A Corona of Thorns for Good Friday

1. Christ Falls the First Time

Here falls he first and knows that he must rise.

On this flint bosom her condemned Lord

Would snuggle as the swaddled infant lies,

These public stones his secret, stable ward.

A rude beginning when there was no room

Makes now less rued this resting from the rood.

They would have stoned him when it was to soon,

Now seeks he stones to bathe with salty rheum.

But yet redemption lies a weary way

Ahead and Roman pikes yet pry and prod,

A seven-sentence sermon yet to say,

A hangman yet to name him Son of God.

He rises, struggles onward for the prize,

Then falls again to find he cannot rise.

2. Christ Falls the Second Time

He falls again to find he cannot rise,

Though inclination be as sharp as will.

This body no mere seeming, no disguise,

The God-Man truly man, for good or ill.

A Roman sword athwart a pilgrim’s way

Derails devotion, unslays sacrifice.

A passerby who longs his lamb to slay

Must now by-pass that plan to pay this price.

Though from the temple courts now balked by blood

Of man from shedding blood of goat or bull,

He leads a truer lamb behind this rood,

Enters a truer temple at the Skull.

Diverted from the way he would have trod,

A human hand here helps a human God.

3. Saint Veronica Wipes the Face of Christ

A human hand here helps a human God

To clear his sight. Who's spittle healed the blind

Is blinded now by sweat and salty blood.

She can’t stop cruelty, but she can be kind.

The first veil ruined on this ruined day

Is freely given. Face to face she sees

The face of him who walks for her this Way

Of Sorrow, slaves to set her free.

Like all we give to Christ this cloth comes back

Infused with the true icon of his gaze.

She bears his victory in a simple swatch

Of linen set with sacred blood ablaze.

We never see his face in what we keep.

He turns our tears to those for whom he weeps.

4. Christ Addresses the Women of Jerusalem

He turns our tears to those for whom he weeps:

The victims of war’s purple testament.

A woman’s tenderness of heart he seeks

To see the price of power, and lament.

The tree he bears, though dead, is green with hope

Of life lived out in meek humility

And violence overcome by love’s wide scope,

And ending of the sword’s futility.

We weep beside the way of Calvary’s cross,

Yet set aside our crosses for the way

Of swords drawn to revenge our pain and loss,

And yet more swords in yet a drier day.

‘Neath our false tears he falls yet full of hope

And naked waits for hate’s uplifting stroke.

5. Christ is Stripped of His Garments

He, naked, waits for hate’s uplifting stroke,

An emptied bucket dancing in the air.

Foul spittle’s target, butt of scoffing jokes:

With God nailed safely what will men not dare?

The first blood ever drawn by him was shed

To make a cloak for our first parents’ shame.

Now his own blood he offers in our stead

And hangs exposed, uncovered, blasted, blamed.

What hope for naked sinners when the King

Of Heaven high for all to see

Lacks any veil to veil his suffering?

What hiding place for us now can there be?

Our Covering uncovered covers us:

He clothes our naked guilt with his last breath.

6. Christ Dies on the Cross

He clothes our naked guilt with his last breath

Breathed out to shape a small child’s bedtime prayer.

The breath of life now stopped by breathless death

Commits itself into to the Father’s care.

From Adam’s nostrils God’s gift now withdrawn

That finished Eden’s work and gave us life.

Our bodies nothing now but fleshly brawn,

Our days now nothing but survival’s strife.

The One whose Breath once brooded on the deep

Of chaos’ void and called forth dark’s first light

Now sinks in darkened night and breathless sleep,

That suffocates our souls in airless plight.

They free his corpse. They handle mangled earth.

The breath of God returns now to its birth.

7. Christ is Placed in the Tomb

The breath of God returns now to its birth,

The second Adam’s dust to Adam’s dust.

Some spices seek to cheat devouring Earth

Of her fair prey for Eden’s broken trust.

Through Him one son, one daughter dodged the grave,

And Lazarus the grave clothes shortly left,

Undid their dying ‘til another day:

But death’s Undoer’s now been done to death.

With Roman signs and soldiers seal the tomb

To guard from those whom fear now holds in ward.

With bars and bolts lock up the upper room

To ward off those whom fear now keeps on guard.

And silently inside the tomb Christ lies:

Here falls he last to know that he must rise.

Now to the Gate of My Jerusalem A Holy Week Meditation Hardin Simmons Chapel at the South Texas School of Christian Studies Mark 11.1-10/15.12-14

(Note: My colleague Dr. Joe Rangel, who oversees the undergraduate chapel here at the South Texas School of Christian Studies, gave me the privilege of preaching for the Holy Week service. I thought I'd share this brief devotional. Thanks as always to Malcolm Guite for his stunning sonnet sequence, "Sounding the Seasons," the source of the sonnet below.)

Collect

Great God our King, when You sent Your Son into the city where You made Your glory to dwell some cheered him because they thought he brought the kingdom of their own ambitions and others cursed him because they knew he endangered the kingdom of their own privileges. Grant us the grace of blasting vision that forces us to see our own choice of crossless kingdoms, to repent, and to embrace the Kingdom of Heaven. This we pray in the name of Your Son our Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.

            How could they do that?

            That's the question this story makes us want to ask. How can the same crowd go from "Hosanna" on Sunday to "Crucify" on Friday? The short answer is that it isn't the same crowd.

