Putting the Holy Back in Holy Week

My goodness, but the devil is getting loud these days.  Telling us to confuse life for death, and death for life.  Convincing us that to disagree is to hate, that to love is to license, that to kill is to free from slavery.  Ramping up tension and anxiety and anger, so that we cannot see ourselves, or our neighbor, or Christ, during this Holy Week.

Make no mistake, there are vital, critical issues at stake in the public sphere.  We may all disagree to varying degrees on the correct path forward, on what constitutes Truth and Life, on the meaning of words like love and freedom, life and death, rights and license.  Those are important conversations to be had, particularly when they can be had in a mature, adult, intelligent, respectful fashion.

But this week, these are not the most important conversations.  The colors, the pictures, the votes, the manifestos, the righteous indignation, the accounts of suffering…they all pale in comparison to the suffering endured by the one who is Truth and Love himself, Jesus Christ.

This suffering was endured for you, oh suffering one.  This suffering was endured to take away your suffering.  And when you know that, really know it, soak it up for just a few days, it does change your perspective.  It doesn’t make the hurts and wrongs and the abuses of this world go away.  Not at all, but just for a moment, it can show you the truest, real-est, most hopeful, life-filled thing – person – you will ever encounter.  

And the devil knows it.  The devil is a jealous and wily one.  He/she/it wants you to look anywhere but the cross, anywhere but the crown of thorns, anywhere but the host and chalice, anywhere, ultimately, but the empty tomb.  And so the devil ramps up his attacks.  What are normally sly little whispers in our ears (…did God really say…..?) become loud shouts, death throes, the anger and screaming of one who might very well win the round, but will always lose the match.  

So defy the devil this week, Church.  Put down your swords, and take up the Word of God.  Put down your pictures and take up an icon, or better yet, your cross.  Put down your anger and take up grief.  Put down your shouts and take up prayers.  Put down your indignation and take up love.  Put down your despair and take up hope.

 

Know that the gates of hell cannot, and will not, prevail – so have a blessed, reverent, and holy, Holy Week. 

On Being a Good Woman

Are you the “perfect woman”? 

                Do you have every verse of Proverbs 31

                                Highlighted

                                Underlined

                                Memorized

                                Perfected

                Do you have a husband

                                That you

                                                Cook for

                                                Clean for

                                                Pray for

                                                Submit to

                                                Sometimes resent and

                                                Sometimes annoy but still

                                                Make love to every night

                                That

                                                Loves you

                                                Sacrifices for you

                                                Is the head of you and your household

                                                Even when he

                                                Says or does dumb things

Do you have six children

                                That you

                                                Nurse until they are 3 years old

                                                Homeschool

                                                Teach to be perfect Christians

                                That

                                                Love you

                                                Call you “Mommy”

                                                Get fingerpaint on your walls and

                                                Spit-up on your clothes

                                                Forget field trip permission forms

                                                And ask you to decorate impossible cakes for their 

                                                birthdays

Do you know how blessed you are…to know who you are…to be a good woman?

Are you the perfect woman?

                Are you the quintessential feminist who

                                Burns your bras

                                Supports reproductive rights and

                                Women’s health care

                Do you have a career that is

                                Unstoppable

                                High-earning

                                Successful

                                Difficult to juggle with your 2.1 kids

                                                And so you lobby and

                                                Blog and

                                                Facebook and

                                                Twitter

                                                In support of

                                                                Equal rights and

                                                                Equal pay and

                                                                More support and

                                                                More respect

                Have you made peace with

                                Your genitals and

                                Your sexuality and

                                Your right to good sex

                Do you know that God wants you to be

                                Happy

                                Prosperous

                                Stunningly orgasmic

                                Fertile on your terms

                                Free

                                Liberated

Do you have academic credentials from

                                All the right schools

                                With all the right mentors

                                                Who taught you

                                                                That once you were enslaved

                                                                Oppressed

                                                                In bondage

                                                                Held captive

                                                By the patriarchal traditions of the world

                                                And now you know that

                                                God wants you

                                                                To be free

                                                                To be a good woman

               

Do you know how blessed you are…to know who you are …to be a good woman?

