April 10, 2022
Many persons want a better world. Not enough persons want to be better people. The quote floated by my line of sight this week. It poked like a thorn Like seeing the crack in the glass It leaped like perhaps true hard things do. Do most people desire a better world? It would seem so. Yet the definition of what it means to have a better world Is itself a break in the vessel, where the evil gets in, a break that leaks, ruins. Vader, Pilate, Herod, fictional and non-fictional despots seem to think they are making a better world. Many good and middle people want a better world. But is the second half true as well? Do few persons desire to be better people?
It is fruit and serpents it is the thorns, the fractures of “normal.” We don’t do the hard things, we shout with the crowd, we run from our commitments, we humblebrag about our dragon skins. We seek high after high, distraction after distraction, mean girls mean girl mean girls too. And then there is the comfort steering around the shame, the bliss of the discharge of blame. We crack the cracks rather than repair the potholes.
The conviction in the quote about seeking better worlds without becoming better ourselves, it comes from a deep reading of Scripture and an intentional life with God. It rises from a sensibility of hope – the hope nurtured by the Spirit of God in the easy and hard times. Hope that as St. Augustine says has two beautiful daughters: Anger that things are the way they are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.
The world of kid fears and principalities and trends meets God in human flesh and yells – crucify him. The fully human human God’s intention for the better world living breathing celebrating loving us. And our response is to crucify and repeat. Waring madness, racism, antisemitism. Quiet in the face of evil is evil. Not to turn is to turn. Anger, the child of hope, fires. Regret stirs. Courage, the child of hope, I pray, kindles: turn us to him, to his cross, turn to a better us.
Anger and courage’s mother is clarity, is truth. Today we hold up the mirror and the bright light, we re-embody the path of Jesus and his violent rejection. In his death Evil tries to crush the love he is and offers with our hands. We say that he dies for our sins. Of course, he does. Something must bridge the gap, and it is this very tragedy that interrupts the madness. There are a zillion theories and all of them may only get slivers of the truth right. We may never know exactly how or why but we are assured by word and experience that this terrible moment sets us free, opens our eyes to the way between wanting a better world and becoming better people.
Does God love us and forgive us from the worst of us? Yes. To all for whom selfish ideas around the mysterious truth of this day have been used to shame, harass or abuse, I kneel at the cross and say: I hear your pain, and on behalf of the universal church, I am sorry. The utter exposure of the passion must change us, turn around how we see and how we act in the context of all wonton destruction of God’s beloved, it should turn us in voice and action away from cruelty and dehumanization. In Holy Week we are called to brave the desolation, to get in close to the beings and places under the bloody grind of evil. We are to go where Jesus is.
I invite all of the Jesus followers, and the Jesus curious, to make the commitment to the journey of Holy Week. If you haven’t tried it before, I invite you to begin. It changes me for truth and courage and release and hope every year. For ages and ages, this is how the people who seek to follow Jesus into becoming a better world and better people do just that. This is how we enter the mystery, with the very heartbeat and hands and voices of the neighbor and the stranger. This is how we re-member the holy and great cosmic story. Make your way, in whatever way you can, enter the Shadows, Maundy, Good Friday, And then we can truly share the first hope of Easter. Time after time this week lays bare the judgment of the set of statements I began with. Do we seek a better world? Do we seek to be better people?