Crucifixion

The Day We Remember The People Who Are Thrown Away

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The Christ of the Breadlines, Fritz Eichenberg, Woodcut, 1951

For those Christians who worship a Holy God who cannot abide sin and whose righteousness demands punishment, today is a day to remember how God, the Father, inflicted all His anger on His Beloved Son, satisfying once and for all the debt of sin the human race has run up since we limped out of Eden.

I used to believe that myself. And, on a good day, I took comfort in it. I believed that my sins, even mine, were forgiven, and felt some peace, until I screwed up again.

As an old man, I have looked through enough microscopes and telescopes, stood at the foot of enough mountains, walked through enough forests, seen enough waves roll in, and held enough babies in my arms to change my definition of “Holy” from “Absolute Righteousness” to what Rudolf Otto was trying to express when he described the “Holy” as Mysterium et Tremendum:

“Mysterium” is the feeling I had in the mountains, at the seashore, and holding that new grandchild. It can’t be put into words.

“Tremendum” means what the hymn, “Were You There?,” is singing about:

“Sometimes, it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”

This is what Moses felt when he stood before the burning bush. Isaiah felt this when he saw the Throne of God high and lifted up in the Temple. Mary felt this when the Angel Gabriel asked her to bear God’s Son.

It doesn’t matter whether you believe these stories are literally true or not. What matters is that they represent moments —moments I hope you have had—moments of awe that both humble you and fill your soul with a sense of your worth in the grand scheme of things.

The opposite of this feeling, these days, is consumerism. Consumerism only recognizes the value that can be rung up on a cash register, and throws away the things that no longer have value: toilet paper, laptops, and human beings. We are all immersed in it. Many of us struggle against it, but it can sometimes be overwhelming. The message is that our buying power measures our value. Those with more buying power are far more valuable than those with little or no buying power.

We Americans are currently ruled by two men who had the misfortune of being blessed with success by consumerism . One succeeded at making things that consumers will buy, and the other excels at selling things, even things that don’t exist. Consumerism has stunted our souls, so most of us buy what they sell—or at least don’t object to their pitch.

We are now beginning to see the ultimate evil that consumerism can drive us to — making a virtue of throwing away human beings

It is no accident that those who are now randomly firing “corrupt and lazy” scientists, weather forecasters, and park rangers and are advocating throwing away the elderly, the poor, the disabled, immigrants, and others they have deemed valueless, want us to forget that we did the same to Native Americans and Enslaved People. They don’t want us to see that their disparagement of DEI is a continuation of a pattern of cheating and exploiting women and people of color, while carving out some cushy positions for incompetent white guys.

According to some traditions, the place where Jesus was crucified was on top of Jerusalem’s trash heap. One of the things we remember on Good Friday is, “He took his place with sinners” . . . on the trash heap.

We always label the people we throw away “sinners” AKA criminals (read mentally ill, learning disabled, abused as children), shiftless people who can’t feed their kids even if they work three jobs, the disabled and old people who didn’t amass a fortune to support them and depend on Social Security instead. All of them drain money away from those of us who always want more. I am appalled at how well I understand that reasoning.

This Good Friday, Jesus takes his place with “gang members” (Guys with brown skin, Latino names, and wearing the wrong colored clothes) in a jungle prison in the ironically named country of El Salvador.

The only thing that will save Elon, Donald, MAGA, and me is to recover a belief in human beings as the image of God. To have an experience of the Holy, whether it manifests as a burning bush or a new grandbaby, a Heavenly Throne or a hug when we need it most and expect it least, an angel or an answer to our heart’s oldest question. We need the encounter with the Holy that Thomas Merton felt one day at the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville.

He saw the faces of all the strangers passing him by and realized he loved them.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.

― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

street lights

What is Your Brand?

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The shortest description of marital conflict that I ever heard came from a man who said,

“First, you have to understand that my wife is Nordstrom’s and I am WalMart.”

It’s amazing how much we can tell about people by where they shop, the logo on their shirt, what kind of car they drive, even where they choose to live and what organizations they belong to.

For example, if I tell you that we own a Prius, that I love living in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in New York City (and the world), and that I belong to a church that has a huge ministry to homeless and LGBTQ+ people, you probably can guess how I vote.

My brands say:

  • I care about the environment.
  • I believe in diversity.
  • I am a compassionate human being.

The problem is:

  • My carbon footprint is still Sasquatch-sized.
  • My closest friends look like me, talk like me, vote like me.
  • I care a lot more about MY physical and financial security than I care about YOUR physical and financial security.

