power, but rather as the sign of the death-defying love of Jesus the Christ.

MEDITATION: Whom do you blame for the ways in which you suffer?  What are the consequences of your blame and accusation?  In society, who are our scapegoats?  What would it be like to end this game of shame and blame?

2. The cross is laid upon him
“We each have our own cross to bear.”. Suffering is the universal condition of humankind. The Christian religion makes this point by making the cross its most central image. Buddhism, too, begins with this recognition. The Buddha’s first “station” on his path to enlightenment was to recognize that all life is suffering.

MEDITATION: What crosses do you carry through life? When have they become too heavy for you to bear?  Who or what can help you bear them?

3. His first fall
According to the Stations, Jesus stumbled and fell three times as he was marched to Golgotha to be crucified. Jesus said (Matthew 21:42-44) that the stone of stumbling would become the cornerstone — the most important stone in the building of the new kin-dom of heaven on earth.

MEDITATION: What is the “stone” that makes you stumble and fall? What is it like to be humbled? How can your stumbling stone become the foundation of a new and better life for you and others?

4. He meets his mother Mary
What was it like for them to encounter each other as he staggered to Golgotha?

MEDITATION: What unfinished business do you have with your parents and/or with your children?  If this was your last chance to communicate, what would you say to your parent or child?

5. Simon of Cyrene is made to bear the cross
A man named Simon, who came to Jerusalem from his home in Cyrene, in North Africa, to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem, was picked, apparently at random, to carry Jesus’ cross. It was a common practice of Roman soldiers to press people into service to carry loads for them. 

MEDITATION: What crosses are you asked to carry for others? Do you do so willingly or grudgingly? And who carries the cross for you?  What do we owe the Simons of our world today – the people who labor in our fields and factories, the people who empty bedpans and mop floors?

6. Jesus’ face is wiped by Veronica
This station is based on a medieval-era legend not found in the New Testament.  According to the tradition, Veronica was one of the women of Jerusalem who followed Jesus to the cross. She wiped his face to offer comfort, and his image remained on the cloth. The cloth became a sacred relic that had healing powers. The name “Veronica” means “true image” — the true image of the Christ, which can be found in every human being.  Veronica herself became the true image of the Christ through her act of compassion for Jesus.

MEDITATION: When you look in the mirror, do you see the true image of the Christ ? Do you see the suffering of the Christ, and also the one for whom the Christ is willing to suffer?  When have you witnessed the true image of the Christ in other people?

7. His second fall
Jesus, weakened by beatings, fell again on his way to Golgotha. When we are weakened by one disaster, we are made more vulnerable to others.

MEDITATION: What hurts have you experienced, both physically and emotionally, that leave you more vulnerable to more hurt? Have you chosen to hide or excessively protect yourself from further suffering, or have you chosen to keep on living and loving, and risk being hurt again?

8. He meets the women of Jerusalem
Jesus encountered a group of women who were his followers, wailing about his impending death. He told them to wail not for him, but instead for themselves and for Jerusalem, which he predicted would one day be destroyed. Indeed, about 70 years later, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the people of Israel were driven out of the country, not to return fully until this past century.

MEDITATION: What is your place in history? How do you, and how can you, make a difference in the unfolding of human destiny?  What is your part in preventing catastrophic climate change, and in advancing economic, social, and racial justice?

9. His third fall
Jesus fell a third time on his way to crucifixion, according to the Stations legends. He had lost his strength, his power, his reputation: many of his followers had abandoned him.

MEDITATION: What have you lost along life’s way? In what way are you cursed by these losses, and in what ways are you liberated? If you could have anything back that you have lost, what would it be, and what would you do with it if you had that second chance? What do you have to lose now — dignity, pride, position — and what would it be like to lose it?  

10. He is stripped of his garments
In Jesus’ time, it was extremely humiliating to be seen naked. His robe or cloak was taken by the Roman soldiers, who further humiliated him by drawing  lots to see which of them would get it.

MEDITATION: What part of your life do you want to keep “under cover”? When have you been painfully exposed?  In what ways have you made light, downplayed, or disrespected the sufferings of others?

11. He is crucified
His last words were “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This was the moment of Jesus’ worst suffering, but it was also the pivotal moment of the gospel myth.  The writers and the readers of the gospel would have recognized these words as the opening line of Psalm 22.  And they would have remembered the rest of the psalm, which says:  “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.  In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them.”

MEDITATION: What ideas or definitions or theologies about God have you forsaken, or have forsaken you?  What experience or understanding of God has taken their place? 

12. He dies on the cross
The sacred myth of the gospel says that Jesus died on the cross and three days later was resurrected.  The resurrected Jesus lived and breathed and walked and talked again, but he still had the wounds of the crucifixion on his hands and feet and torso.  After he died, he wasn’t the same. 

MEDITATION: What part of you is dying?  What part of you has died?  In what ways will you never be the same?   Do you embrace this change, or regret it?

13. His body is taken down from the cross
The gospel tells us that one of the rulers of Israel, a man named Joseph of Arimathea, secretly admired Jesus and asked to remove and bury his body after his crucifixion.  This surely must have exposed him to danger from the Romans as well as from the other members of the Jewish Sanhedrin. (According to medieval legends, Joseph later came to England to establish the Christian church there, and in England he placed the Holy Grail – the cup used by Jesus in the Last Supper – in a well at Glastonbury.)

MEDITATION: When have you been served profoundly by people who have helped you in secret, with no thought of reward or even thanks? What thankless, hard tasks are you asked to do for the sake of others? Are you willing to do them without recognition or reward? When is it appropriate to expect thanks and reward for your good work, and when does public acknowledgement just get in the way of being of service?

14. His body is laid in the tomb
Jesus’ death was shameful, but he was buried respectfully and honorably. Joseph of Arimathea wrapped his body in a shroud and placed it in a new tomb with herbs and spices, in the traditional manner.
The tomb was the cocoon, the womb, in which the story of Jesus the historical person of first-century Palestine gestated and transformed into the sacred myth of the universal Christ – the manifestation of God, who is unconditional love. Each of the three days in the tomb was a “trimester” in that gestation period…. ending with the resurrection we celebrate at Easter.

MEDITATION: What part of your life is entombed — on hold, unseen?  What kind of “gestation” or transformation is underway within?  What new life might await you when the stone is rolled away from your tomb?