Our Lent

Day 40: Carrying stories to fill the world

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Read John 21:24-25. Or, watch it on video below.

What’s left?
    We’ve already enjoyed the most exquisite breakfast we’ve ever tasted in our lives and now the rising sun is at our backs as we return to the rest of our lives. Plus, it’s a holiday season! We’re just about to enjoy Easter dinner with our families and, then — then, we seriously need a good long nap.
    So, haven’t we covered everything already?

    Almost. There’s one last Thing, hanging there like one of those antique ribbon bookmarks from the final page of the final gospel. That is, if we can remember what’s there in those final verses of John’s 21st Chapter. Can you recall?
    It’s books. Lots and lots of books.
    Don’t feel bad if this image didn’t immediately leap to the front of your mind. I haven’t met a single person in the many months it took to prepare this 40-day reflection who could recall immediately what was contained in the final verses of the final gospel. Remember that John’s gospel opens with: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
    Then 21 chapters later, John closes with lines that include, in most translations, a very curious word: “If.” The final passage goes like this:
    There are also many other things that Jesus did. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
    Translations vary, but the vast majority — including Eugene Peterson’s contemporary paraphrase, “The Message” — position that little word “if” right in the middle of John 21:25.

    How strange of John to finish his truly Grand Opera of a gospel in this odd, folksy voice of a storyteller. The style of this line feels more like Tolkien than New Testament, it seems. Remember that John is famous as the gospel writer who casts his scenes in such clear-cut, black-and-white terms: What about Judas? He was a demon, John says. Who carried Jesus’ cross? He carried it alone — period, John says. And so on.
    Then, this oddly fuzzy little tag is left hanging off the end of his gospel. This is the very definition of leaving loose ends.
    Even though our “Things We Carry” narrative now has run into 40 chapters (not a nice, concise 21 like John’s gospel) — we know what John is talking about when he says that there’s never enough space to exhaust our story. There were a lot more things we could have written about in our meditations. We never explored Things like the crown of thorns, for instance, or the nature of the rooms — from poor homes to imperial halls — through which Jesus passes. In the chapters we have shared with you, lots of details were left on the cutting-room floor, mostly for reasons of clarity and focus.
    But, here’s a good example of a gem that was lost in the cutting — and that now sparkles back at us in the context of this final chapter — our final moments together in this Western Lenten season.

    Remember “Chapter 22: The Precious Poetry of War’s Rumors” that featured a story about Russian poet Joseph Brodsky?
    In that chapter, I described how the poet fled the Soviet Union and, in the mid 1970s, wound up at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he was supposed to teach poetry and immediately collided with his first class of university students. We say “collided” because Brodsky came to the seminar room with a far greater urgency about learning poetry than those shaggy-haired, up-scale American kids could begin to imagine.
    It’s true that, as the discussion unfolded in that first session with skeptics in Brodsky’s class, the kids had no initial sense of this poet who would later (in 1987) win the Nobel Prize for Literature. And, it’s true just as we reported in Chapter 22, that he finally did have to explain to these privileged university students that words weren’t merely intellectual toys.
    His line, which his students would never forget, was: “If you are sent to a prison camp — the poetry you carry in your memory may be your entire world. So, we must choose well what world we will carry, no?”

    However, one detail we didn’t include, because Chapter 22 already was long enough, was that it was me — your guide through "Our Lent: Things We Carry" — who finally, after a long discussion with Brodsky, managed to recite the first Psalm of the evening: Psalm 90.     That night, Psalm 90 was recited from the King James Version that includes the remarkable verses:
    “We spend our years as a tale that is told. ... So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
    More than 30 years later, I still recall Brodsky, looking out a window, smoking quietly and nodding his head in the cadence of Psalm 90 as it resonated in the East Quad seminar room in Ann Arbor.

    The idea that our spiritual calling involves sharing our stories with one another isn’t something that’s universally celebrated in Christian teaching. There have been long periods and powerful movements in Christian mysticism, over the centuries, that have argued for a spiritual goal of completely submerging our individual lives, hearts and spirits in the body of Christ — to such an extreme degree that we humbly deny any value as individuals.
    People talk about “crushing” or even “annihilating” ourselves as individual personalities in our pursuit of mystic union. Many writers and preachers have encouraged others to go and do likewise.
    Such voices still echo. The French philosopher turned Christian mystic Simone Weil, whose writing has seen something of a revival in the last couple of decades, wrote to a friend in 1942: “Nothing concerning me can have any kind of importance.” It’s part of a long passage in which she talks about the “valueless” nature of her individual life.
    However, if (and this is another enormous “if” like the one that closes John’s gospel) — if Weil’s writings had not survived her death at age 34 of tuberculosis in 1943, the world would have been a poorer place. Her story, although often austere and extreme in its observations, is a powerful gospel in itself. The heroic example of her life, including her commitment to the French Resistance in World War II, and the challenging spiritual ideas she continues to spread throughout the world via her surviving writings, have prompted many people to suggest that she is an ideal saint for our times. Clearly, by the way she lived and wrote, she contradicted her own 1942 argument that her life was unimportant.

    There’s proof of this spiritual principle in the works of writers as diverse as Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, Jack Kerouac and C.S. Lewis, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Joan Didion.
    This is why J.R.R. Tolkien ends his Lord of the Rings trilogy with Frodo handing over to his friend Sam the priceless “big book with plain red leather covers” in which he and Bilbo already have filled nearly 80 chapters of the narrative. The story is precious, both because it was experienced at a dire cost in human life and because the narrative the book contains is timeless.
    Yet, Frodo does not fill the entire book. He intentionally leaves some blank pages at the end and, as he gives the book to his dear friend Sam, he says, “The last pages are for you.”

    This is what John is saying in the closing of his gospel: Not that the story is finished — but that John is finished writing.
    He is saying, in effect: The ultimate Thing in our human pilgrimage through God’s creation is the Story itself, the narrative we carry with us into the rest of the world that can connect all things — that can reconcile all things.
    So it was shared 2,000 years ago in the last of the last of the gospels.
    The message is Timeless and True: Our salvation is inextricably bound up with those Things we choose to carry with us as we move through the world. And, the most important Thing of all that we bear is the Story we have been given to share.

Questions for Reflection:

    If someone had only your life as an example, would they assume that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead?

    In your life, what are you carrying now? What Story have you been given to share?

