Fessing Up: My bin Laden Problem

I am not a very good Christian.  This is not the first time I've realized this, but it's hit home in a deeper way in the last couple days.

When I heard the news late Sunday night that Osama bin Laden had been killed, I was glad.  Not jumping up and down with joy, not calling my five favorite people to celebrate -- not that.  But more than mildly satisfied. 

Last night, lying in bed, I got around to processing a fact I had learned a couple hours earlier.  bin Laden saw the bullet coming:  He realized he was about to be shot.  It occurred to me then that bin Laden must have experienced genuine fear in the nanosecond before his death.  Regardless of how much bullshit bravado and wannabe-matyr's self-glorification an individual has engaged in up to that point, when there's a gun pointing at him and he realizes the odds are greater than not that he will be killed, there has to be a quick stab of fear.  And for some reason, I liked the idea that bin Laden experienced such fear.  Maybe because he caused so many innocent people to experience a fear that was as least as deep -- on September 11, of course; also on October 12, 2000, when the USS Cole was bombed; and in other instances that I know too little of to catalog here.

It's not the Christian thing to be happy about anyone dying violently.  It's not the Christian thing to hope that anyone -- even someone who embraced evil as willingly and frequently as bin Laden -- suffered at the moment of death.  That was not what Christ taught -- not at all.

I know what I should be doing is praying for God's mercy on his soul.  And I am doing that, a few seconds today, a few seconds yesterday.  Along with asking God's mercy and healing for all those whom bin Laden and his followers killed or psychologically maimed. 

I'm fighting the part of me that wants to be glad about the way this man died.  Maybe the best reason to wage that fight inside me is so my own soul does not become cold and prone to dehumanizing anyone...even bin Laden.  Because I'm guessing having a cold soul prone to turning others into objects -- targets -- is how bin Laden became bin Laden.

May God have mercy on all of us sinners.  Osama bin Laden included.

Good Friday: Nails, Death, Love That Survives

The nails are not just pointed, as one would expect, but jagged along the edges.  There's still bark on the beam they're nailing him to.  You want to picture that wood still in the tree, not the form it takes here, as a method of torture.  You cannot bear to watch him nailed to that beam, and then the lifting up.  The blood streaming from his hands, the thorned crown still on his head.  But you're there, even though others have fled.  His mother is next to you; you wish she was not here to see this.  Mary Magdalene as well.  But they, too, look like they're staying.  They will not flee.

This afternoon is full of nails, the soldiers hoisting him up; you hear him groan as they pull the beam into place.  Bitter wine on a cloth put to his lips.  Words exchanged with thieves.  Lungs that cannot find enough air.  A crying out.  Death.  This man who is not only a man has died a human's death.  Not a death that is antiseptic, free of all pain and anxiety, with the support of loved ones all around, but the most gruesome type of human death, a death characterized by skillful torture, derision, abandonment.  And yet he says -- you can hear it from where you stand, twenty feet away -- "Father, forgive them."

Here's what I get out of good Friday:  The God I worship loves me, and all people, enough that even when we do our worst to him, he does not reject us but continues to love us and seeks to transform us through mercy, forgiveness, and hope.  I've killed Christ a thousand times through my sinfulness, and yet he still loves me enough to want a serious relationship with me.  Unearned grace.  Amazing grace indeed.

In the end, I find I must embrace a God who loves me (and everyone) that much.  God wins me over by loving the human race in the midst of our killing him.  Love that survives death; love that heals sinners.  On Good Friday, on Calvary hill.

Holy Thursday: Bread, Wine, the Garden

Holy Thursday -- the night of the Last Supper, the night when Jesus expressed his deep love for his apostles by telling them he intended to die for them.  Very soon.  And yet he wanted to celebrate this meal, this passover, with them, so close were they to his heart.

If you're a Christian (or, like me, a very flawed "attempted Christian"), you have to put yourself in that upper room.  You have to picture yourself there, reclined at table, fifteen feet or five feet or two feet from Jesus.  With all your sinfulness, your lack of humility, your moments of unkindness and petty hostility, your selfishness and materialism, the parts of yourself you wish you could replace with The Better Version of yourself.  Even with all that within you, you owe it to yourself to picture yourself in that room.  Especially, in fact, with all of that within you.  We are taught that Christ died to save sinners, not the righteous.  Sinner means me.  I bet maybe it means you as well.