This is for the woman who is not a good woman…

                She has no husband and

                No children

                She likes bras because

                Her boobs hurt without them

                She has a career but

                Hates Oprah

                She has no voice in the mommy wars but is

                Tugged by both sides

                She knows that “blessed are the wombs that never bore and the 

                breasts that never nursed”

                Means her

                But she cannot support the death of children she would gladly bear 

                and nurse

                Blessed or not

                Even in defense of women

               

This is for the woman who is not a good woman…

She gets looks from the good women

                Looks that silently and

                Accusingly and

                Painfully ask

                What is wrong with you

                Why aren’t you a good woman

                Don’t you love God

                Don’t you love yourself

This is for the woman who is not a good woman…

                She silently

                Painfully

                Prayerfully

                Trods along behind her God

                She wonders if she loves Him enough

                Or if she loves herself enough

                And maybe that is why

                She is not a good woman

                Why she is alone

                Knowing hardly a one who can

                Understand or

                Empathize

This is for the woman who is not a good woman…

                She continues to trod

                Because God or

                Fate or

                Destiny or

                What-have-you

                Has given her no other option

And so she tries

Although it is hard

                To trust that His promises are

                For her

                Even for her

                The woman who is not a good woman…

Lutherans and the (new) Pope

So...Lutherans have historically had a tenuous-at-best relationship with the head of the Roman Catholic Church.  Say what you will about Martin Luther (and we Lutherans ought not pretend that he was blameless), Leo X was hardly a model of Christian virtue, grace, or pastoral care.  It was the headbutting between Luther and Leo that ultimately led to the split of the Church.

Luther believed that Pope Leo (and, when you get right down to it, the whole office of the papacy) was the Anti-christ, because he/it obscured the gospel of God's grace, and laid too many legalistic burdens at the feet of the faithful.

This might well have been true, particularly of Leo X and a few other spectacular papal failures - in fact, a dear and very Catholic friend of mine has argued that what Martin Luther needed was not a kick in the pants or threats of excommunication, but rather, "a good pope."  Hmm...

So here we are, nearly 500 years later, and much has changed among Catholics and Lutherans alike.  There has been a growing consensus, in the intervening 500 years, that we are more alike than might be initially thought - if for no other reason than the sacramental understanding we have of the way in which God works.  Of course, there are other similarities - the Real Presence we believe comes in those sacraments (at least 2 of them!),the common language of Scripture, the liturgical form of worship we share, and above all, a reliance on, and a focus on, Jesus Christ as the only hope for a hurting and broken world.

And so, 3 days ago, the College of Cardinals elected a new pope - the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio, who has taken the name Francis, in honor of St. Francis of Assisi.  By all accounts, Pope Francis is a humble, caring, pastoral man.  It is said than in Buenos Aires, he lived in a small apartment rather than the fancy bishop's residence, cooking his own meals, answering his own door, and taking the bus to work each day.  He apparently has visited hospitals full of AIDS victims and other seriously ill children.  He has criticized Marxism, but is also suspicious of capitalism.  From the first hours of his papacy, it became clear that he would eschew many of the traditional trappings of the office, from bejeweled clothing and accessories to servants and drivers to physical separation from and elevation above his fellow cardinals.  These signs and symbols of power Pope Francis seems not only uninterested in, but confused by. (Why wouldn't he go pay his own hotel bill the morning after his election?  Aren't we supposed to set a good example?)

Pope Francis is also deeply orthodox, which in modern parlance is code for "pro-life, pro-marriage, anti-women priests, and anti-contraception." (How come nobody ever complains that the pope is orthodox in his approach to use of the Trinitarian formula in baptism?)  His take on these issues is formed, one hopes, less by an attraction to rules for rules' sake, but by a coherent theological understanding of proper stewardship of God's gifts to humanity.  (Whether one agrees with that theology is another thing entirely, but it is hardly an arbitrary imposition of "hateful rules".)

So, back to the Lutherans.  What do we think?  Well, judging by vox populi, the initial judgement of "the average ELCA pastor" is "it's nice that he likes poor people, but he still hates women and gays, so I don't want anything to do with him".  Hmm...

Over in the Missouri Synod and "even more isolationist" corner the reigning viewpoint seems to be, "I'm certainly glad he's sexually orthodox, it's just too bad he's the anti-Christ.  Wolf in sheep's clothing, dontcha know?"

To all of which I say in response, um, really?  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you your woman-hating pope: