Shape and Substance

You mounted up late this morning
and even then choked down the last bite
of hardtack and swallowed the dregs
tasting less of coffee than of tin cup.

Still it’s sure to be a good day,
high pressure azure sky and warming fast
and the rumor that the scouts have seen
a big enemy camp downriver.

Swallowtail guidons snap in the breeze,
thirteen stripes and thirty-five stars,
a nation too eager to be on its way
toward its destiny and your place in history,

a better place no doubt
than starving like a dog in a Dublin slum,
and better fellows found in the saddle
than in the brawling alleys of the Bowery.

Why, there just might not be
any better place in the whole wide world
than riding column-o’-twos through the Montana grass
on the twenty-fifth of June in ‘seventy-six,

with the midday sun warming your back
and someone up ahead whistling Garryowen
and your horse stirring to match the column’s trot
and your whole future waiting for you

just over that next rise.

June 2015

This is not the cathedral, soleil matinal. This is not
the western portal. Up close it is paint, thick-coated or brushed flat,
transferred from his palate of creams and saffrons and persimmons
and muffled blue, as though a stream descending

from some higher ground happy in its purity
is forked by an island of clays—mustards and reds—obstinate,
insistent on its own reality. The island makes its point
upstream, but as the blue slides by and down

the argument seems less clear:
on the right still blue and pure while on the left
a kind of mingling of reasons blends to lavender.
The chalk-white on the right sits in judgment until

it too is drawn into the fray, and yields to blues and mustards.
This is not a cathedral door in sunlight and shadow,
nor a clay-cut stream. It is paint, thick-coated or brushed flat and
transferred from his palate of creams and saffrons and persimmons

and muffled blue. But step back, and he convinces you
of columns and arches upon arches, spire and
massive towers reaching, framing an eternal azure sky
as though heaven itself is bounded by their claims,

of dark alcoves between stone pillars ablaze in reflected glory,
of a door, part shadow and part light, promising within
solace without sentimentality, absolution without apology,
of a spirit that blends the argument of colors into truth,

and of a tiny Christ atop the western portal extending
the invitation to create with him a cathedral of the soul,
stretched on the imagination, made of paint thick-coated or brushed flat,
transferred from his palate of creams and saffrons and persimmons

and muffled blue.

[A friend shared with me an extreme close-up photograph of the door in Monet’s “soleil matinal” rendering of the western facade of Rouen Cathedral.  I was struck with how Monet’s apparently haphazard way of applying paint to canvas, viewed up close, becomes a cognitive whole when viewed at a short remove, and how we participate–as though by faith–in the creation of the image Monet suggests. That was on a Tuesday. On Wednesday, nine people were shot to death in Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC; their only offense was the color of their skin. It occurred to me sometime later that the final line in the penultimate stanza may have contained meanings I did not anticipate. PKH]

A sermon preached in Shelton Chapel of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary on 9 June 2015. The poem, Beside Himself, which appears toward the end of the sermon, is the same one published on this blog last week.

Mark 3:19b-35 

This is a bizarre and unsettling passage. I think I understand, but understanding is a bit like holding a tiger by the tail: now that I’ve got it, what do I do?

Let’s start with the understandable parts. The writer of the gospel of Mark uses a literary structuring device called inclusio –or at least that’s the name I learned for it; others call it “bracketing.” Regardless of the name, the device works like this: Mark begins telling a story—in this case, the story that the family of Jesus is concerned about Jesus’ mental health and come to “restrain him,” as the text says—but then interrupts that story to tell another one—in this case, the exchange of remarks between the scribes and Jesus over whether Jesus uses magical powers in casting out demons—and then returns to complete the first story—in this case Jesus’ redefinition of his family as “whoever does the will of God.” The two family stories are the bracket, and the dispute with the scribes is the center.

The family of Jesus heard of Jesus’ arrival “at home.” They “went out ” to him—a curious verb; one wonders why the family would have “gone out” to meet Jesus if he were “at home”—but cannot get to him because so great a crowd of listeners surrounds him that “no one can eat.” Mark says the family came to “restrain” him; the verb here is a form of krateo, which in its gentlest form means something like “to hold” or “take by the hand” and in its more vigorous form means “arrest” or “sieze”—eiher way, it’s clear they intended to exert some power over Jesus The family came because they have heard that he was “out of his mind.” That’s strong language, too, which may be why older versions used to translate, “beside himself.” I have to confess that I like those older translations. It seems to me they get closer to the meaning of Greek phrase—a form of ex istemi, meaning “to stand outside.” It’s the word from which we get our word, ecstatic, which originally meant “to be in an ‘out of body’ state.” From the family’s perspective, Jesus was in a fugue state. He’d gotten out of his head, out of control, and needed to be corralled and brought to heel.

