Among Us Women

Recently, my mother-in-law, Irene, a devout Roman Catholic, passed away. At her viewing, I participated in my first Rosary service. The word rosary comes from the Latin “rosarium,” rose garden, and truly one is led from one fragrant moment to the next during this devotion.

The Rosary is made up of several sections, including the Lord’s Prayer, the Gloria Patri, and meditations on Scripture from Christ’s life (the Mysteries). Honor and appeal to the Holy Virgin Mary winds throughout:

“Hail Mary, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

As I sat before Irene’s casket in its rose garden of bouquets, two phrases of the devotion wafted fresh meaning to me.

St. Luke records that Elizabeth was the first person to say, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” After Mary accepted the call to bear the Son of God, she hurried to the best source of support and celebration she knew, her also-pregnant cousin. Elizabeth’s first glimpse of this young lady enveloped her with joy. So much did the Holy Spirit of God fill her that her own baby leaped inside her. She knew instantly that Mary was carrying the Messiah and burst out with praise for her and the new little life growing within.

Elizabeth’s praise declared for all generations the position Mary holds among humanity.

Above every one, God chose this woman in which to dwell in the fullness of his incarnation. She was ordinary in many ways. But unlike most of us, Mary was willing to receive devastatingly Holy Mystery unto herself although only God knew what would become of her in the process.

Elizabeth’s praise declared for all generations the position Mary holds among women.

I saw in my mind’s eye the Blessed Virgin standing vanguard at the front of ranks of women stretching for eons into God’s presence. Women two thousand years old walked with my grandmothers, mother, and now my mother-in-law. Behind these emerged millions more from all places and conditions, my living female relatives, friends, and yes, even myself.

Mary then moved among us, hugging this one, smiling at another, talking some sense into that one. She did not demand attention; she always pointed us to Jesus. Yet in doing so, she assumed a major role to bear us up, to strengthen our resolve to live, and die, in as full of the Holy Spirit’s grace as we could hold.

And we will die. There’s nothing like the funeral of a loved one to illuminate the fading blooms that we are. Death cannot hide itself behind flowers, satin, and lace.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death.”

Now is to celebrate Irene’s blessed life, however imperfect. Now is to grieve her earthly loss. Now is to glimpse our own imperfect but blessed lives. Now is to face our mortality.

At the hour of our death, there is no doing it over. We sinners being made into saints need all the appeals such a vanguard can bring to the Throne to help us be faithful to the end.

Mary is a woman like me, but a far stronger, wiser one, and sometimes I find myself shy to request her prayers. I am right there with Elizabeth when she followed up her ecstatic greeting with, “But why am I so favored, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?”

Yet apparently this great Lady, the God-bearer, wants to come among us women. As our principal spiritual mother, she enfolds us in the wide reach of her supplications. Above all, she wishes us to be receptive to her example and make it our business to say to her Son, 

“O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray. Cast out our sin, and enter in. Be born in us today.”

Like the Thief

Of thy mystical supper, O Son of God, accept me today as a communicant…Not like Judas will I give thee a kiss, but like the thief, will I confess thee, “Remember me, O Lord, in thy Kingdom.”

From the Orthodox communion hymn, “Mystical Supper”

Barabbas the Bandit received a lucky break that day. Two of Barabbas’ henchman, Lestes* and his partner in crime, plus an itinerant teacher were not so fortunate. All four men were popular with the peasantry, so it took the chief priests and Pharisees some forceful rhetoric and crowd manipulation to help the governor decide which pairs of wrists to nail up. In the end, Pilate released the rebel leader in return for two minor insurrectionists and a non-violent rabbi.

Lestes suspected they traded the rabbi purely on trumped up charges, and while waiting sentencing in the Praetorium, he had heard Pilate say he found Jesus innocent of crimes against both Jewish and Roman governments. But the Jewish leadership eventually broke Pilate down with politically loaded words—“tax evasion,” “subversion,” “opposing Caesar.”