HERE's our video version of today's scripture! You should see a video screen below. Click it to play. (If you don't see a screen in your version of this story, CLICK HERE to see the video at YouTube.)

COME BACK TOMORROW -- and for all 40 Days of Lent -- and take your next step along this timeless journey with readers around the world.
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Day 39 Exquisite taste at a 5th table

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Read John 21:1-14. Or, watch it on video below.

Do you enjoy the natural world? Have you ever spent the night outdoors and then shaken off the damp, the aches and the chills to approach a breakfast fire — or, at least, experienced this through novels by authors like Larry McMurtry or Ernest Hemingway?
    If you’re nodding your head to these questions, then you’ll agree that the most exquisite post-resurrection scene in the Bible is Jesus beckoning his old friends to breakfast on the shore at dawn.
    Remember, this is the setting in which Peter recognizes Jesus from the boat, pulls a fisherman’s cloak around him and leaps into the water to reach Jesus first. Then, the others come to shore in their boat. At this point, here’s how John sets this fifth and final Table in our Lenten pilgrimage:

    As soon as they came to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid upon it, and bread. Jesus said to them: “Bring some of the fish that you have caught.”

    Note that detail? Jesus already has the fire burning and he’s got a first helping of fish already sizzling there — but, he knows the taste of fresh-caught fish and he wants the men to bring some of that fresh-off-the-boat fish to share in the little circle he’s forming on the shore.
    John continues, explaining that Peter quickly began unloading fish. And:
    Jesus said to them, “Come and eat.”

    Somewhat nervously, they came. And John says:
    Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and he did likewise with the fish.
    Do you see the pattern? An invitation. A circle forms. There’s sustenance and there’s sharing.

    More than a decade ago, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited Detroit and the Detroit Mayor’s office made a point of dispatching a plain-clothes detail of police to guard this world-famous civil rights hero. On Sunday morning, which oddly enough was the only down time left in the archbishop’s busy schedule, he invited me to interview him in his suite at the Renaissance Center’s hotel. We had met a few times over the years and he graciously made arrangements to spend an unhurried hour answering questions, once again.
    However, after I trekked all the way into the downtown area, parked and made my way up to Tutu’s suite, the archbishop came to the door of his room with a worried frown. “There has been a change,” he said. “No interview now, I am sorry to tell you. I must use this hour for something more pressing.”
    As I stood in the hallway, peering into his sitting room through the open door, several tall men in dark suits were visible as they sat rather awkwardly in easy chairs.
    “Anything serious?” I asked, wanting an explanation but not wanting to be rude.
    “Well, it was a discovery I made just a little while ago, or I would have telephoned you not to drive down here,” he said. “It seems that every single man in my police detail here either sings in a choir or is a deacon in his church — and I am the cause preventing these four fine men from serving in their parishes today. I cannot ignore this situation.”
    “What do you plan to do?”
    “Well, we have ordered some wine and a loaf of bread from room service and — of course — we must hold a liturgy here,” he said. “It will take me an hour, I should think.”
I stood silently for a long moment.
    “Are you a man of faith?” he asked at length. “Would you like to join us for our little Eucharist?”

    What do you think happened next? Who could refuse such an invitation?

    This is why one of the most memorable Tables in my own half a century of living is an ordinary glass-topped, chrome-framed coffee table in a hotel sitting room in Detroit — because, around that table, Tutu invited five of us to join him as he prayed, taught, chanted a Psalm and finally consecrated bread and wine to share with us.
    As I read that scene on the shoreline in the middle of John 21, I can feel the electricity those men felt that morning. Just as the five of us were in Tutu’s hotel suite as he celebrated the Eucharist just for us — Jesus’ followers on that shoreline 2,000 years ago surely were walking on pins and needles as they approached the breakfast fire. What was happening? Who was this? They were virtually certain it was Jesus, but none of them “dared to ask,” John writes. The connections in this spiritual journey often are extremely difficult to discern.
    But, Jesus kept pointing, time and time again, to this symbol — this THING — that is so central to the kingdom he sees emerging: a TABLE. Remember the pattern: An invitation. A circle forms. There’s sustenance and there’s sharing.
    Are you still a little nervous as we approach this next to the last thing in our 40-part journey? Are you a little unclear, still, about how broadly we should think about this critically important Thing — this fifth Table that Jesus is laying out for us?
    Well, we can put this another way: It’s not as hard as it may seem.

    In our adventure, we’ve already encountered the depths of Robert Frost’s poetic vision. If you missed that chapter, go back and check it out — because there’s some unforgettable imagery in that “Chapter 22: The Poetry of War.” These things all have a way of becoming inextricable tiles in the mosaic of our lives.
     Forty years ago, the first Robert Frost poem that I ever memorized was so simple that it barely seemed like poetry at all. But the lines wear so well through the many ages in a person’s life that it’s the one poem that prefaces most collections of Frost’s poetry to this day. It’s a simple hymn about the gathering of two people in a rural setting — and it goes like this:

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan’t be gone long. — You come too.
I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan’t be gone long. — You come too.

    In much the same way, the invitation went out from the little fire along the shore of Galilee 2,000 years ago, the tangy smoke tickling our nostrils and the warmth soothing our damp and aching bones. Who could resist such an exquisitely delicious invitation?
    Oddly enough, so many of us do resist, don’t we? Perhaps we’re urgently headed somewhere else on such a busy morning. Perhaps we don’t have time for this — period! But that fire still is burning on a shoreline near us. And the invitation echoes through all times and places:

We shan’t be long. You come too.

Questions for Reflection:

    Today, think of exquisite memories you may have of unexpected breakfasts -- or perhaps an unexpected meal at some other time of the day -- when you felt joy and community all around you. How long ago did that happen in your life? Wha does the memory tell you about yourself and your need for spiritual community?

    Can you create such a gathering yourself this week? Jesus did it with the simplest of settings -- a fire, some fish and bread. Robert Frost did it with a simple invitation to take a walk in the country.

HERE's our video version of today's scripture! You should see a video screen below. Click it to play. (If you don't see a screen in your version of this story, CLICK HERE to see the video at YouTube.)

COME BACK TOMORROW -- and for all 40 Days of Lent -- and take your next step along this timeless journey with readers around the world.
    MEET OUR PARTNERS! You'll enjoy their rich array of reflections and ideas. You'll find their fresh comments every day at Our Lent!
    ADD A COMMENT! Even if it's just a few words, our readers enjoy hearing from each other. When you "click" to comment — you don't have to reveal your full name, although we welcome that. You will have to enter your Email address (that's how we prevent Spam), but your contact information is kept private. Please, add a few words.
    ALSO, you always can email me, ReadTheSpirit and Our Lent Editor David Crumm.