Before that can happen, however, Mark inserts the center story of Jesus’ dispute with the scribes. Trying to discredit his healings and exorcisms, the scribes accused Jesus of sorcery, of “having” Beelzebul—basically, using the satanic Lord of Demons to conjure and control demonic forces. Jesus’ reply pointed out the logical fallacy in their argument: that demonic power does not defeat itself, but is bested only by a stronger power. And then he told this short parable: one cannot break into the house of a strong man and steal his possessions without first tying up the strong man and rendering him incapable of defending his home and property. And finally he offered up, without any explanation, this strange and troubling saying about unforgiveable sin.

And now Mark takes us back to the story of the family’s seeking to take Jesus home. Mark is careful to note here that Jesus’ mother and brothers were “standing outside, ” using the same words as those he uses to describe Jesus’ mental state a few verses before. Mark is also careful to note that “a crowd was sitting around him,” so that the family has to “send to him” in order to call him. It’s almost as if Mark is underlining the fact that those who thought Jesus was “outside himself” in the first part of the narrative now understand that they are the ones left “standing outside” while Jesus is now on the inside. As if to underscore the point, when told that his mother and brothers are seeking him, Mark tells us that Jesus asked “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Then “looking at those who sat around him,” said “Here are my mother and brothers.” It’s worth noting that the phrase the NRSV translates as “those who sat around him,” might be more literally rendered, “those sitting around him in a circle.” In these last verses, Jesus has moved to the geometric center of the circle in the center of the story.

What fascinates me is the ironic reversal in the text. Those who think of themselves as on the “inside” of the family, and who thereby think they have a prior claim on Jesus, are distressed when they find him “outside himself” and outside their control. Yet throughout the story, it is they who are “standing outside” unable to get in, and he who is at the center of the circle. Those who begin the story as family by the story’s end have lost that status, and Jesus has replaced them an entirely new family: those who share the circle with him, and those who “do the will of God.”

But let’s go back to the strange saying at the center of all this. In the midst of Jesus’ reply to the scribes, he says this:

Indeed, I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sin and the blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can have no forgiveness eternally, for that one is guilty of an eternal sin.

This statement seems to serve as a kind of separating device between those who side with Jesus, and those who oppose him. Those who oppose him, who say of him that he is possessed or in league with Beelzebul, place themselves forever outside the circle, outside the community of the faithful, and in this stark statement, outside the reaches of the forgiveness of God. Those who respond to Jesus, who receive the gospel in the Spirit in which he offers it, are within the circle, sheltered and secure in the fellowship of grace. In other words, it’s all about accepting Jesus and the Spirit in which he comes. You either do or you don’t. And if you don’t, you’re outside the reach of forgiveness. Nothing else matters: no familial relationship, no prior claims, no standing in the religious community.

If I stand back from that statement, take a breath, and think about it, I’m shocked by its vehemence. We hold tight to the notion that nothing—no act of human depravity, no depth of disbelief—lies outside the reach of the sovereign mercy and grace of God. Yet here, Jesus seems to be suggesting nothing less than that: “…no forgiveness eternally, for that one is guilty of an eternal sin.” I struggle to find a place for that in my theology. In the end, I don’t know what to do with this all-or-nothing Jesus. Talk about a tiger by the tail!

Here’s what I know: it’s all about the house, and who’s in and who’s outside it. This passage is about separating insiders from outsiders, those who have control from those who can only pretend to what they do not possess. And the irony of this passage is that those who think they are on the inside are actually on the outside, and those who by all rights should be on the outside are on the inside. Those who think they are in charge are really powerless, and those with no claim to power find themselves gathered most closely around it.

And at the heart of that irony are these two sayings about the strong man and the unforgiveable sin. In the strong man saying, Jesus breaks into the house of the “Lord of Demons” and overpowers him, “putting an end to him.” Jesus is making an apocalyptic claim, asserting that in him, the reign of God has broken in, the impregnable house of the demonic is broken into, and the power of Lord of Demons is forever broken and bound. And anyone who cannot see that, anyone who thinks that Jesus is crazy—anyone who thinks that the Spirit of Jesus is an unclean spirit—is not only wrong, but is fighting for the wrong side. This is an all-or-nothing moment—as indeed, for Mark, is the whole gospel—and there is no room for indecision. Either you are in the circle with him, or you’re outside.

