Cwinthdon cyninges fiell; Crist waes on rode: the end of my lenten meditations and musings

So its Lent. I mean, more specifically its Holy Week, and nearly at the end of Holy Week, we've come to Good Friday. Its amazing what happens this time of the year. At Christmas, we celebrate the Nativity, an event that we recognize in our actions and thoughts. Just so the other parts of the church year. The liturgical year follows the life of Christ, and the different stages of his earthly life and ministry are easy enough to acknowledge through devotional emphasis, whether it be the mystery of his birth, the glory of his Transfiguration, the majesty of his ascension, or the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost by his promise. All these events we participate in primarily through a sort of mental and spiritual acknowledgment. Lent is different. Holy Week is different. Easter is different.

Part of the benefit of smart friends is scavenging their intelligent posts. A friend of mine posted a bit from her priest recently. I think its worth quoting:

Again the cross is brought out in procession, and that unique week of weeks approaches when the church invites us not so much to examine and to discuss, but to silently and intensely follow each step of Christ, to follow his slow and irreversible path to suffering, to crucifixion, and to death. It invites us to pick up this very cross.

As a pastor from my synod put it, this week encompasses the whole drama of our faith, the death, burial, and resurrection of that which was from the beginning. Lent is something different from the rest of the year, and Holy Week from the rest of Lent, most especially (I think, anyway) because in it we're actually invited to participate in this moment in the life of our Lord in a unique way. Of course, each part of the church year could easily be a metynomy for the whole of our faith if understood correctly, but Holy Week more than the rest.

Lent is strange for Lutherans, I think. On one hand we've got a good bit of practice. After all, saying that we're "poor miserable sinners" is part of the penitential rite that opens our services, the rite that happens immediately before Divine Service begins. On the other, we're the folks who hammer on the distinction between Law and Gospel. So a season where we're told to look at ourselves, to be awed by the burden of sin and the weight of glory, to repent for our deeds in the hope that we do not return to them to be builders of that which we've destroyed, has a foreign feel for us. We generally don't talk in church about the need to "do better this week" since our services focus on what Christ has done for us rather than what we do for him. Of course, the sinner's justification -salvation by Grace Alone through Faith Alone- need not create a tension. But, in all honesty, sometimes it does. Talk of right praxis is often met with the accusation of "pietist" and the conversation goes sour.

Lent does something to transcend all this in that it embodies the call of Christ. It begins with God speaking through a small man in front of me, saying "remember, oh man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." He puts ashes on my head marking me with the most despised and glorious of all marks: the command to remember is coupled with the sign of the cross. And at that moment, there is the call. This call cannot be parsed into law and gospel, into condemnation or forgiveness. It is the very voice of Christ calling me to repent, to believe, to turn. The next 40 days are the playing out again of a call, a call to fasting, repentance, and charity. Speaking through that little man at the altar, God himself calls us to follow him. The very word "remember" is a command, but repentance is nothing more than remembering both what we have done and what Christ has done and will continue to do for us.

Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship describes it like this when talking about the call of Christ on a man:

"And as he passed by he saw Levi, the son of Alphaes, sitting at the place of toll, and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him" (Mark 2:14).

The call goes forth, and is at once followed by the response of obedience. The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus. How could the call immediately invoke obedience?.... For the simple reason that the cause behind the immediate following of call by response is Jesus Christ himself.... According to our text, there is no road to faith or discipleship, no other road -only obedience to the call of Jesus.... It is a gracious call, a gracious commandment. It transcends the difference between the law and the gospel. Christ calls, the disciple follows: that is grace and commandment in one.