Day 38: Heartburn from the stranger dead ahead

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Read Luke 24:13-34. Or, watch it on video below.

    U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jack Lewis, at age 40 with years of military service under his belt, thought he had seen everything the world could throw up into his path. As a young father, he had even suffered the tragic death of one of his infant daughters, who stopped breathing while she took a nap one day. He’d also served as a firefighter for a couple of years.
    “So I had seen some bloody messes in my time and I had been in combat zones before where bad things happen,” Lewis told me via telephone from the motorcycle shop where he was working in Seattle, Washington. “But what happened that night on that road in Iraq was something that I just couldn’t mentally off-load after it happened.
    "Eventually, I had to put it somewhere, so — one night after it happened, after I’d finished all my reports for the day, I just banged the story into my laptop and I emailed it to my blast-list of people who are special to me, who I needed to keep in the loop of my life.
    “Telling that story was a way of saying I’m OK. It was a way of feeling that I was reconnecting with the real world. It was a way of asserting that I was still alive. It was a way of putting that story somewhere.”

    The story, called "Road Work," was discovered by Public Broadcasting Service documentary filmmakers, through a program funded by the National Endowment of the Arts that’s designed to collect and publish narratives written by U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The moment the PBS filmmakers spotted Lewis’ story, they knew where to put it: on national television. Their version of "Road Work," narrated by Lewis’ own voice, was included in an hour-long film, “Operation Homecoming,” which debuted last year on PBS and may continue to show up on PBS stations from time to time.
    The visual images seared into Lewis’ memory that night in Iraq were recreated by a remarkable crew of film technicians to bring Lewis’ real-life piece of short nonfiction vividly to life for the whole world to experience.
    Quite literally, "Road Work" is a contemporary gospel about this same Thing we are encountering today in the final act of our Lenten journey:
    The unexpected Stranger in our path.

    Jesus’ followers already had learned a lot about strangers from Jesus himself before his execution by the Romans. At this point late in their life’s long journeys, what happened on the road to Emmaus should not have surprised them as much as it did. But then, Jack Lewis thought he had learned a lot about such things, as well, and he was unexpectedly knocked out of his boots on a dark roadway in Iraq one night.
    Remember the Walk to Emmaus?
    Luke tells us in Chapter 24 that two of Jesus’ followers, one named Cleopas and the other one never identified by Luke, are going to a village called Emmaus about seven miles from Jerusalem. They are talking with each other about all these dramatic things that have been happening.
    Then, a stranger suddenly looms in the roadway — so close that he falls in step with them. Luke tells us, as readers of the story, that this is Jesus — but Luke explains that Cleopas and his buddy have no idea who they are encountering! Jesus even tries to jog some awareness of him by joining their conversation. Jesus asks them the equivalent of: “Hey, what’s new?”
    Luke tells us that Cleopas and his buddy are so clueless — and so deep in mourning about what has unfolded in Jerusalem — that they begin to rebuke the stranger in a pretty rude manner. They frown and tell the stranger: “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who doesn’t know what has just happened?”
    This stranger doesn’t let on that he knows, even better than they know the story!
    Instead, Jesus as the Unexpected Stranger, eggs them on. He asks them, “What thing?”
    Goaded in this way, Cleopas and his friend spend four whole verses of Luke spilling out the dramatic story of Jesus’ life, death and the skeptical, confusing early reports about the empty tomb.
    That’s when Jesus lets them have it, although he still does not reveal his identity to these clueless clods. Jesus snaps at them: “Oh, fools! You’re so slow of heart in believing all that the prophets have spoken!” Then, he goes on at length, essentially reading them the riot act about their skepticism and their overall lack of spiritual awareness.

    And they still don’t recognize him!

    Then, finally, they reach Emmaus and — at long last — they do the right thing and compassionately invite the stranger to stay with them and share an evening meal. And, while this stranger is picking up some bread, blessing it, breaking it, and passing it around the table — suddenly their eyes are opened and they recognize Jesus.
    At that point, their moment with Jesus is virtually over. He’s gone from them in an instant! And all they are left with is the realization that “our hearts were burning within us while he talked with us along the road”. Only at that point — as Jesus already has departed — do they realize that they should have recognized him along the road due to the sheer spiritual power of that connection they were feeling with this stranger.
    They would think about their encounter in the roadway the rest of their lives.

    Jack Lewis said something like that about his year in Iraq and especially his encounter on a dark roadway one night. “This may sound like a glib answer, but I don’t think it is: I’m going to be spending the rest of my life trying to figure out what happened to me in that year in Iraq.”
    In "Road Work," he tells the story of a night patrol in which he and his men were traveling in complete darkness in an enormous, heavily armored, tank-like vehicle called a Stryker — except that night their Stryker struck a little Iraqi family car with an impact that flipped the Iraqi car and crushed its interior into what Lewis calls “a bloody mess.”
    Climbing out of the Stryker to assess what had happened, Lewis was nearly deafened by the screaming of an old man who had survived the fearsome crash. He asked a translator to explain the old man’s agonized cries. What he learned was that the remains of a young man inside the twisted car were this man’s son — an honors student in engineering.
    Having clearly conveyed that message, the old man continued to scream in Arabic.
    Turning to the translator, Lewis asked: “What’s he saying now?”
    The translator’s response: “He says to kill him, too.”

    As Lewis tells the story, he realized that this particular death of the boy in the car — among so many deaths unfolding in Iraq — was devastating because, without any warning in the midst of a close-to-ordinary evening in Iraq, “a monster had killed this man’s son.” The death of Lewis’ daughter years before had not been nearly as violent as this man’s loss of a son, but Lewis understood the spiritual devastation of losing a child.
    In an instant, “I knew how that one Iraqi man felt.”
    In an instant, Lewis realized, “He is not different from me.”

    Lewis had traveled half way around the world, carefully trained for all kinds of situations he might face in a war zone. But he wasn’t trained — he wasn’t prepared at all — for this. In a lonely roadway, thousands of miles from home, he had suddenly jumped an even greater spiritual distance than he had traveled physically to reach Iraq. He had discovered himself in an unexpected stranger’s form.
    So it is with Lewis and other Americans as they encounter strangers in Iraq today; and so it was 2,000 years ago in an encounter with a stranger on a similarly lonely roadway. As these encounters unfold, we will be changed. And, when we are, we must put these remarkable stories somewhere.