We are accustomed to treating Mark’s apocalyptic urgency with a sort of genteel and clinical reserve. Perhaps the passage of too many years has inured us to the possibility that things-as-they-are will one day give way to things-as-they-will-be. Perhaps we’ve seen too many self-convinced crazies willing to consign the rest of the world to hell for the sake of their own righteousness. Perhaps we’ve endured so much heartache that we’ve learned to protect ourselves from the rash promises of hope. Whatever the reason, now-or-never apocalypticism doesn’t sell well in the mainstream market.

All the same, there is something in us that can’t quite let go of the dream that the strong man’s house will at last be plundered and evil led away in chains. There is something in us that stirs whenever we say “thy kingdom come” or hear pronounced from the Table that “whenever we eat this bread and drink this cup, we show forth the Lord’s death until he comes again.” There is, I think, a little apocalyptic in us all. The only real question is how seriously are we prepared to take it.

Here’s a poem about what it feels like to be the family of Jesus in this text. It seems to me to get at this apocalyptic tension between being on the inside and being on the outside.

Beside Himself

Mark 3:20-35

He was beside himself. That’s being kind;

the scribes called him demonic, blasphemous,

the sycophantic crowd was wonderstruck,

but to us it was clear he had just

lost his mind.

He was beside himself. It’s what we dreaded—

this apocalyptic proclamation

this all-too-public defamation—

given the mental state he’s in

who knows where he is headed?

He was inside the house. We heard him say

the strong man’s hold has no defense,

one sin is without recompense—

what further need of evidence

had we to find him fey?

He was inside the house, and we were not;

that was the problem in a nutshell;

the walls weren’t thick, but a well

built wall is stronger than hell,

can keep you in—or out.

They were beside him, they and not we

who were family, who would claim him

and in our solicitude tame him

and if not, then shame them

for being where we could not be.

They were beside him. We stood apart.

Their circle met his inspection,

their obedience his question;

they offered no rejection of

the Spirit in his heart.

They were beside him. Suddenly it was plain:

will he not transgress the respectable

and sit at the less appropriate table

and speak his truth in harder parable

and lead us to a cross again?

We should have been beside him. We are his family.

Do we not say his prayer to bring

the kingdom in? Of what king

do we imagine we might be speaking,

or when? We were his family.

We were

The great temptation the Church always faces is the temptation to believe it has proprietary control over the kingdom Jesus brings, that we can agree with the comfortable parts and ignore the unpleasant ones. Here’s the truth, friends: we don’t, and we can’t. There is no in-between in this, no installment plan where the apocalypse comes in manageable bits. We either pray for the reign of God, or we work for the Lord of Demons. We’re either inside the circle, or outside the door. In the apocalypse, it always looks like Jesus is beside himself. In the end, though, which side are we on?

In memoriam, Rev. O. Floyd Hooker, 1922 – 2014

We sat for ninety minutes in the room
where he lay as though asleep
and talked about things he said and did
half-expecting him at any time to rouse
and correct the memory or tell his own until
they wheeled the velvet-shrouded gurney in,
the folded body bag respectful at the foot,
we said our last goodbyes beside his bed,
and reluctant shuffled out to greet a strange
new beginning.

Rising, I saw his hair, not grayish-white but dark,
not tousled, straying on his forehead (which
he’d have absently brushed back into place),
but combed in ordered rows, a straight-plowed field
where, beneath, a fertile soul still nourishes
still offers up the nutrients of faith
and understanding.

I saw his arms, not flaccid but outreached
to drive a nail or shake a hand or bless
or carry a baby dripping from the font
out into the midst of her new family,
or pick me up when I fell off my bicycle,
or embrace me when as now I can no longer
stay with him.

I saw his hands, not mottled but clear-skinned,
the wounded finger sliced by the planer’s blade
in an ancient carpentry shop before the war,
not trembling, but firm gripped and steady
save when he holds aloft the bread and cup
to pronounce the very mystery he trusts
without understanding.