Long quote, I know, but I think it explains what I'm trying to say about Lent. It begins with this call of repentance and the turning of life from light to darkness. Last month, we began by following behind Christ as he fasted. This week saw us follow behind his donkey waving palms during his jubilant procession to the cross. And then, after his triumphal entry, our participation becomes more passive as the words of the gospel spoken to us wrap around our ears and hearts and bring us into the very story. We follow as a young John and a trembling Mary did, listening as the readings bring us, as the first utterance of those words brought them, to his trial, to his beatings, and finally to his death and burial. And we remember, as we do whenever we think of our baptism, that our God walked the road before us, showing all that it might bring. His resurrection is ours, but so is his cross. So is his tomb.

Holy Week is not so much about pondering or explaining doctrine. No, it "invites us not so much to examine and to discuss, but to silently and intensely follow each step of Christ." We do this always, or at least we're called to. During Holy Week, I guess, the reality of this call is just so much clearer because all we can do is simply follow, watch, and wait.

Different churches have different Good Friday traditions. Our church has a Tenebrae service. Psalms and gospels readings follow the Crucifixion and burial of Christ as the lights are slowly snuffed out, just as the Light that lighteth all men appeared, for a moment in time, to be blown out. The sun turned away, the earth shook, and we stand in darkness as those last remaining disciples did, until we hear that resounding crack that shook their hearts when the stone closed the grave in a poor mockery of "immensity cloistered." And as we stand, a single lit candle is brought out from behind the altar, and as we leave it reminds us that, though the story may have stopped flowing over our hearts, it has not yet come to an end.

And so we call this Friday Good. This week, we learn anew year after year that all our study, all our good works, all our striving and understanding, even all our penitence, come down to hearing the call, leaving the place of toll, and walking after that Jesus who existed from the beginning, who knew from all eternity the road he would travel, and who invites us in these moments to realize that we too must walk it behind him. The road may not be the one we'd like it to be. Worse still, it may be something like the one he trod. But Christ himself has called us to it. We walk it in faith, knowing that, while our humiliation along the way may bring us to our own Golgotha, He is strong and faithful to pull us along the final steps and across the threshold of glory.

Even after Tenebrae, the candle burns at the altar.

Eulogy, 18 February 2011

I'm posting this for friends and family who asked for a copy of the eulogy spoken over our Briona on February 18th. Feel free to copy if you'd like to keep it. For anything that, in retrospect, should have been said or omitted but was not, forgive the mistakes for the sake of mourning and a rushed hand.

Her obituary:

http://obits.mlive.com/obituaries/flint/obituary.aspx?n=briona-a-jawhari&pid=148640596&fhid=4729

The Flint Journal's article:

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2011/02/two_teenagers_in_three_days_di.html

Her eulogy:

We love this girl. For the benefit of those of who had not the privilege of knowing her as we did, I think its more than appropriate to relate a bit about her to the room. Briona Jawhari had a richness to her life, compared to which any words will fall flat; but such is our lot today.

I’ll start with her very early youth, the dawn of what should have been a very glorious day. From a young age, I think it an incontestable fact that Briona was, to put it lightly, strong willed. She was immovable, and we would learn to call sure-footedness later, was just plain stubbornness then: at four year old, the girl had a will like bound cords of iron. (We used to call her Angelica from “Rugrats”).

But, for as strong as she was, we cousins were older than her and much bigger, so often this immovable mental surety could not help but give way to our brute strength. Ah, but then the soft petals of her personality would show, for with one little word all our schemes against her would crumble: “Baba” she would say, “Daddy,” and the day was lost, because she was a daddy’s girl if there ever was one. Her daddy loved her with a heart as big as the whole world, and she knew it.

Her capacity for stubbornness was, in time, shorn up with no small amount of wit, and her acuteness of thought in debate would later earn her college scholarships by the time she was in middle school.

Now, its impossible to talk about Briona without talking about her two ‘sister,’ Courtney and Kamyn. For those who don’t know, Middle-Eastern women have children in batches: when one woman is pregnant, her sisters catch it from her like the flu! And so Briona alwas had allies, because no matter who was right and who was wrong, those two were always on her side, and (just like with her daddy) she knew it.