Sounded a lot like his own charges, thought Lestes, as he dragged his cross behind Jesus through the city. Everyone knew he and his partner deserved what any “robin hood” had coming. It was clear to Jewish aristocracy and the Roman tyrants anyway. Palestinian peasants themselves tended to appreciate seeing bandit groups lighten the pockets of the rich to pass some wealth along to them.

Jewish bandits were religious, too; they believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As a child, Lestes had embraced his parents’ hope that a messiah-king would rise to fix their broken civil and economic world. Somewhere in his youth, the unending oppression and poverty set his cynicism ablaze. It had become time to take things into his own hands. He grimaced: Now others would take his hands and close them forever.

Death by crucifixion took hours because the soldiers attached a foot piece to the cross so that he would keep pressing up with his toes to ease the tearing of his lungs, heart, and gut. The idea was to keep the criminal from dangling and thus cut off his air supply before he has had enough time to suffer.

Torturous as it was, slow dying gave Lestes time to think. Although he wasted most of his effort on the instinct to stay alive, he still knew he could choose how to take his death. He could either rail against the injustice of Rome or acknowledge some kind of punishment was justified.

He had justified most of his actions as a robin hood, even in the Name of God. For the greater good, he could deceive, terrify, kidnap, muzzle, bind, beat, and cut. Long ago he had lost the inner nudge to ask permission for anything. The lines between yours and mine had blurred under nights spent in alleys and hidden spots along the roads. In that robber’s dark he could avoid the stare between him and his victims that exposed their common and futile grasp for gold.

Now under The Skull’s** noonday sun there was no hiding that futility. The notice fastened over his head was concise and true: Bandit. When his soul would finally land in Hades, this truth would forever seal his condemnation before God.

The only falseness to the day was that an innocent man groaned next to him. Bandits, highwaymen, rebels, and thieves Lestes knew plenty. From what he had heard about Jesus over the last several years it was clear that he was no insurrectionist; at least, nothing resembling one.

Yet here were Jewish leaders and soldiers laughing and scoffing, as if triumphant they had succeeded in killing the greatest criminal of all. “He saved others; let him save himself if he is really God’s Chosen One, the Messiah. If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”

Then Jesus said something more shocking than the insults. “Father, forgive these people, because they don’t know what they are doing.”

Sweat and blood mingled in rivulets down Lestes’ body. If Jesus wanted and was able to garner God’s forgiveness for this crime against himself, even while dying, he might really have the power of a messiah. The notice above the man’s head, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” could be true. Lestes seemed to hear two hearts throb in his ears.

The criminal on the other side of Jesus broke into Lestes’ thoughts. Rage at their fate spat out of him. “So you’re the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself—and us, too, while you’re at it!” Lestes’ chest heaved for air. “Don’t you fear God even when you are dying?” he asked. He choked on the bile rising from his belly. “We deserve to die for our evil deeds, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Lestes’ throat was parched, for the effort to keep from suffocating had wrung the moisture from his body. Yet tears baptized his eyes as he twisted his head toward Jesus. For the first time in his life, he asked pardon and permission. “Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

In answer, the King said, “I assure you, today you will be with me.” Before nightfall, Jesus threw open his palace doors, while angels craned their necks to see the first of many of us weeping thieves invited in to plunder paradise.

*Lēstēs is Greek for a robber, bandit, insurrectionist.

**The Skull is English for Golgotha.

Come, Thou Long-expected Jesus

On my mantle I have arranged the couple dozen figurines of my Fontanini nativity set, each character frozen in a perpetual gaze. The young pan piper seems lost in his melody, and another youth leans against a fence, musing toward my hearth. The shepherds and most of the sheep lift their faces to my ceiling. The goose girl and the old garlic farmer, too, pause to watch. An ox and donkey rest in the stable, ready to chew their cud, while a token angel hovers in the background. Joseph and Mary kneel near them, hands raised in anticipated adoration. The two look down at an empty manger, because high church tradition and common sense ask me to leave it so until the Day comes to celebrate Jesus’ actual birth. Each creature in my crèche holds its breath in a resin-bound chest. Waiting for God.

I, too, wait. But what kind of God do I expect?