Questions for Reflection:

    What strangers have you encountered this week? Did you interact with any of them? Try interacting with one stranger today and see what happens.

    Have you ever experienced something in your life that you just couldn't keep to yourself? Are there stories in your life that you've just felt compelled to share with others?

HERE's our video version of today's scripture! You should see a video screen below. Click it to play. (If you don't see a screen in your version of this story, CLICK HERE to see the video at YouTube.)

COME BACK TOMORROW -- and for all 40 Days of Lent -- and take your next step along this timeless journey with readers around the world.
    MEET OUR PARTNERS! You'll enjoy their rich array of reflections and ideas. You'll find their fresh comments every day at Our Lent!
    ADD A COMMENT! Even if it's just a few words, our readers enjoy hearing from each other. When you "click" to comment — you don't have to reveal your full name, although we welcome that. You will have to enter your Email address (that's how we prevent Spam), but your contact information is kept private. Please, add a few words.
    ALSO, you always can email me, ReadTheSpirit and Our Lent Editor David Crumm.

Day 37: Rolling stones and overcoats of clay

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Read Matthew 28:1-3. Or, watch it on video below.

A death-blow is a life-blow to some
Who, till they died, did not alive become;
Who, had they lived, had died, but when
They died, vitality begun.
    (Emily Dickinson, from Poems on Time and Eternity)

After 37 days on the road, it’s time in this Final Act of our drama for a Pop Quiz! But, don’t worry. There’s only one question: Have our eyes, ears, minds and hearts been opened?
    In these final four chapters, we’re about to encounter four of the most significant Things in our pilgrimage, each one a timeless echo of spiritual wisdom. And today? Our final Stone lands KA-BLAMMM in our path.
    Do you remember all the stones that have come before us? Remember “Chapter 5: Even Stones Speak” — in which we encountered Luke’s amazing tale of the stones in the roadway as Jesus entered Jerusalem? Here’s how Luke described the stones that day: Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Tell your disciples to keep still.” And He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would cry out.”
    Remember “Chapter 12: Stones as Spiritual IEDs” — in which we explored Jesus’ warning that God’s kingdom involves unavoidable foundation stones. And, as Matthew put it: “Anyone who falls on this stone shall be broken; but the person on whom the stone falls will be crushed into powder.”
    Remember “Chapter 21: Tumbling Milestones” — in which Jesus warned that cycles of human creation and destruction are timeless truths that our faith must transcend. He pointed to the immense stones of the Jerusalem temple and, Matthew reports, he said, “Truly I say to you: There will not be left here one stone upon another; they all shall be thrown down.”

    On Easter morning, God demonstrates once and for all who is master of the stones. We especially like the Cecil B. DeMille details in Matthew’s account of this: all the Earthquake and special lighting effects, which are lacking in the more bare-bones Easter-morning narratives in the other gospels. Surely, one of the greatest lines in all of literature is: “His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow.”
    One level on which Christians celebrate this story each year focuses on what’s inside the tomb: Nothing. That’s a powerful, 2,000-year-old tradition that’s central to Christianity. But, what we’re saying today in our journey is this: Let’s not forget the lesson of the moving stone itself.
    Jesus warned us that the stones would shout out — that the very foundation stones of our world would rock and rumble until our basic perceptions are shaken. And, now, we know: He was right!
    It’s so easy to miss this point in the midst of the Earthquake and flashing lights: All along, Jesus was calling us to glimpse the new kingdom he was calling us to help restore in this world. Our biggest challenge, he said — again and again — was opening our eyes, our ears, our hearts and our minds to glimpse this larger vision. Remember that day he grabbed a fistful of budding fig branches and waved them in our faces — commanding us to simply: LOOK!

    Jesus is calling us to see these larger visions of our world — to help conquer the selfish and deadly powers of this world that seem to hem us into patterns of living that threaten to destroy us. But, no, Jesus doesn’t appear in Act IV of the gospels with any kind of healing medicine in his outstretched hand.

    In fact, in John’s Chapter 20, the risen Christ responds to Thomas’ doubts by inviting him to “reach out your finger, and behold my hands; and reach out your hand, and thrust it into my side.”
    Jesus himself still has wounds!

    A Public Broadcasting Service documentary, "Operation Homecoming," features the Vietnam veteran and author Tim O’Brien, who first popularized the phrase, "The Things They Carried" — a title to which we’re paying at least a little respectful homage in our own Lenten title. O’Brien’s 1990 novel recounted the powerful lessons he learned on battlefields in Vietnam, focusing readers on a whole series of Things that GIs carried with them into battle — from their basic emotions to their equipment and even the candy in their pockets.
    Now, 17 years later, O’Brien appears in the PBS documentary, talking about the lives of GIs in Iraq. The main conclusion he draws from his own experience with wartime trauma is this: Healing from trauma isn’t necessarily a healthy goal.
    After our weeks together, perhaps you agree with O’Brien. And, in the final four scenes of this Lenten drama, we find Jesus showing us these same spiritual insights. More than checking the tomb to see that it’s empty, the point is to recall the rocking and rolling stone, remember who is master of the very stones and envision what kind of creation we are called to help restore, despite the injuries that we carry.

    Are you familiar with Emily Dickinson’s story?
    She was a recluse until her death at age 55 in 1886, privately writing nearly 2,000 poems that often reflected on intense matters of life and death. Yet, only a handful of her poems found their way into print during her lifetime.
    It wasn’t until long after her death, through the influence of other writers like poet Conrad Aiken in the 1920s, that her work was widely read and finally earned the respect of literary scholars. To this day, scholars hotly contest details of her secretive life. How much did she suffer from illness, from unfulfilled romance, from religious controversy? Whatever the final scholarly verdicts on these issues, the truth is that, throughout her life, she somehow seemed unable to move from beyond the stony walls she had built around herself.

    And yet — and yet, she wrote those nearly 2,000 poems — each one, by its very definition, an act of faith in transcendence. Just read her nearly endless stream of poetry on the nature of death — and life — and you’ll glimpse a soul hoping for the possibility of rocking and rolling stones. So, let’s close with a Benediction of a little more Emily:

Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
‘Dissolve’ says Death — The Spirit ‘Sir
I have another Trust’ — 
Death doubts it — Argues from the Ground — 
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay.