As strong as she was, Briona had need of their strength. Her mother, the Lord keep her, fought a losing battle with drugs even when Briona was a young girl. Now, Bre was as smart as we all say she was in part because she learned things no child should ever have to deal with, much less understand: she lived with the constant fear that her mother would die. It was unsafe for Sam to let her spend prolonged time with her own mother, and she understood exactly what was going on. She knew that it was a fight that Tina would probably lose.

But do you know what she did? She knew that she was the only thing her poor mother had that was worth holding onto, worth holding onto, worth fighting for, worth hoping for. So she took her heart, knowing full well what was going to happen to it, and she gave it to her mom. Knowing what it would cost her, she loved unconditionally. She could have been smart, could have cut herself off from her drug addled mother, could have protected herself from the pain and sorrow that would come, but she did none of this. And her mother died, and the heart that Briona gave her was broken into so many pieces.

I’m going to relate a story to all of you that Briona told me this year. It took place some months ago, but it has stayed with me. At the time, she was in the midst of a terrible situation in a terrible place. (But her daddy went and brought her home, because that’s what dads do, they bring their girls home).

We were talking about where she was, about the struggles she faced daily and her determination to keep her path straight. She looked so tired, and I asked her why she had trouble keeping her eyes bright and open, and she told me she had been up all night. Why? Well, where she was staying, there were several small children, you see, and, well, one of them had an accident. He didn’t wake up his mom; he didn’t wake up his dad; no, when he found himself lying awake in his own bed covered in the filth of an embarrassing mess, he went to the most loving person he knew: he went to Briona. And she spent the rest of the night bathing this boy, cleaning the filth and embarrassment from him, putting him in her bed, making sure his sheets and blankets would be fresh and free of shame in the morning.

So that’s what she did with her life. She picked up all those broken pieces of her heart, and she gave them all away again, a light of grace in places that would have been utterly dark.

And then she was overcome, and we lost her.

There is nothing more unnatural than writing a eulogy or memorial speech for a child. Nothing I can say could make such a thing less tragic, nor could any set of events surrounding the passing of a child make it more bearable. Death under any circumstance is an aberration, a loss, a cutting short of the good things of God; but how much more do we feel the truth of all this when the song cut short had only just begun to be sung. Briona’s life had just begun, and then it was stolen from her, but also from us.

And so we mourn, and so we cry. And like Rachel we refuse to be comforted, because or loss is real.

The most human impulse would be to now try to explain to ourselves and each other why we’re in this place, speaking about the loss of this beautiful girl, whose life was stolen. She was vibrant, with a laugh like a spring morning cut short. Her heart was a lion’s; her voice was magnificent. And what could be the point of some plan or explanation that could make sense of all this? Thankfully, we know that this was not the plan for her life, that our golden girl was simply stolen from us.

Some may say to not weep, but we do, and we will. For what else can we do but mourn?

And yet we find some comfort in our tears, for with them we declare the absurdity her death, the wretchedness of our loss, and the beauty of her life. And as we mourn, we find comfort somehow in one another, because our tears do not fall singly but flow together. And in seeing our own tears join with those of our neighbor, we look up, and we join hands, and we hold one another in our grief, and we keep one another standing in our sorrow, afloat but not drowning in sadness.

So do not fear to weep, for we mourn together, but do not forget to reach out your hands, for without one another we have nothing to keep us from sinking into the despair that overwhelms us.

And still our tears bring us yet this unexpected mercy, that they remind us of the God who wept at the death of his friend; and we recall that this same God, the man Jesus, said, “Talitha cumi, little girl arise” and the dead girl did; and that at the end of time this very same Jesus has pledged to declare, “Behold, I make all things new,” and that this same Jesus weeps with us now.

So for all assurance, we weep still, we grieve still. We are thankful for the grace that gives us one another, and as we go on, we’ll remember with thankful hearts the time we had with Briona, and her parting will be remembered among us in the love we give each other daily.

The peace of God keep us all.