I wait for an accessible God, a Holy Infant, who in his vulnerable innocency softens our fearful and resistant hearts and makes a manger his crib. How gentle is a God who thinks it best to slip unobtrusively into the human race amid only a couple dozen witnesses. Such action St. Isaac of Syria calls “exalted humility.”

The Word who became human clothed himself with humility, and thus spoke with us in our human body…Creation could not behold him unless he took part of it to himself and thus conversed with it: only thus was creation able to hear the words of his mouth face to face.*

I wait for a restoring God, a Saving Victim, because life’s experiences deny us the naiveté of “children nestled all snug in their beds.” When the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Child matures, his creatures behold him but cannot bear to hear his words. His humility descends even lower, for far from respecting him at least as a decent human being, his own ravage the very body designed to embrace them. How merciful is a God who thinks that his bloodied hands give best the healing touch a broken creation needs. He willingly makes a manger his coffin.

I wait for an intervening God, a Warrior King, as thousands of African women protest unrestrained mass rapes in Congo, and Port-au-Prince residents hope in vain for homes. I plead for his sovereign power to rescue the oppressed and destroy evil once and for all. How just is a God who thinks that truth and righteousness must prevail. Yet, as in the Bethlehem grotto, he seems to have hidden himself.

I finally catch a glimpse of the Warrior King in the hazy cosmic distance of the last book of Holy Scripture. St. John’s apocalyptic vision reveals he is not at all what I would expect: a Lamb looking as though it had been slain. But this humble, sacrificial Lamb standing in the midst of the throne of heaven is more like a royal lion. He takes command of all judgment of the world and ushers in an everlasting kingdom of peace. Infinitely outnumbering my token figurine, angels encircle the throne and sing; this time every creature in heaven, on earth and sea, joins in**:

 Worthy is the Lamb,

who was slain,

to receive power

and wealth

and wisdom

and strength

and honor

and glory

and praise!

Returning to my Fontanini crèche, I defy tradition and common sense to place my tiny lamb figurine in the empty manger. Someday, God will make it his throne.

Come again, long-expected Jesus.

 

*Daily Readings with St. Isaac of Syria, p. 66

**Revelation 5:6-13

The last thing to go

Five years ago this month, my mom, Erma, passed away, and she left a memory of her sense of humor with us. Her family will read this and think, “Well, she was humorous in spite of herself.” It is true: Mom was born with an underdeveloped funny bone and had to rely on others to tickle that bone into maturity. She grew up in the farmlands of Iowa, where unfortunately for her folks’ humor could be as dry as the corncobs in the cattle crib.

When Mom married Dad, she discovered his sense of humor was also understated, so if she was not diligent, his wit could pass her right by. His quiet humor could not always penetrate through the struggle to raise five children on a country preacher’s income, and after one of my brothers died, followed by Dad fourteen years later, it was pretty hard for Mom to gather resources for hilarity.

Yet, she could be easily amused. Let a man, be it her sons, brother-in-law, or my husband, tease her, he could inevitably pull out a good laugh. Once she got a joke, which often flew over her head at first, she would titter—a few seconds behind the rest of us. She liked to recall stories from her past, especially about the time she and a fellow female pastor of a rural Iowan church fed the parish rats poison with a spoon. Humor bordering on the macabre, but hey, it qualifies.

She herself was a comedian without knowing it, and sometimes in a most impious way, which made her even more funny. She had a way of choosing the wrong word that sounded similar to the one she wanted, or slightly mispronouncing the correct word. To preserve the sanctity of her name, I will only give the mildest example of these. Never one to swear, nevertheless when she felt strongly about a subject, she would say in that voice which needed no microphone, “And I am a-dam-ant about it!”

Mom’s crowning funny story occurred just days before she passed away. Her illness had for months presented doctors with great challenges to keep her system in balance, and as she now lay in the hospital, they told her, “We are between a rock and a hard place.” She picked up on this idiom and said to my sister, “I wish that Moses would come and strike the rock.” She was referring to the Bible story in which water gushed out of a desert rock that Moses struck with his staff, bringing relief to God’s people. My sister reminded her that there was a verse in the New Testament about that rock being a type of Christ. The need to know where the verse was bugged Mom from that point on.