Not so sure there's room for sinners?  Think about the apostles who were in that room:  Judas, who would betray Jesus; Peter, who would in a few hours deny his friend -- the one he called "messiah" -- not once but three times.  Surely there's space in that room for you and me.

The Last Supper is -- at its core -- about God's deep, unconditional love for human beings: collectively and individually.  The Last Supper is not a theological concept, regardless of how much theology one can derive from it.  The Last Supper is an event, a bittersweet celebration in God's courtship of the human soul.  It's an intimate gathering.  We are called to attend.  We have the invitation.  There's room at the table.  Someone is offering bread, now wine.  But it is something more than food that is handed around, something more than drink that is in the cup.  The person who is calling is not just anyone, but the God who would be both creator and friend.  ("I no longer call you servants, but friends."  Of course, if you wish to grow in the friendship, you eventually realize you must learn to recognize and serve the Christ who is in your neighbor, and everyone is your neighbor.  Tough to live it out, yes.  But the selfless, unconditional love found in the Last Supper, and the next day on Calvary hill, is nourishment for the journey.)

A few hours later, you are in the garden.  Jesus is praying.  You think you might have heard him weeping.  That was a few minutes ago.  You are so very drowsy.  Maybe you just imagined he was in distress.  Yes, that's probably it.  There's some wind in the trees.  It could have been that.

When you wake up, he's saying something to you -- you and the rest.  "Can you not stay awake for just a little while longer?"  Not angry, more disappointed.  You've disappointed him, but there was love in his face (just as surely as you saw sweat on his temples), as well as distress.  He has retreated to the back of the garden again, and you are once more feeling drowsy.  If you could just take a short nap.  Jerusalem is a bustling place.  Your limbs are aching from the distances you've walked in the crowds, edging your way through. Your head hurts from the noise of the city.  It isn't so unreasonable for you to want to sleep a while, is it?

No, it's not Easter yet.  No one fully understands the concept of Easter at this point.  No one has any reason to believe in it yet.  There's no glorious resurrection yet, no matter what Jesus seemed to say about rebuilding the temple.  He said something extraordinary during the passover meal, too, and now he is weeping, and it's getting ominous; you can feel something is about to change in this city.  But you are so very sleepy.  A few minutes, that's all you're hoping for.

It's Thursday night.  You have to live through Holy Thursday.  You wonder how this whole thing is going to turn out.

Healing on the Sabbath, Oh No, Oh No! (Stop That Fellow, Someone!)

Today's gospel reading is John 5: 1-16.  We have Jesus encountering a man with serious mobility problems; Jesus cures him.  The man has been ill for thirty-eight years (have to love the preciseness of that number, yes?).  All those years, the man has not been able to make it into the healing waters in a timely manner.  (Sucks to be him, say those who pass by him each day.)  And then -- suddenly, almost impulsively, you might say -- Jesus heals the man.  Completely.  Fully.  With great unrestrained love.

But alas, Jesus has made a mistake, say the religious authorities.  He has healed on the sabbath!  Clearly that is not permitted.  See?  We have it right here in our holy book of codes and regulations, nicely cross-referenced and indexed.  Excellent table of contents.  Cool blurbs and everything on the back cover.  (Watch out!  It's a heavy object!  At least that's the case with a full-sized Catechism of the Catholic Church in the modern age.  If you have it on your Kindle instead, well, not so bad -- but it will still kill your Kindle if you throw it at someone, so please refrain from doing so.)

Mighty fine explanation in today's gospel for why faith in God is not chiefly about rule books.  Not about canon law.  Not about canon lawyers.  Not about quoting chapter and verse as though we can put God to use defending our human notions, particularly the most convoluted ones.  (Those are the ones that the radio hosts go to town with on programs such as Catholic Answers Live on your local reactionary, Republican-loving Catholic right wing station.  Here's a fast ball, folks!  Let's see how hard our apologist can hit it!)

For lent (and maybe for the other forty-six weeks of the year as well), go ahead and forget the legalistic version of Christianity.  Christ came to earth to love, heal, complete, save, embrace, and call each of us into true relationship with God.  Indeed, he was not one to carry around a rule book.  Let us resist with all our might the urge to put one in his hands, lest we miss the real reasons he came to earth and chose to live among women and men -- and yes, chose to die for us too.