Crying Over Spilled Milk

For those of you who don't know, I have something of a swearing problem. Not so much casually or in place of adjectives, or even when relatively great or terrible events take place. No, I generally only swear like a sailor when very trivial disappointments take place. These include dropping something I meant to put in the microwave, leaving a book out in the rain, losing some small trinket, or, quite literally, spilling a glass of milk, especially if it was the last one in the fridge and I meant it to go with some particular snack.

Rather than find it odd that I swear at trivial travesties, I used to think it was stranger that I didn't lose my cool when things of some importance happened: losing a job, death, a fight, a letter of rejection. In those big things, one feels the import clear enough, one sees the meaning behind big decisions or moments, and there doesn't really seem to be a need for you to contribute much of a hype to the whole thing in the form of a response. To put it simpler, everything is already important enough without your small voice giving it an air of importance, and you feel important enough handling a real tragedy to need to amplify anything with obscenities.

Now swearing at all the little things, then, bespeaks a lack of confidence that such trivialities, and the importance placed in them, add up to anything resembling importance. To them, then, I begin to add such magnitude as all manner of sound and fury can. In a larger way, I think its connected somewhat to a level of boredom men can feel in their daily work when they're not sure the work they do is meaningful. Since we don't kill huns or wolves all day, a neighbor's bad parking job or a stuck jar of pickles become the big trial for the day.

For those of you who don't know what exactly it is that I do, I've recently gone through a pretty lateral move within the same company (and in the same location), and the long and short of it is that I research and write full time now at a location three time-zones away from the rest of the office, making my contact with the outside world rather limited to the times I can find an excuse to use a library or post office. So I make no product outside of word documents that will one day be footnotes of footnotes of footnotes in publications, and I swear when I lose my pens (but they are really good pens).

So begins the task of reminding myself that my sphere, rather than production-oriented, is truly domestic: For the (married) Christian man, and really a great many societies historically, one's wage-earning is secondary to the role he plays in his home. Indeed, his role as carpenter or millwright is only good insofar as it enables his roles as husband and father. And so I tell myself that, even if I make no product and feel as though I don't get paid (direct deposit sort've takes the fun out of payday) the work keeps my family in house and home, well-fed, clothed, and generally provided for. For those who care, Luther's Large Catechism is excellent at reminding the reader of the importance of doing one's daily work. And then I pray for thankfulness and forgiveness. And then I swear because I can't find the recording I made of a friend lecturing on the Seven Years War a little over four years ago.

Romanticism is alive and well I guess, for even if I do not want an adventure where I'll go find myself, the desire to have some sort of job where I do very grave and important things indeed, like some epic hero that happens to wear a tie (thats a lie, my dream job has chain-mail). But all that really means is that is that I'm forgetting my place in the chain. So glory be to God for dappled things, that spilled milk may be the worst upset of my day, and that my life's importance is not anything I win for myself, but that its worth is imparted by Him who made it and preserves it.

Cookie dough, severed limbs, and heaps of broken images

So, I suppose one knows the honeymoon is over by any number of signs, chief among them being (1) the Mrs will no longer sit through Mel Brooks movies with me, and (2) on a very rare occasion, she admits that she's too tired to make cookies. This seems like something not at all important, but, as a more than spoiled newly-wed husband, I'm not at all used to not eating cookies now am I?

The latter occurred last night. I despaired. I very nearly sulked. I think I went into another room and shut the door. Just before I resigned myself to going to bed with no cookies (an awful fate, I know) some lines came to my head though, I think from Dylan Thomas, about not going quietly into that dark night.... 30 minutes later, I was happily eating from a tube of cookie dough I picked up on a late night run to Kroger.