As soon as my sister-in-law and I walked in the next morning, she ordered us to find the reference, but we could not. As providence would have it, the chaplain on duty arrived, but before the woman could read a psalm and pray with us, Mom—from behind her oxygen mask—plied her with the verse reference question. The minister smiled and said, “Well since I’m a Jewish rabbi, I don’t know the New Testament very much. But after we’re done here, I’ll go right down and ask one of the other chaplains.” Mom accepted this; to her, being a rabbi was no excuse for not knowing the New Testament.

True to her word, the rabbi quickly returned with the answer. She said, “It took a rabbi, a priest, and a minister, but we finally found it—on the internet.”

At least the search had kept those three out of the proverbial bar.

We laughed over the story until Mom said, “Tell it at my funeral service.” She had come full circle and acquired an exquisite blend of a lifetime of faith in Christ, devotion to the Scriptures, and now at last a developed sense of humor.


*The New Testament reference to Moses' rock is 1 Cor. 10:1-4.

LABELS

I hate sticky labels. Well, actually I don’t mind the ones that have the special coating that allow me to peel them off in one pull of thumbnail and forefinger. Otherwise, I believe labels are manufactured in the pit of Hades. Dante missed one level in his Inferno; it is the one whose tenants are consigned forever to remove labels and price tags from jars, vases, and inexpensive collectibles. The labels are affixed with glue meant to stick eternally, and because it is hell, of course there is no water to act as a soluble. If those folk never cussed upon earth, they do now.

Product labels are hard to remove; much more difficult are the labels we affix to others and ourselves. One of the most enlightening and humorous books my husband and I have read in recent years is Look Me in the Eye, by John Elder Robison. While he was growing up, people mistook his affect and strange ways of interacting. He writes,

Everyone thought they understood my behavior. They thought it was simple: I was just no good.

“Nobody trusts a man who won’t look them in the eye.”

“You look like a criminal.”

“Sociopath and “psycho” were two of the most common field diagnoses for my look and expression. I heard it all the time: “I’ve read about people like you. They have no expression because they have no feeling. Some of the worst murderers in history were sociopaths.”

I came to believe what people said about me, because so many said the same thing, and the realization that I was defective hurt.

Eventually, Robison realized that was he not a sociopath, but that he had a special (and not bad) way of being human. He was able to peel off that old label and receive a new, informative one of “Asperger’s,” a type of autism. Now rather than feeling shame, he was freed to enjoy his uniqueness. Understanding that he was an Aspergian gave him a reference point to adjust some behaviors so that he could relate more effectively. It also furnished a position from which he could explain his ways to other people. He taught me to stop assuming that a person who won’t look me in the eye or does not respond to my “good morning,” is shifty, cold, or hung over.

In fact, Robison’s story caused me to wonder about my other labels for people I meet casually or see on the news. Why do I label them when I know nothing about what goes on in hearts hidden beneath Botox, tattoos, or three piece suits? True, sometimes labels serve as useful identifiers for certain behaviors: he is a hero because he saved the drowning child; she is a criminal because she robbed the store. Jesus explained such appropriate labeling this way, “Every tree is known by its own fruit… A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil.” However, Jesus says this in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, and he first warns against judgmentalism,

Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the plank in your own eye? How can you say, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother’s eye.

In other words, any business of labeling starts with examining the tags that are stuck on me. What labels have people branded me with that are not who I genuinely am, but that still cling to me and cause me shame or anger? What labels have I slapped on myself that restrict my liberty to develop in new ways, or conversely, that excuse poor behavior? Peeling off these labels may be painstaking, with a spiritual fingernail or two breaking in the process. But the freedom is worth it. John Elder Robison would agree.

When God subjected himself

“And he [Jesus] went down with them to Nazareth and was obedient to them.” Luke 2:51

One of the hardest things for human beings to do is to learn to obey. I won’t go into the theological reasons why this is so. In any case, we have to admit we struggle not to resent subjecting ourselves to someone else’s will. That’s a good thing, too, most of the time. Following just anybody’s directives without thought to his or her intentions can be dangerous. Even so, it’s good for our well-being that the majority of us U.S. citizens obey the basic laws of this land. At the least, it keeps us from killing each other off.