A moment, I said, and when alone
took the styrofoam cup from the table
half full of water he’d sipped the day before,
dipped and traced with moistened finger
above his now-closed eyes the oldest sign,
the one he’d fingered wet and shining
on half a thousand foreheads past and gone,
liturgy reflexive on my lips
that death at last completes what baptism began
and begins again.
__________________________________________________
[Earlier on the day I wrote this poem, I had heard a lecture on funerals, in which the speaker had made a case for the importance of care for the physical remains of the deceased. While I’m not sure I altogether agree with him, it did get me thinking about the corporeality of the experience of my father’s death, and the relationship between the body and the Sacraments. I hope this poem both conveys that sense of corporeality and suggests something of that connection.

April 2015

Who rearranged the furniture in my room?

Why do I keep running into things

once settled and conveniently secure

so I could pass among them in the dark

unconcerned that I might stub my toe

on familiar things in unfamiliar places?

Why’s the sofa here that should be there

while the recliner’s clear over there too far

from the crane-necked lamp I nightly use

to read of other lives, if not my own?

And did I not store that table in the basement

to hide the scars and scratches of a careless past?

Too soon the dawn will chase away the darkness,

and I will see this room through other eyes.

John 13:1-17/ Maundy Thursday

Austin Seminary, 2 April 2015

I have never liked this passage. For that matter, I don’t like the practice of footwashing in general. Despite my crude Tennesseean origins, I have managed to gather and retain some shreds of dignity and sophistication, all of which are threatened by the prospect of removing my shoes and socks in public and, worse, permitting someone to wash my feet, and then, worse still, having to wash someone else’s. I know what my feet look like and, more to the point, smell like after a day’s confinement in the prison of my shoes, and I am not eager to share that knowledge with others. Add to that the fact that, in the old South where I come from, hauling out the galvanized tubs filled with cold water and dunking one’s naked extremities is something only that brand of Christian we used to call “Foot-washin’ Fundies” ever did, and the clash of culture and custom is almost overwhelming. I dread this day. And so I will not look askance at any of you who, beset with similar dread, elect to sit silently in your pews and stare at the cracks in the floor while your colleagues make their way to the washtubs. I understand, believe me.

That said, if you can stay with me for a few moments, I would like to offer you a different view of this text and its importance, one that has only recently dawned on me. For I have begun to see this text not merely as warrant for another of those annoying ordinances the Footwashers of my childhood insisted on practicing because Jesus told them to, but as an invitation to a different view of Jesus, of church, and ultimately of us. Let me explain.

Let’s start by acknowledging that Jesus in the gospel of John is an intimidating figure. He seems to know what others are thinking, and to be only too ready to correct their misperceptions. He is constantly talking about himself and his rather unusual relationship with the one he calls his Father, something not done in polite company. He seems unwarrantedly rude toward his mother at the wedding reception in Cana, and a little too intrusive in his conversation with that strange woman at the Samaritan well. As the gospel picks up steam through the middle chapters, he seems inordinately eager to get on with it, to get to the cross and his moment of “glory” like some overconfident athlete that isn’t sufficiently modest about his prospects for victory. Unlike the synoptic gospels, where Jesus pleads in Gethsemane that the Father might spare him his suffering cup, in John Jesus doesn’t ask for divine mercy, but boasts that “it is for this reason that I have come to this hour” (Jn 12:27). John’s Jesus seems almost arrogant.

All of which makes what happens in chapter 13 so strange. Jesus knows that the last hour has come. Instead of marching into the street to confront the Temple authorities and dare them to arrest him, he lingers at table, strips to the waist, and kneels before those who have called him Master, and washes their feet like a common house servant. What’s going on here?

In a nutshell, what’s going on is love. that loves those whom he has called, and because he loves them he is preparing them to be without him. That much is clear from the first sentence of the chapter. Verse 1 is really one long sentence whose only finite verb is he loved: “he loved his own to the end.” All the rest—the fact that the Passover had started and that Jesus knew that his hour had come—all those are relative clauses that set the context for this first word of Jesus’ love. To put it most directly, foot washing is about the love of Christ.