The Church is Not Principally About Exclusion & Judgment: Good News from Mexico

Bishop Raul Vera Lopez, of the diocese of Saltillo in Mexico, preached a homily on March 27 in which he told gays and lesbians (as well as the rest of the world), "The church is your home....[because] Jesus founded the church to bring in those on the outside, for those suffering exclusion and rejection...so that they find the love of God."

Right there, the good bishop pinpointed the church's core mission, a mission that often gets lost when canon lawyers and those in the hierarchy campaign (in effect) for a spot in the Roman Curia:  the church's chief job is to celebrate and embrace the love that God has for every human being, and to open the door for individuals to come into relationship more and more deeply with God's love.  That's what Christianity is supposed to be about.  Too often, sadly, that's not what happens.

Bishop Lopez (who also supports the legalization of civil unions for same-sex couples in Mexico) provides hope not just for people who are GLBTQ, but also for all Catholic Christians who are waiting for signs of progress in the church.  I'm convinced that--no matter the short-term conservatism of Benedict XVI and the men he appoints--Bishop Lopez respresents the direction we'll see the church moving in over the next fifty years or so.  There is cause for hope.  

[Hat tip to Deacon Greg Kandra for linking to the article from U.S. Catholic.]

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust -- and That's Just Fine

Due to my work schedule today, I wasn't able to make it to an Ash Wednesday service.  That's fine, though, for I was able to find a couple pockets of time today for some good reflection and prayer, and I feel like my Lent is off to a good start.  (Most years, I end up not really getting started on Lent -- ashes on the forehead on Wednesday or not -- until a week or so has gone by, and by half way through Lent, I've usually written it off as another failed part of my so-called Christian walk.  Just have to be honest about that.)

This year, however, I made a brief detour so as to drive through a cemetery near where I work.  It was, roughly speaking, the equivalent of having ashes imposed and hearing someone tell me, "From ashes you have come and to ashes you shall return; repent of your sins and live the Gospel."  (If it had not been so cold and damp, I might have climbed out and walked amongst the graves for five or ten minutes.  I may be a strange fellow, but I've always found cemeteries to be exceedingly peaceful places.  Nothing like the common human fate to lend one perspective on the foibles of daily life.)

I remember reading once that Jim Carrey, early in his career, at a time when he wasn't successful at all and could barely pay his bills, wrote a check to himself (undated) for a million dollars.  He believed in his future success; he promised himself he would be able to cash that check some day.  It's good to believe in yourself that way, I suppose; it's healthy to give yourself goals.  Yet my occasional trip through a cemetery has a somewhat analogous purpose in my life -- and I do not mean this in any morose way, not at all.  But the truth of the matter is, I am sure I will die some day, and I will be completely dependent at that moment (and for all of eternity, yes indeed!) on the grace and great mercy and love of God.  So when I trip through the graveyard, that is sort of my own simple way of saying, "I'm one of you; here too lies my fate; and yet there's a resurrection awaiting me some day as well, even if these stones seem incredibly solemn."  I'll be worm food or ashes in a blink of an eye.  And yet God's love ever surrounds me; I am, through Christ's loving substitution of himself for me, God's darling one.  (Yeah, honest, me.  And you too!)  Proud indeed to be in this club, this group of souls who are not forever confined to this world, even though it's a great place to be for right now.  In a bit (a few decades? a few years?) I'm out of here and on to more of God's love.  Amen.

Happy Ash Wednesday and a good Lent to all.

Catholic Bishops: Right on Workers' Rights

Here's a link to a Huffington Post piece on the Catholic bishops of Wisconsin coming together in defense of workers' rights to unionize and engage in collective bargaining.  On paper, the church has a pretty good record of supporting workers' rights -- witness, for instance, John Paul II's support for Solidarity in the 1980s.  (Sure, some of his enthusiasm was likely due to Lech Walesa's anti-communist streak, but there are other examples of JPII's record on this issue.)  I vaguely recall reading somewhere (not sure where) that even the arch-conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke once championed the rights of migrant farm workers.  (There, I finally said something nice about Burke.)