Still I for one am a little squirmy when I read in Deuteronomy God commanding the people to obey and serve him, not once, but 20-plus times. Why does God make such a big deal out of serving him? Well, for one, he, not we, is the All-wise Creator who has made us for his purest love. He designed the world to work in harmony when we love and serve him. Period.

Yet there is another big reason for the command to obey. Humble to the utmost, God has subjected himself to us. This truth was highlighted in last Sunday's service as we celebrated the feast day of The Holy Family. The key verse from the Gospel reading is quoted at the top of this post.

Jesus was twelve. He scared his mother and step-father half to death wandering off by himself to the temple in Jerusalem to discuss theology with Jewish scholars. When Mary and Joseph finally find him, it would have been natural for a 12 year old boy to smart off when chastised for worrying them. “Hey, I’m an above-average kid, I’m impressing the big guys. Why do I need to listen to you anymore?” No, Jesus not only returned with them to back-water Nazareth, he, the Creator of all the earth, lived under their guidance until he came of age.

So, as an adult, Jesus could say of himself without any false tone, “For the Son of Man came not to serve, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many.” If he had not served us with his very body and blood, where would be the source of our salvation?

So, what reaction would God desire to such great love? Our reciprocity.

The only one moral infantcide

In my parish, we follow a 30-day cycle of reading all 150 Psalms. At this Saturday’s Vespers, in honor of our bishop’s visit, our choir will be leading the congregation in singing the Psalms appointed for the 28^th of the month. They happen to include Psalm 137 (Hebrew numbering).

Over the years, I have belonged to several Protestant faith traditions, all devoted to singing portions of Scripture. But we never thought of singing all of Psalm 137 during a church worship service. In fact, at music practice, we Orthodox choir members shot up our eyebrows. “Why are we singing this?”

Why, indeed? Psalm 137 is absolutely no fun. It has no words of praise to the Lord, but of lament and violence.

The original setting for the psalm is one of ancient Babylon’s water ways. Some exiled Israelites musicians of the sixth century B.C. are sprawled, weeping by the bank, and have hung their harps on low-hanging willow trees, too homesick to sing.

A group of Babylonians happen by and torment them, “Sing a song of Zion!”

“How can we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?” they reply.

Yet, they do sing. The song evolves into a devotion to Jerusalem, now lying in ruins. The writer thinks back on how their neighbors, the Edomites, gloated over the disaster. Worse yet, they lurked at escape routes in Jerusalem’s walls, rounded up fugitives, and handed them over to the Babylonians (Obadiah 12-14).

The anger wells up so greatly in the psalmist’s heart that the last of the song is a horrible curse:

Happy the one who takes
and dashes your infants
against the rock! (v. 9)

How in the world do we Christians of the 21^st century handle this? Wouldn’t it be best to discount it as one of those texts of an unenlightened people before the coming of Christ and modern civilization?

The Orthodox Church handles this psalm by boldly incorporating it into her liturgy. This is not because she endorses anything remotely like literal, human infanticide. Rather, she interprets this and other imprecatory psalms in the light of Jesus Christ.

Thus, for followers who take our cue from Jesus to, “Love your enemies,” there remains only one category of enemy that we must actively fight against. This category is the demonic forces of evil (Eph 6:12).

Psalm 137 becomes a lament of our exile in this dark world, as we long for the physical kingdom of God to come. It is an imprecation against our tempter and accuser. With this understanding, St. Benedict revolutionized verse 9 in a most practical way for us today.

“Lord, who shall dwell in your tabernacle?

He who takes the evil spirit that tempts him; . . . who grasps his evil suggestions [in their infancy] and dashes them to pieces on the rock that is Christ.”[1]

[1] The Rule of St. Benedict, Justin McCann, trans., ed., (Ft. Collins, Colo.: Roman Catholic Books), 9-10.