            Understand that the Jerusalem of this narrative is a deeply schizophrenic city. On the surface, making the most noise and dominating the feed of the twenty-four-hour news cycle are the Galileans, the redneck rebels from up north. They came roaring into town sporting the symbols and slogans of sedition: Palm branches were the logo of Judas Maccabeus, the Hasmonean Hammer who, a century or so earlier, routed the Syrians and set Israel free; "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord" was a greeting used for royalty, essentially the equivalent of, "God save the king!" These were out-of-towners, trippers, tourists who muled their mutinous notions into the boiling pot of the Passover.

            Beneath this red-state surface we find the blue-state sophistication of the natives. Jerusalem was the seat of an accomodationist political theology that sought to ride the uncertain riptide of realpolitik and protect the privileges they had acquired under the status quo. They thought Galileans talked funny.

            The first crowd cries out on Sunday for Christ to conquer, then abandons him on Friday because their theology had not use for the cross. The second crowd cries out on Friday for Christ to be crucified and stays silent on Sunday because their theology has no use for a king.

            So that's the answer to the question, "How could they?"

            But I don't think, here in this week before Easter, that "How could they?" is the best question for us to ask. I think a better question would be, "How have we?"

            You see, each of us is our own Jerusalem, a split-personality of spirituality, each part of which requires that we repent. On the one hand, there is the Palm Sunday tendency to cheer for a Jesus we believe will bring about the kind of life we want. The problem is that we swiftly abandon Him when He leads us to a kingdom that makes sense only in light of the crucifixion of all that we value. On the other hand, there is the Good Friday tendency to try to make sense of the world as it "really" is. The problem is that we readily crucify a Jesus who starts insisting on upending the careful compromises that secure our power and privileges.

            So the question is not, "How could they turn on Jesus?" but, "How have I turned on Jesus?"

            The Cambridge poet Malcolm Guite has written a Palm Sunday sonnet that powerfully captures the challenge of this story, and I will close with it today.

Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,

The seething holy city of my heart,

The saviour comes. But will I welcome him?

Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;

They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,

And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find

The challenge, the reversal he is bringing

Changes their tune. I know what lies behind

The surface flourish that so quickly fades;

Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,

The hardness of the heart, its barricades,

And at the core, the dreadful emptiness

Of a perverted temple. Jesus come

Break my resistance and make me your home.

(From Sounding the Seasons by Malcolm Guite: http://www.canterburypress.co.uk/books/9781848252745/Sounding-the-Seasons)

Sonnets for the Stations of the Cross: 7 - Christ dies on the cross

The breath of God returns now to its birth,

The second Adam’s dust to Adam’s dust.

Some spices seek to cheat devouring Earth

Of her fair prey for Eden’s broken trust.

Through Him one son, one daughter dodged the grave,

And Lazarus the grave clothes shortly left,

Undid their dying ‘til another day:

But death’s Undoer’s now been done to death.

With Roman signs and soldiers seal the tomb

To guard from those whom fear now holds in ward.

With bars and bolts lock up the upper room

To ward off those whom fear now keeps on guard.

And silently inside the tomb Christ lies:

Here falls he last to know that he must rise.

Cabbie Christology Easter Sunday March 31, 2013 John 20.1-18

            Bishop N. T. Wright sat in the back of a black taxicab stalled in the snarled gridlock of London traffic. The hack driver, bored with contemplating the car-scape and noticing his fare's clerical vestments, struck up a conversation. He bagan by noting that his passenger was "a vicar." Wright acknowledged that this was basically correct. The cabbie then observed that the Church of England was having "a bit of trouble about women bishops." Again, Wright assented. Then, in flawless Cockney, this man offered his theological insights to one of the most brilliant New Testament scholars of our day:

            "What I always say is, if God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, everything else is basically rock 'n' roll, innit?"

            Mary Magdalene thought Jesus was the gardener. She was wrong, because of course he was the risen Christ. But she was right, too, because if he was the risen Christ, everything else was basically rock 'n' roll.

            She was right because this Second Adam, who came to a different garden on "the first day of the week," the beginning of a new creation, would fulfill the charge that the First Adam failed in the first garden after the original seven days. And because from here on in Christ might come to her in anyone - Jew or Greek, slave or free man, male or female, big shot or gardener, scholar or cabbie.

            God had raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Everything else was basically rock 'n' roll.

            Easter Sunday reminds us that we must now calculate for the incalculable. Jesus might appear to us anywhere and speak to us through anyone and tell us to do anything including commission a woman to teach the Gospel to a congregation of men. It isn't that all bets are off; it's that the time has come to double-down on everything.

It's Still Rock 'n' Roll to Me,

Doug

Sonnets for the Stations of the Cross: 6 - Christ Dies on the Cross

Today is one week from Good Friday and seemed to be an appropriate day to ponder this awful and incomprehensible moment. My preacher father used to say that to a Christian every Sunday is Easter Sunday. I guess that means that every Friday is Good Friday. I read years ago that Psalm 31.5, which Jesus quotes as he dies, was taught to Jewish children as the equivalent of our, "Now I lay me down to sleep." I have used that notion as the clue to begin this sonnet.

He clothes our naked guilt with his last breath

Breathed out to shape a small child’s bedtime prayer.

The breath of life now stopped by breathless death

Commits itself into to the Father’s care.

From Adam’s nostrils God’s gift now withdrawn

That finished Eden’s work and gave us life.

Our bodies nothing now but fleshly brawn,

Our days now nothing but survival’s strife.

The One whose Breath once brooded on the deep

Of chaos’ void and called forth dark’s first light

Now sinks in darkened night and breathless sleep,

That suffocates our souls in airless plight.

They free his corpse. They handle mangled earth.

The breath of God returns now to its birth.