Of course, there's also a history of some members of the hierarchy thwarting workers' efforts to unionize:  for instance, Justin Rigali opposing the right of elementary school teachers in Catholic schools to unionize within the Archdiocese of St. Louis in the 1990s.  (Those elementary school folks were, for one thing, more poorly paid than their already poorly paid counterparts in Catholic high schools.  Perhaps not coincidentally, most of the elementary school teachers were female, while the high schools employed a sigificant number of male teachers.)

In any case, I'm glad to see the bishops in Wisconsin come down on the good side in this dispute with Scott Walker.  Social justice is still one of the winning cards in modern Catholicism; may this card be played with greater frequency, that's all I ask.

The Transendental God, Ecology, and Vietnam's Future

Thomas C. Fox has an intriguing piece in the National Catholic Reporter.  He explores the interplay between women's religious communities (Catholic sisters, for instance) in Vietnam and the signposts that point to the forces that may help determine Vietnam's future.  Thanks to the insights of the women he is interviewing, he sees ecology as playing an essential role, along with a respect for God's gift of creation.

A brief excerpt from the article:

I asked the women sitting with her what they felt is the single greatest social challenge facing Vietnam today. Without coaxing and almost in unison the women said ecology. Unless the people attend to ecological needs, they explained, all other social issues will only get worse and the fabric of Vietnamese society will weaken.

Studies have indicated, for example, that one third to one half of the Mekong Delta, the nation’s primary food source, is in peril and could be under water in 50 years if expected sea levels continues to rise.

That ecology would be viewed by these women as Vietnam’s number one social challenge took me by surprise. But it was followed by another because they were coming to ecological issues through what was for them a relatively new spiritual framework: the presence of God in creation.

My spouse and I spent some time in Vietnam a decade ago, and we hope to make a return trip as a family in another year or two.  While I'll never claim a full understanding of a culture as rich and nuanced as Vietnam's, I can attest to both the beauty and the economic importance of the Mekong region, having made an all-too-brief day trip there during the three weeks we spent in the country.

I also have at least a simple appreciation for the co-mingling of Buddhism and Catholicism in Vietnam.  It is, of course, chiefly a Buddhist culture, though many Vietnamese self-identify as Catholic, and still others (a significant number, from what I've heard) identify themselves as both Buddhist and Catholic.  That may seem like a jarringly "hyphenated" identity to very conservative Catholics, for whom Buddhism probably sounds as strange as some just-discovered Martian faith.  In truth, however, Buddhism and Catholicism have--at least on a good day--much in common, including the call to compassion and a respect for all of God's creation, both that which is sentient as well as that which is inanimate.  (In other words, don't drill, baby, don't drill, at least not in ANWAR.)  

Fox closes his article with a lovely, and poignant, quote from Sr. Dang Thi Ngoc Bich:

God is a transcendent Creator, giving life to all creation. The task is clear. We need to preserve this creation.

 Amen to that.  Love God, love and care for what God has created.  And consider, on occasion, the consequences inherent in not preserving God's great gift of nature.

Isaiah's Words -- the Essential Calling

Here's the first reading from mass yesterday, which was the fifth Sunday in ordinary time.  It's from the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah.

Thus says the LORD:
Share your bread with the hungry,
shelter the oppressed and the homeless;
clothe the naked when you see them,
and do not turn your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your wound shall quickly be healed;
your vindication shall go before you,
and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,
you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!
If you remove from your midst
oppression, false accusation and malicious speech;
if you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday.

Some days, the church seems to wander from the central, core mission that Isaiah sets out in this passage.  More specifically, at times the Roman Catholic church seems to view its core mission as keeping women out of positions of authority within the church; fighting the right of same-sex couples to enter into long-term, legally recognized, committed marriages; getting lawsuits tossed rather than recognizing the rights of the oppressed.

But there are times--lots of moments: small, quiet moments which don't receive much publicity and which are often best kept private--when people within the church (people within every faith tradition, really) do what Isaiah describes.  Thank God for those moments.  May there be more of them.  May each of us remember why God put us on this earth.  May we be open to serving God's will by serving the needs of those around us.  That calling--a calling given to each woman, man, and child in the church--is so much more important than the latest arcane decision from the Roman Curia, so much more essential to what it means to be a good Christian (or Jew, or Muslim--or, for that matter, a good Buddhist).

What is described in this reading is what I need to keep my eyes on this day, this week.  Through the grace of God, may I rise to the occasion.