My oldest daughter is graduating from high school this year. It’s unbelievable.
I don’t mean that in an “Oh, my gosh!” sort of way. I mean literally- it’s Unbelievable!
If I were being asked in a court of law-under oath- if its possible that enough time has past to change my darling little toddler into a beautiful and independent young woman, I’d say “No, way.”
But I’d be wrong. There she is.
….And my second born is graduating next year. Unbelievable!
One of the memories of Rachael that seem as recent as yesterday is of her strapped into her car seat and attentively watching the scenery go by- “Pacie,” of course, in hand. She’s always been fascinated with God’s world.
Invariably, especially in the summer, we’d hear an excited “Rat House!” We’d look over our shoulder to find her pointing out the window at a building in the early stages of construction. I don’t know where she got that- why she associated a framed house with rats. Maybe all the crisscrossing timbers reminded her of a huge nest. I’m not sure. I do know that I miss hearing her little voice pointing out the wonder of something uniquely new.
After a few weeks the paint would go on, the roof would be finished and we’d drive by without comment- just another beautiful and warm American dwelling.
The memory makes me think...about buildings and foundations, Daddy’s and their children and about what each of these journeys have to say to the liturgical path we travel each year.
Bright Week is coming to an end. The Feasts that lie ahead of me- Ascension Thursday and Whitsunday- each assume the foundation of Easter morning, but my attention will be directed to their wonderful lessons…and then I’ll move on to live in the house that Christ built.
It will be easy to forget the foundations. Thought I’d take one more look before the walls go up.
It seems odd, somehow, that we can cancel out forty days of heavy preparation with one week of bright revelry. It must be a very heavy concentration of brightness indeed to counterbalance all the darkness that Lent brings forward. And of course it is. All the days that cling indivisibly to Pascha are God’s judgment enacted…really enacted.
God’s Judgment. The phrase itself sounds heavy.
Even now as I’m writing this, it sounds a bit, well.... wrong.
Easter about judgment?
Judgment bright?
I see the judgment in Good Friday, but Easter… ?
It seems I want to play judgment against mercy- as if God’s verdict was by nature grim. What does that say about my concept of God? Judgment is really about choosing. When I say I don’t trust someone’s judgment, I mean that I’m unsure about the choices they make. Why would I think that all of God’s choices are naturally forbidding?
Some of my problem is in wanting to equate mercy with only a positive response and judgment with all the negative ones. But surely saying “No” to some things is the more merciful route. Think of cancer, loneliness or pain.
When God’s verdict comes down it means brightness to some options and darkness to others- all at the same time. When choosing between competing options, a “Yes” to one always implies a “No” to the other, and vise versa. You can’t choose, I mean really choose, one thing without rejecting another. Every spoken “Yes” is one half of a larger compound word: Yes-No. Every spoken “No” says “Yes” at the same time- if only silently.
I think I’ve contrasted the wrong things. Mercy isn’t opposed to Judgment. Rather Mercy is opposed to my death. God's judgment is mercy. His mercy is judgmental. There can be no Easter morning without Good Friday. One drags the other with it…unless our God equivocates. Unless he’s not quite sure what he wants…unless he refuses to really choose.
But thankfully our God does know what he’s about. He knows what and who he's for, and that someone is you and me, fully alive. This means, is another way of saying really, that he is against all that is opposed to us…all that drains the glory from the life we were meant to have and all that leaves us pale, limp and hurting.
The cross made audible His rejection of choices in opposition to His covenant love. Mercifully he didn’t scream His rejection- his judgment- at each individual who mocked the glory he had intended for them, but rather He spoke clearly to the King who represented those people. Ever loving, He played that part himself and muffled the necessary rejection through his own body.
On Easter morning our God laughed out a great “Yes!” to the life of our beloved King. The boringly familiar counterfeits of true power and glory- money, raw strength and selfish pleasure- each made a play for supremacy.
Both religious and political manifestations made the claim, “This is the way to godlikeness. This is the way of true humanity.” But in response God left each of those advocates in the sweltering misery of their lives… and eventual deaths, but to Him who took upon himself the form of a servant and was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, he gave eternal life. “That’s it. That’s what I’m for,” God vigorously declared in Christ's public vindication on Easter morning.
The Cross and Resurrection form one declaration- one judgment. Neither was possible without the other for each formed- each was, really- the other viewed from beneath. On Good Friday, our God spoke the "Yes”, which Easter so obviously declares. On Easter he whispered “No!” to the scandalous sin of Good Friday.
Judgment and choice, all of it. Mercy, all of it, too….because all of it for us.How different from the capricious vision of god that I often struggle with- a god who arbitrarily makes rules so that he can torture me eternally if and when I break one of them…and all for his own personal pleasure.
Good Friday and Easter tell of another God altogether- one who is by nature a Father. And His judgment- his choice- is for me. He wants only what any Father wants for his child. And who can stand in his way?
He hates all that would harm me, and has a heart so soft that he can’t bear for me to witness his dispatching of my enemies. He covers my eyes and does the deed, takes my face in his hands and says “No one will ever harm you.”
That’s the gospel. That’s our God. That’s where we must start to build his house.
Now, what sort of walls would best go up on such a foundation...
1 comment:
The walls are us. We are the living stones. We are made out of the same stuff in the foundation; we with those foundation stones made from the cornerstone stuff.
Our lives are the making of the stone. It is because of what we are made of, and where we have been placed, that we all want to make something of ourselves.
Any one who has tried stone masonry will know just how difficult it is to get a stone to do what you want. You have to know how the stone was formed, you have to follow the layers in the stone or, when you chip parts of it off you might crush the whole thing. If you just pound on the part you want to break off you might break the whole thing into two or two hundred pieces. The mason can not do what he wants with any stone; the stone has to be, at least in part, made to take a certain shape even prior to the cutting.
As much as we try, we often find we do not know our own shape and structure. It is always our duty to try.
All our lives God makes the necessary changes. Water is the best source for this. However, this is not a quick fix process, even with a large mass of water at high speeds, still it slowly smoothes away the stone. It does something that a sharp hammer could never do. It adds a beauty unlike what fire does; though hammers and fire do add beauty.
But if a stone would respond to the water it would not need the sharp hammer or the fire. Or rather, there may be a lot less cutting and burning.
At the appointed time the walls are inspected by the architect. Each piece individually. There maybe some sticky muddy bricks made up with straw and sticks. They maybe stuck to us like glue, perhaps they are part of the reason that we are there at all. The other parts of the wall may think that we look like the same sticky mess beside a whole 'nother stone; a separate one. But the architect knows his blue prints and can remove it safely from the wall.
The stones hope that the ones beside them taken away will one day return. For a stone will keep the fossil of those sticks, shells, and bones, that have imbedded themselves into its own identity. It can not forget; how could it with all those holes in the wall.
Because the walls are what they will be, but still not yet, some parts of the wall are sagging; some because of those muddy, sloppy bricks; some parts are falling and bringing others with them because they do not respond to the shape they are supposed to take and can not bear the weight of their place. Other parts are glorious, and we envy them. We want our piece of the wall to hug tight to the foundation and support those that will be built on.
The stones cry out, wondering what the foundation had in mind to begin with. The structure does not make sense.
Why did the foundation hold in its original plan something that looks so strange and takes so long?
M.C.
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