Which makes sense of the rest of the scene, if you think about it. In the middle of the meal, the last meal they will share until they and we stand on the other side of cross and tomb, Jesus rises, strips off his outer garments, and begins washing feet. In any Greco-Roman house, it is an act of hospitality to welcome one’s guests by rinsing the dirt of the road from their feet, signaling thereby that they belong in the home, that there is a place waiting at hearth and table, that they have a share in the bounty of the place. You can even hear this is Jesus’ response to Peter: “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Jesus’ work with basin and towel is the work of welcome, the work of love. But this hospitable act comes in the middle of this, their final meal together, rather than before it, which is, I think, John’s way of telling us that cleansing is not a prerequisite for sacramental grace, but its result. As we share the fellowship of Jesus, we are made clean and welcomed, given a share in the bounty of the house.

But it’s not just any house into which Jesus welcomes us. Rather, it is the Father’s house, the same one of which he will say in the next chapter that is has many rooms, and where he goes to prepare a place for us. Note the little aside the narrator gives us just before Jesus takes up the water and towel: “knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God….” John wants us to know what Jesus knows: that the home to which he goes, and into which he welcomes those who follow him, is the Father’s home, and that this welcome is an eschatological act. What happens when Jesus washes feet is not just that the dust of the road is rinsed away and we are welcomed into a house; it is that we are welcomed into the intimate, inclusive fellowship of God. We are made clean. We are made whole. We are made one with each other and with the Father and the Son. We are ushered into the presence of the Kingdom. His welcome is the welcome that transforms.

But even that’s not the end of it. Having washed the disciples’ feet, he then commands them to turn and do the same to others. Does he mean, as the Baptist brethren of my childhood thought, that we must haul out the galvanized tubs every month as a reenactment of the moment, just to remind ourselves of our belonging? Perhaps, but I think that Jesus is using the metaphor of washing other’s feet as a way of pointing to a deeper reality. I think it’s a way of reminding us that it’s never enough to “enjoy the benefits of Christian community for ourselves alone” (Book of Order, F-1.0302a), but that something about this moment of gracious inclusion keeps forcing us out to include others. Something about being welcomed into the eschatological fellowship of the people of God impels us to look beyond these walls and those already inside them, but out through the windows at those yearning to come in, and even those for whom entry has never even crossed their mind.

My wife, who will be received into the heavenly precincts as a far better Christian than I, is by training and experience a public health nurse. While we lived in Jacksonville, FL, Pat worked as clinic nurse at a medical clinic for the homeless. Hundreds of Jacksonville’s most destitute street people made their way through the clinic every week to receive free medical and dental care, well-baby check-ups, pre-natal care, and psychiatric services. But the most popular clinic by far was the foot clinic. Here, in an otherwise unimpressive exam room in a corner of the clinic facility, men and women who spent their lives on their feet, mostly in leaky, ill-fitting shoes, or no shoes at all, could sit for a while, and receive treatment for corns and callouses, ingrown toenails and a myriad of fungal infections, so that when they went back to plodding the paths of their endless pilgrimage, it was with a little less pain and the knowledge that someone cared enough to wash their feet. Pat always approached what she did with clinical precision: trim that nail, apply this ointment. To her it was just part of a life of medical practice. But I’ve always thought that there was a lot more to it than that. To me, what she did looked a lot like the Kingdom of God. It was a way of saying “you belong” to those hustled out of every doorway and rousted off every park bench in town. It was a way of saying, “welcome home” to those for whom “home” was a distant or even painful memory. It was a way of saying, “I see you; you are valuable in my sight” to those we mostly don’t make eye contact with. It was a sure a sign of the eschatological fellowship as I have ever seen. “As I have washed your feet…,” said Jesus.

A few weeks ago, I came across this poem by the young British poet, Liz Berry. It’s about a dog, and the person who rescues her on a cold north English Maundy Thursday night. At least, at one level, it’s about a dog. But the poem—like all great poetry—works on more than one level, and Berry keeps expanding the metaphor, until it’s a mirror in which I see my own face. Maybe you will see yours, too. Here’s something else you should know: Berry is from the Black Country, the industrial north, near Birmingham. There the term wench, which sounds derogatory to us, is an affectionate term for a female, and a “midden” is a garbage dump. The poem is “The Passion: The First Path.”

text of Liz Berry’s “The Passion: The First Path” here

 In a few moments, I’m going down to have my feet washed, and then to wash whoever will come after me. I don’t do this to boast of my faithfulness; I’m not that faithful. I do it because my wet naked feet remind me that I’m loved, that I’m home, that I belong, and washing your feet reminds me that you belong, too. I’m doing it because, mongrel that I am, when I look into your eyes, I can see myself through the eyes of Christ. Maybe you can see that, too.