Questions for Reflection:

    In the face of these awe-filled spiritual revelations at the climax of the gospel stories, what does the Spirit say to you? Where do you find your salvation in this story?

    And, what do Dust and Stones say to you? Think about the Dust and Stones in your weekly journey through life. Where are the Dust and Stones? And what are they saying to you?

HERE's our video version of today's scripture! You should see a video screen below. Click it to play. (If you don't see a screen in your version of this story, CLICK HERE to see the video at YouTube.)

COME BACK TOMORROW -- and for all 40 Days of Lent -- and take your next step along this timeless journey with readers around the world.
    MEET OUR PARTNERS! You'll enjoy their rich array of reflections and ideas. You'll find their fresh comments every day at Our Lent!
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    ALSO, you always can email me, ReadTheSpirit and Our Lent Editor David Crumm.

Day 36: Timeless mystery of 4th Table

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Read Colossians 1:15-20. Or, watch it on video below.

    Where in our story do you find salvation?
    We’ve raised this question before in our journey, because the answer isn’t as easy as it seems. As Christians, we all know how to boil down the Good News into a couple of sentences. But, what we’re saying here as the curtain falls on Act III of our 4-Act, 5-Table Lenten drama is this:
    Beyond the first couple of sentences about salvation that most of us can recite by heart, what is the fullness of our faith? Or, let’s put it another way: None of the four gospels is two-sentences short!

    We’ve spent weeks on our Lenten journey — and we’ve only scratched the surface of the final days of Jesus’ life. So, what’s the larger story that Jesus wants us to learn about God’s unfolding creation?
    Well, let’s start today with the tables we’ve explored already: first, the table at Bethany when Jesus was surprised by a woman’s literally overflowing response; then the tables Jesus overturned in the courtyards of the Temple as disturbing examples of community gone awry; then the new kind of table Jesus established in his Last Supper with his disciples.
    So, what’s this Fourth Table?

    Well, we suggest today that the Cross itself is a Table.

    If you think such a metaphor sounds crazy, consider for a moment the ancient Orthodox customs on Holy Friday. If you’ve never experienced that in an Orthodox church, you might want to pay a visit this year. (And you have time to plan ahead for a visit, because the Orthodox world is a week behind the Western church in observing Lent this year.)
    What you’ll find on Holy Friday in Orthodox churches is a special, large cross on which the body of Jesus hangs crucified, sometimes in a life-sized iconic sculpture. Then, as the Holy Friday liturgy unfolds, the priest solemnly and lovingly approaches the cross, takes down the body of Jesus and carries it past the many icons that are arrayed across the front of the church — to lay Jesus’ body on the altar table.
    These are the steps that lead toward the procession of Jesus’ shroud around the entire church. The shroud usually is an ornate fabric, decorated with a painted or embroidered icon of Jesus; and after the procession, the shroud is laid in a wooden tomb that stands at the front of the church until the beginning of Pascha, or Easter.
    In the West, we’ve lost most of that amazing imagery that still dominates Orthodox life. We’ve lost our collective memory of such processions and such tangible use of sacred symbols. But — think about Jesus’ crucified body literally juxtaposed with the Table in this Eastern liturgy.

    Puzzling over this imagery? Well, take a moment and re-read that dense, abstract language from the first chapter of Colossians (or watch the video version below. Think about the line: “In him, all things connect.” Some translations render this closer to: “In him, all things hold together.”
    Think of Jesus’ arms, stretched on the cross, but also transformed as arms reaching out as if “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on Earth or in Heaven.” The Cross truly is shame, pain, sorrow and humiliation. It is violence, injustice and oppression. But the Christian story is about transformation — as we’ll certainly see in the fourth and final act of our drama.
    Think back through Jesus’ life. What’s Jesus’ chemistry of community? It’s the Table — the custom of drawing all people around him into a circle that shares, learns, serves and eats together! So many of the greatest lessons of Jesus’ life, if we think through the scope of his whole ministry, are associated with customs of eating and, thus, metaphors of a shared table.
    And now, the Cross is no longer a call to wallow in suffering and gore, to glory in a primeval ritual of blood sacrifice. The Cross is transformed into a sign of new hope. That rumbling we’re feeling beneath our feet is not Earth shattering. It’s Earth renewing!
    As it says in Colossians: Not to destroy, but “to reconcile to himself all things.”
    All!
    Now, that’s a moment of truth that surely should knock us to our knees as Christians, isn’t it?

    One of my favorite books over the past year has been, "I Sold My Soul on E-Bay: Viewing Faith Through an Atheist’s Eyes," by Hemant Mehta. This is the bright young writer from Chicago who became so disillusioned with religion that he declared himself an atheist — and demonstrated his firm convictions as a non-believer by auctioning off on eBay a chance for some eager evangelist to try to sway him. The book is his first-person account of his resulting adventures as a staunch skeptic among believers.
    What could this possibly have to do with today’s meditation? Well, guess who wrote the glowing preface to Mehta’s book? None other than the Rev. Rob Bell of Mars Hill Bible Church, who is emerging as one of America’s most famous multi-media evangelists! Rob recommends that Christians, in particular, read Mehta’s book, partly because some of Mehta’s sharp critiques of organized religion hit bulls-eyes! But, there’s a deeper reason Bell thinks we all should take time to get to know skeptics like Mehta: Our Good News, our Gospel, is that the cross reconciles all things.
    All are invited to the Table.
    In just a couple of pages, in the opening section of a book by a wise young atheist, Rob outlines a stunning theological argument! It’s not just that we should invite everyone to the Table, because that’s the gosh-darned noble thing to do. No! Bell is saying that we must invite all to the Table, because God’s creation — the larger kingdom to which Jesus is calling us — depends on all of us being there. Our salvation depends on welcoming a circle around this new Table that is unbroken.
    Falling to our knees yet?

    As the curtain is just about to drop on Act III, a little time for prayer and reflection on these overwhelming truths certainly is in order. Think waaaay back for a moment — waaaay back past the beginning of our little Lenten story to the Nativity narrative. When the truths emerging around Mary became almost overwhelming, what did she do? Luke tells us, “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” So, even if we can’t quite wrap our minds and hearts around such reflections in a single day — then, let’s at least “treasure up all these things and ponder them.”
    Just before we pull the cords that drop this Act III curtain, let’s add one more reflection on today’s central metaphor. Even the Rob Bell preface to Mehta’s book is a little abstract, isn’t it? So, let’s close with an absolute nuts-and-bolts diagram of a crucially important Table.
    We need to ask ourselves in the intermission between this Act and Act IV: Where else do we find Tables like the one Jesus envisioned? Where else must we work to build and rebuild the Table in each new generation and repeat the invitation that calls the circle to form around it?