It got me thinking a bit about how poetry, in the midst of my very real and trying sorrow, gave me a bit of a hand out of the hole I was in. It can't really give one comfort in despair, for something transcending reality is needed to give solace for the trials of reality. No, it can't lift us out of despair, but it can give us a way to make some sort of sense of our situation, a framework whereby we connect the things we experience to something beyond our particular lives. Poetry is no comfort or solution, only a temporary stay against confusion (to augment a smarter man's thoughts). For the Christian, Jew, or Mohammedan, revealed truth offers permanent comfort in its assurance that, as Lady Julien puts it, all manner of thyng will be well (though each offers, of course, a different explanation of why). Poetry, on the other hand, fills a different niche for religious believers than scripture insofar as it offers us a way of reconciling the explanations of scripture with those things in the world that seem to deny all explanation.

Here's what I mean: Job needed comfort, and he found it not in God's explanation, but in God's assertion that he was, in fact, still God while Job was not. St John's apocalyptic vision gives an assurance to believers not insofar as it asserts the reason or explanation behind history (it doesn't explain any sort of Divine Harmony in history), but it comforts in its assurance that Christ the King will return to right all wrongs, reconcile history, and save his creation. In the midst of cosmic assurances and comforts, poetry gives us something useful still in its (temporal) explanation of reality's sad incongruities and its disturbing consistencies.

Examples are easy to come by, but I'm thinking in particular of a poem by Seamus Heaney in Electric Light, but I'm sure most of us have some other very particular poem that has come to mind during another particular circumstance. The poem tells of a boy arriving at his school in the wake of a bombing (presumably in Ireland). He looks about, and while despair my be on its way in later in the day, the prime emotion seems to be simply confusion. Slowly, the boy makes sense of what he sees; rather, an English monk from the seventh century makes sense of it for him as lines describing the bloodied hall of Heoret drift, unasked for, through his memory to give some framework of understanding to the things he sees. Poetry offers him some way to stay his confusion, some way to explain just what the hell happened and why the universe would be oriented in such a way that some fellow's arm ends up over the door. The poet gives a skeleton to his experiences. It's worth quoting, but I don't want to steal any of Mr Heaney's well earned intellectual property. The poem's called 'The Border Campaign,' and its well worth the read.

In fact, something about revealed truth demands the creation of art surely by nature of being a fixed truth revealed. My point isn't even going to be Incarnational here, nor am I going to say that all art is worship or anything else that translates into everything=holy=everything. The points a simpler one than that: the Christian scriptures (both testaments) and their derivatives (Koran, etc) all seem to indicate a certain moral economy. A straight-forward reading of the Psalms, Proverbs, Beatitudes, and most of the Koran, gives one a sense that a very sovereign God who loves the good and punishes the bad holds court in the universe and will makes sure everything goes the way it should. Then reality happens, and things don't seem to go that way: I run out of cookie dough; Children die; Grendal keeps coming back. Reality has a way of refuting revealed scripture.

Should this bother us? I'm not asking if it should makes us sad, but if it should really keep us up at night. Of course, the short answer is no. For three days, the Word himself was refuted and defeated by the facts of this world, and his mother wept as Rachel did for the loss of her child, but the Resurrection shows the undoing of all that seemed victorious in those moments on the cross. So our job here just to wait for however long three days might actually be, remembering the promised restoration at the end of it. But, truly, it does bother us. So we pick up pens and do our best to reconcile some sort of synthesis between the broken shards of reality around us and the ordered universe revealed to us.

Its not entirely uncommon to get a strange look when you tell folks you devoted four years and more money than its worth repeating solely to the study of tall-tales. Whats even stranger is the face they make when they find out that you've not even a Teaching Certificate at the end of it and, eh? you still read that stuff that was homework not too long ago even when no one makes you. I suppose it is strange, but so is our world, and while the Christian has the light of revealed truth to teach him of eternity and the comforts promised by God himself to make it on the road there (and real comforts they are indeed), life is strange enough that we still find ourselves asking "what the hell just happened" more often than we'd like.

And yes, the stay against confusion offered by poetry is in the end only momentary, but fragments shorn up against ruin are better than ruin, even if they only keep you standing up long enough to get home, staying confusion well enough to get the oven preheated, anyway.