My brands are. . . . shall we say . . . “aspirational.”

My brands are a mask I wear on life’s stage to win the applause of the audience.

The Greek theater mask gives us the word “hypocrite.” You already know enough Greek to understand that “hypo” means “below” and “crit” is the root of “critic.” It comes from the Greek word “judge” or “discern”. Thus, hypocrites have not risen to the level required to make discerning judgments. They literally, “know not what they do.”

Jesus called out hypocrisy, because it was what got him killed.

My brands are my way to unconsciously pretend to be someone else, which is a very human thing to do.

The French philosopher, Rene Girard, called this tendency “mimesis.” It is the reason why, if you put two three-year-olds in a room full of toys, the only toy one of them wants to play with is in the other kid’s hands.

Marketers understand that very well.

When JoJo Siwa wears a new hair bow, thousands of “tween” girls want the same hair bow because they identify with JoJo. They, too, are positive, talented, and they stand up to bullies, just like JoJo.

I have zero interest in luxury watches, but I read a whole full-page ad that said that Daniel Craig wore a Rolex while playing James Bond. Since I, too, am ruggedly handsome, resourceful, witty — like Bond — I wondered if I should wear a Rolex.

Our brands give us our identity. They tell us — and others — who we are.

Perhaps this is necessary in the first half of life. We all start out identifying with Mom and Dad — our family is our “brand.” Then we individuate by identifying with peers: jocks, band kids, nerds, losers. Young adults may emulate mentors or personal heroes.

The Tantric religions like Buddhism and Hinduism call our brands “attachments.” The Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, call them “idols.” Both traditions tell me that

I will never find God or my True Self (which is either God or the Image of God), without letting go of my brands.

If only it were as easy as giving my shirt with the polo pony logo to Goodwill.

The truth is that giving up the “brands” that matter most to me, feels like this:

Banks, Thomas; Anatomical Crucifixion (James Legg); https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/O1350 Credit line: (c) (c) Royal Academy of Arts /

Jesus’ words: “Whoever would follow me must take up the cross daily,” mean different things to different people in different circumstances. That is the beauty of them. To me, in this Third Half of Life, it means letting go of my “brands.” My understanding of my “self” has to die so that something new and more real can take its place.

Sounds nice, but it feels like being crucified — slowly and painfully. We can do this intentionally through practices like mindfulness or letting go of our things, or we can just wait for life to nail us.

Anyone who practices mindfulness encounters stuff that contradicts the image that we like to present to the world — our personal “brand.” And that hurts. I know I am really meditating when, like Scrooge on Christmas Eve, I run into things that I don’t want to see:

  • The wrong turns I took in the past.
  • The needs of the world that I ignore.
  • The fact that I will die and all that I have will not matter at all.

It’s not fun. It feels like dying. I only do it because I keep finding something truer and less superficial underneath my “brand.”

Of course, you don’t have to meditate. Life itself will rip the brands off you, sooner or later.

When loved ones die, it can feel like a part of you has died. You lose one of your most important “brands”: “son” or “daughter,” “brother” or “sister,” “husband” or “wife.” Getting used to thinking of ourselves without those “brands” is not the only component of grief, but it is an important one.

One way we do grief work is that we often dream about the deceased in the first few weeks and months. Then, when we wake up, we realize they are really gone. It is one way our souls come to terms with the loss of that person and our “brand” in relation to that person.

When I retired four years ago, I dreamed every Saturday night that I had to preach the next morning. Unlike my dreams of lost loved ones, these were seldom pleasant dreams. They were filled with anxiety. When I awoke, the anxiety continued. Who am I now?

I am happy to say that those dreams are much less frequent and I am beginning to like No-Longer-Reverend Roger.

It takes a long time for an identity to die. Just as it takes a long time for someone to die on a cross.

This pandemic has stripped brands from a lot of people. The “stylish” were reduced to sweat pants and undershirts. “Gourmands” had to eat their home cooking or take-out. That is nothing compared to what was taken from people who lost their homes and incomes, their life-line visits from friends and relatives, and places where they gathered with their community: their bar, their bowling alley, or their house of worship.

Most of all, there were those who lost their health or their loved ones. I’ve written before about how COVID-19 took my “brand” as a strong, vital man (see Daniel Craig, above). Yet, I am also discovering a person underneath who is:

  • more open to the flow of life.
  • more accepting of change.
  • perhaps even a tad more ready for the loss of my most fundamental “brand,” my body.

I wonder what you lost? How hard was it? What did you find underneath your “brand?”