    You may want to spend extra time today with our Questions for Reflection — because we’re reaching awe-filled ground here.

Questions for Reflection:

    Some have suggested that public institutions -- like public schools, hospitals, parks and libraries are Tables that we must keep building and rebuilding in each generation. But people envision these Tables -- these circles of community -- in many forms. Where do you envision such Tables in your community, your nation or around the world?

    What is your role in the circles that form around these Tables? Or, to put it another way, ask yourself: If God intends to "reconcile all things" in Christ, then where do you see yourself fitting in the reconciled circle?

HERE's our video version of today's scripture! You should see a video screen below. Click it to play. (If you don't see a screen in your version of this story, CLICK HERE to see the video at YouTube.)

COME BACK TOMORROW -- and for all 40 Days of Lent -- and take your next step along this timeless journey with readers around the world.
    MEET OUR PARTNERS! You'll enjoy their rich array of reflections and ideas. You'll find their fresh comments every day at Our Lent!
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    ALSO, you always can email me, ReadTheSpirit and Our Lent Editor David Crumm.

Day 35: Finally confronting the naked truth

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Read Matthew 27:27-31. Or, watch it on video below.

Then, Job arose, and tore his cloak, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground — and worshiped. Job said: “Naked, I came from my mother’s womb — and naked shall I leave this life. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the lord."
    (from Job 1:20-21)

    In half a century of listening to sermons, I can’t recall even a single little homily preached on the next remarkable Thing in our journey:
    Nakedness.

    Perhaps this is because there’s so much other material to cover in Holy Week sermons about sacrifice and salvation that no one has time for such a potentially disturbing topic as the spiritual nature of nudity in the Lenten narrative. It is true that the 10th Station of the Cross, observed by millions of Christians around the world, is the Stripping of Jesus by the Romans preparing to crucify him. And many artists down through the century, even many modern artists, have visually meditated on this theme in rendering various versions of the stations.

    Some of the modern images of the 10th Station are quite unnerving. One such image by a modern artist for the Stations appears at left.

    I’m not naïve. I understand that it’s tough to come to terms with the almost overwhelming number of references to nudity in the final scenes of the gospel accounts. No wonder it’s routinely ignored by preachers — wisely, we agree — as a disconcerting choice for the crowds of strangers who show up in Holy Week, especially at Easter with their children expectantly arrayed in new holiday clothes, all set for the family photos at the Easter dinner that’s really the highlight of the day for most families. In Easter services, it’s enough to cover the basic Good News in the scant time allotted for sermons.
    But the nudity at this point in our Lenten journey was obviously calculated by gospel writers to shock us, so it is certainly worth exploring today.

    What’s fascinating 2,000 years after Jesus walked the road to Jerusalem is finding his name invoked in an issue of Wired Magazine last year — in a cover story about nakedness — also known as transparency in the business world.
    Imagine that! Jesus appeared in huge type in Wired, cast as an expert source on the need to strip ourselves bare — as an ultimate symbol of honesty. However, before we jump to Wired, let’s review what we’re talking about in the gospel accounts — because (other than the 10th Station of the Cross) this is material that’s routinely overlooked in our pulpits.

    Matthew, Mark and John are the chief gospel writers who hammer home this visual metaphor.
    Mark starts earliest, back at the scene in the Garden on the Mount of Olives when Jesus is praying, then is arrested and hauled away in a shocking scene of betrayal and violence. In Mark’s 14th chapter, Mark describes Jesus’ followers scrambling away before they are arrested, too:
    His followers all abandoned him and fled. Also following him was a certain young man who wore only a linen cloth. When they laid hold of his cloak and tried to capture him, he left the linen cloth behind and fled from them naked.
    Perhaps this is historical detail — the arrest in the Garden was so shattering to Jesus’ followers that at least one man fled the scene entirely naked, presumably his body scratched and bleeding from the rocks and shadowy olive branches that surely would have injured him in his night-time flight. Or, perhaps this scene is a narrative foreshadowing of what’s about to happen to Jesus himself — stripped by the Roman soldiers.

    In Matthew’s 27th chapter, the attention to such detail seems to be almost a poetic refrain. During the soldiers’ torture and mocking of Jesus, Matthew reports, they stripped him of his clothes, not once — but twice. Then, in verse 35, they stripped him a third time in the crucifixion process and then gambled for his garments.
    John extends the detail even beyond the crucifixion and resurrection into the Appearance Stories at the end of his gospel! Clearly, there’s a point to all of this explicit nudity, so carefully noted and repeated by these writers.
    John’s final nude scene is in Chapter 21 as some of the disciples, after the loss of Jesus, are out fishing in the Sea of Tiberias. They spot a man standing on the beach; the man calls out to them across the water — and they realize that it’s Jesus! John reports:
    Then, the disciple whom Jesus loved turned to Peter and said: “It is the Lord.” And, when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he pulled a fisherman’s cloak around him, for he was naked, and threw himself into the sea.
    The other disciples came to shore in the ship; for they were not far from land, dragging the net with fishes.

    What is the point to all of this — this lack of clothing?
    Well, we couldn’t put it any better than Wired Magazine a year or so ago — in an issue with a tricky double-cover showing a woman who provocatively seems to strip as readers flip from the first cover to the second cover. (She doesn’t really, of course.) Inside was a series of stories urging business leaders to consider becoming “See-Through CEOs”.
    Clearly, the Wired editors are assuming that readers will be uttering a collective: What!?! Because the very next section in this series of stories was a case study designed to prove this controversial point about transparency. Wired reported on real estate broker Glenn Kelman, CEO of a company called Redfin that was flailing around with a provocative marketing strategy — until Kelman took the daring step of deciding to admit to the world that his company’s daring strategy had left his employees and customers — well, flailing around!
    In other words, he came clean. He shed all PR spin. He yanked the veneer off his firm. He stripped himself and his firm buck naked.
    And he saved his company. Wired concludes Kelman’s story this way: “Follow me, he urged. And many have.”
    No kidding! That’s actually what the Wired cover story said — as if this spiritual insight is Big News in our day. Imagine that! For those of us on this Lenten journey, we say simply:

     So it was 2,000 years ago; and so it is today.

