I was preparing something else altogether to say today, the Friday before Holy Week begins… but what I was writing seemed more and more contrived as it emerged. Then, out of the blue as it were, arrived by email a snippet by Sandi Villareal, the new Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners magazine. You may know Sojourners; it is one of the brighter lights in the gloom and confusion of religion in the USA . At Sojourners they had had a hard week, writes Sandi Villareal. So she turns for meaning to our old friend, Psalm 139…
“As this heavy week nears its end, so
many members of our body are hurting. We
witnessed the deadly effects of white supremacy and misogyny in the murder of
eight people, six of them Asian women. In a time of increasing hate crime
and violence… we lament and we grieve. We demand justice and we pray for respite from
hate.
“In trauma, it can be helpful to centre
ourselves in God’s presence. Breathe in:
Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? Breathe
out: If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in hell, you are
there .
“LGBTQ people in the Catholic Church and
beyond were once again subjected to the destructive message that their unions
are (in)valid, when the Vatican decreed that priests cannot bless same-sex
marriages. (But) we know that we are
each beloved. Breathe in: I am
fearfully and wonderfully made. Breathe
out: Wonderful are your works.
“And many are holding their breath as
jury selection proceeds in the Derek Chauvin murder trial. After nearly a year of racial reckoning
following the killing of George Floyd… this trial is about more than the
verdict in one man’s case. (It) is about
examining our systems and ourselves; this is about us. Breathe in: See
if there is any wicked way in me. Breathe
out: And lead me in the way everlasting.”
Holy Week as
we know is about hurting. They hurt Jesus. They were desperately cruel people... Helplessness
in the face of powerful cruelty is the state of millions today… but there is also
the helplessness we feel about it from our safer, more privileged lives. Cruelty and injustice, violence, abuse, pain,
not least to children, flow from decisions of tyrants and bullies, hailed as
leaders... from irreligion, but also from distorted religion… from the
seductions of power and control. This
heavy week, wrote Sandi Villareal – well, Holy Week in faith is inevitably
a heavy week.
Breathe and
pray the Psalms. Breathe and pray your
own Psalms, the inner songs and lamentations of your experience*. Be still.
Bear pain, including the pain others are experiencing. The breath and the pain belong together. Wind and breath and spirit are the same word
in both Hebrew and Greek[1]. Eventually at Easter they light the candles
again, and we may look upwards… and see the light on the hill.
* I recall a remarkable example of this.
After my retirement from parish ministry, we attended
a suburban church whose Minister was openly gay, and a good parish
minister.
But he and others had become the prey of more
conservative elements in the church totally unable to countenance homosexuality
in church leadership. Their view, on the
rare occasions when they stated it clearly, was that no one should ever be
homosexual, let alone “practise” homosexuality – and if you were, or if you
did, then you needed immediately and permanently to change.
Our Minister had confronted these attitudes for years,
sometimes with considerable courage, and he had a lot of support in that
congregation.
But one Sunday morning he was, I think, feeling unwell
– he was at any rate at the end of his tether.
He lost his temper in church, conducting worship. I realised that he had been driven to the end
of his resources. He spoke in heat and
anger, he even used what we used to call intemperate language… and it was
exactly like parts of the Book of Psalms… from the heart, a cry of pain.
After that he went away for six months; other of us
filled in for him, and one day he came back, wounded like all of us, but able
to go forward.
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