Questions for Reflection:

    These are very challenging ideas, aren't they? What would your life look like to the outside world if you committed yourself to complete transparency?

    For many of us, this is one of the trickiest issues in our relationship with God, isn't it? We want God to know us completely and deeply. We want to stand transparently before God -- but, like Peter on the boat or Adam in the garden, our first instinct in the presence of the Divine is to cover up. What are you most eager to cover up?

HERE's our video version of today's scripture! You should see a video screen below. Click it to play. (If you don't see a screen in your version of this story, CLICK HERE to see the video at YouTube.)

COME BACK TOMORROW -- and for all 40 Days of Lent -- and take your next step along this timeless journey with readers around the world.
    MEET OUR PARTNERS! You'll enjoy their rich array of reflections and ideas. You'll find their fresh comments every day at Our Lent!
    ADD A COMMENT! Even if it's just a few words, our readers enjoy hearing from each other. When you "click" to comment — you don't have to reveal your full name, although we welcome that. You will have to enter your Email address (that's how we prevent Spam), but your contact information is kept private. Please, add a few words.
    ALSO, you always can email me, ReadTheSpirit and Our Lent Editor David Crumm.

Day 34: Welcoming the kindness of strangers

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Read Matthew 25:31-46 and 27:32. Or, watch it on video below.

Then, the King will say to those on his right hand: Come, you who are blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me meat; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in.
     (Jesus talking to his followers in Matthew 25)

    Over the past week, we’ve been very busy, haven’t we? We’ve hit several of the dramatic high-points in our Lenten reflections and, beyond that, the holidays are almost upon us and we’re preparing for big events.
    For more than 20 years during Lent, I’ve often been busy visiting congregations hosting special Lenten programs. During one of these visits, I ran into a 40-something Protestant pastor who asked me The Question that’s on millions of minds these days: “So, is there any hope for mainline churches?”

    I have studied this question for more than two decades and I understand both the fear and, I think, part of the answer. The fear is that, as membership in the traditional mainline denominations continues to erode, Americans are flocking to churches with no firm connection to historic denominations.
    Indeed, this does seem to be a trend, but historic denominations — Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and mainline Protestants — are far from lost. Collectively, these denominations have a vast array of spiritual riches, if only the members would stop worrying so much about small stuff like whether they need to find a rock band to attract 20-somethings to services. I have nothing against rock music, but — so far — Jesus hasn’t said much about musical stylings on our 40-day journey through Lent.

    Today, however, we’re focusing on something that has concerned Jesus throughout his life: strangers.
    And one major difference between growing churches and shrinking churches is the way they treat strangers, so it is worth spending a day on this very important Thing.
    In fact, it doesn’t overstate the gospel message to say: Our own hope depends on how well we recognize and relate to strangers. If we truly accept God’s grace in our own lives, and truly understand Jesus’ message, then our lives must extend past our own comfortable cubicles to connect with all of the other people who make up this vast kingdom.
    Just think about the phrase, “the kindness of strangers,” the famous Tennessee Williams phrase from “Streetcar Named Desire,” dripping with bitter irony as the tarnished Southern belle Blanche DuBois drawls, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Understanding Blanche’s checkered past, the hair stands up on the back of our necks as she delivers her trademark line.
    Now, more often than not, the phrase signals precisely the opposite of kindness when it is repeated in literature and the arts — a signal that the strangers we’re about to encounter are anything but kind.

    The problem is that there’s absolute truth in this sad situation. We do a terrible job of caring for the strangers we encounter, because we usually keep them at arm’s length.
    Do you doubt this? Well, one of the biggest scars from the War in Iraq is the way we collectively have treated Iraqis who dared to work with us. Journalist George Packer wrote a powerful New Yorker magazine piece about the problem, headlined:
    BETRAYED: The Iraqis who trusted Americans the most
    If you can’t recall Packer’s long story, you may recall seeing the photographs that appeared with it, including a huge Christoph Bangert photograph displayed dead center in the middle of Packer’s story.
    Bangert’s photo showed an ordinary, middle-aged man — a guy who looks a lot like one of our co-workers, neighbors or fellow parishioners perhaps — dressed in khakis and a neat blue, button-down dress shirt.
    But, wait!
    As viewers examined that photo, it was obvious that something was wrong with this man! He was lying on his side. Perhaps he fell down? And, wait! There was a black cord wrapped around his wrists. And, wait! Why couldn't we see his head in the shadows at the side of this photograph? What was wrong with this man — this stranger with the clothing and the overall appearance of a friend?
    Well, the problem was: He was dead.

    He’s one of hundreds of men and women executed in sectarian attacks and dumped along Baghdad roads. Bangert’s caption tells us that, like many people found this way in Baghdad, it was impossible for Iraqi authorities to identify him.
    Packer reported that the people most likely to meet such an end are the Iraqis who rushed to help Americans in the early years of the war. We welcomed these strangers in our midst, but Packer reports that, as violence escalated in recent years, we wound up betraying virtually everyone with whom we made contact.
    If such an overwhelming example is too uncomfortable to contemplate, let’s look far closer to home — and think about the jokes we often share about the strangers who poke their heads into our parishes during Holy Week.

    In your congregation, have you heard the term, “Chreaster”? It’s a popular buzzword for strangers who only darken church doors at Christmas and Easter. If you’re reading along with us in this Lenten journey, more than likely you’re active in a congregation and you’ll be encountering Chreasters at your church before too long.
    But, there’s a deeper problem here if we laugh too heartily at the term. Somehow, we’ve turned around the spiritual injunction to become specialists in welcoming strangers — to joking privately about how pitiful these strangers seem to us.
    The truth is that, as we reach Holy Week, the theme of the stranger echoes from the Way of the Cross to post-resurrection appearances, doesn’t it?
    Do you realize that the gospel verdict is 3-to-1 that Jesus didn’t carry his own cross? Only John, who has a strong literary agenda in casting Jesus’ story as a starkly drawn sacrificial act, declares that Jesus carried the cross himself.
    All three other gospels say that it was a complete stranger who was forced by the Romans to carry the cross for Jesus. Although artists have waffled on this 3-to-1 verdict down through the centuries — often depicting someone lending Jesus a hand with the cross — please, read the gospel records for yourself.
    They say that a complete stranger carried the cross — period. His name was Simon and he was from Cyrene in what is now Libya in northern Africa. Perhaps he was black; perhaps he was a Jewish man from the large Jewish community in Cyrene. We don’t know for sure.
    What we do know is that he was grabbed out of the crowd by the soldiers.

    Mark and Matthew say the Romans “compelled” Simon to do this. Luke says they “seized” him. In any case, it sounds like mighty rough handling for a stranger in town — and, yet, oddly enough his accidental appearance on the scene suddenly focused history’s spotlight upon him and this one act in his life came to define him in a powerful way. He was identified by the early church and his brief moment on the vast stage of the New Testament has been retold for 2,000 years.
    Imagine that!
    Here is a stranger who, to this day, millions envy for his proximity to Jesus at a key turning point in Jesus’ life. And, what about the other bit players who also are about to step onto the stage? There are two men on crosses next to Jesus’ cross — and one of them suddenly finds himself welcomed by Jesus in a way that likely makes the rest of us jealous, doesn’t it?
    Then, there’s Joseph of Arimathea, a bit player who suddenly shows up playing a major role in the drama — caring for the burial of Jesus’ body. Later legends claim that Joseph was honored as the keeper of the Holy Grail after Jesus’ death.

    Of course, the roadway extends beyond the crucifixion, doesn’t it? And surely we recall the mysterious stranger who showed up on that post-crucifixion roadway? Even Jesus’ closest friends did not recognize that stranger at first.
    Truly, this is a week when we’re likely to encounter more than our normal share of strangers. How alert will we be to their presence? Truly, our own hopes may be bound up in how well we welcome them.
    Perhaps it is our kindness that matters even more than theirs.

Questions for Reflection:

    Think of strangers you have encountered in the past week. How did you treat them? Did you interact with any of them?

    When have you been a stranger? Perhaps while traveling overseas? Perhaps while starting a new job or joining a new church? Can you recall how it felt when people welcomed you? Share these memories with a friend, perhaps a person who once greeted you as a stranger.

HERE's our video version of today's scripture! You should see a video screen below. Click it to play. (If you don't see a screen in your version of this story, CLICK HERE TO see the video at YouTube.)

COME BACK TOMORROW -- and for all 40 Days of Lent -- and take your next step along this timeless journey with readers around the world.
    MEET OUR PARTNERS! You'll enjoy their rich array of reflections and ideas. You'll find their fresh comments every day at Our Lent!
    ADD A COMMENT! Even if it's just a few words, our readers enjoy hearing from each other. When you "click" to comment — you don't have to reveal your full name, although we welcome that. You will have to enter your Email address (that's how we prevent Spam), but your contact information is kept private. Please, add a few words.
    ALSO, you always can email me, ReadTheSpirit and Our Lent Editor David Crumm.

Day 33: A 3rd basin & the banality of betrayal

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Read Matthew 27:24-26. Or, watch it on video below.

Now, we find ourselves fully in Act III of our drama!
     We’re beginning to explore some of the Final Things in our journey; and we’re discovering a remarkable resonance arising from our accumulation of experiences and reflections! The spiritual impact of Jesus’ method — and the narrative tradition that flows from his style of teaching — begins to echo like rolling thunder.

    What’s in our path today?
    Well, we’re suddenly face to face with: another Basin. That’s Three Basins we’ve encountered — forming a powerful Triptych of these symbols of community and betrayal. In Chapter 28 of our Lenten story, we watched as Jesus took a basin, wrapped a towel around his hips and began washing his followers’ dirty feet. Then, in Chapter 29 of our series, we were shocked to recall how even members of Jesus’ inner circle were tempted to abuse the intimacy of a shared bowl.
    Now, there’s this Third Basin.

    Surely, you recall this famous scene: Jesus is caught in the grip of Roman imperial authority and we find figures like Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the Province of Judea, processing his case through the legal system of that era. This was a turbulent era in Middle Eastern history and Bible scholars like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan argue quite persuasively that Jesus, most likely, was fed through this cruelly efficient system with other trouble makers who’d been swept up by the Roman authorities — pretty much like cattle through a chute at a slaughterhouse.
    It’s tempting, given the enormous spiritual significance we now see in Jesus’ life, to cast these scenes in Jerusalem as titanic confrontations of Spirit and Empire. And, while we certainly do agree that these Things were filled with overwhelming meaning for humanity — the truth of what actually unfolded on the ground in Jerusalem probably was far closer to what German political theorist Hannah Arendt described as “the Banality of Evil.”

    Hannah Arendt, who died in 1975, was born in 1906 in what is now Germany and managed to escape the Holocaust by fleeing to the United States with her family. Her complex and sometimes controversial life was dominated by 20th-Century questions about freedom, moral responsibility, the global failure embodied in the Holocaust and the nature of possible political action that might overcome such catastrophes in the future.
    In 1961 and 1962, she wrote in The New Yorker about the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who had been captured in Argentina and was carried to Israel for these historic hearings that eventually resulted in his execution. Afterward, she published her influential book, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil."
    In the book, Arendt’s point was that Eichmann was not a monster and showed no signs of mental illness. In fact, he was a typical bureaucrat in an imperial system who morally justified his role in organizing the Final Solution as if it was merely a noble example of patriotic work by a loyal civil servant.

    Eichmann argued in court that he had no moral responsibility that should be described as a crime, since he was working in the service of a far larger system and that the decisions governing his actions were made at levels far above him. His only moral duty was to follow orders, he argued. He was able to carry out his work with tragic efficiency, Arendt concluded, because he knitted around himself a tapestry of what Arendt called Amtssprache, or “Officialese.”
    This insular approach to the world — hemmed in by Officialese until people actually believe that they have no moral responsibility to the larger community — was the fatal flaw in so many political systems around the world, Arendt argued. Too many systems encourage this Banality of Evil.
    Of course, in Eichmann, we’re talking about a world-class war criminal responsible for millions of deaths — but we can see that this principle Arendt describes is powerfully played out in countless other lives, as well, if we just stop to think about it.

    Go back and read the parts in which Pilate is cast in the four gospels. The basin actually appears only by implication in Matthew’s 27th chapter:
    When Pilate saw that he could do nothing, and a tumult was rising in the crowd, he took water and washed his hands in front of the multitude, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this just person!”

     This famous hand-washing scene — so often depicted with pitcher, basin and towel dramatically displayed before a nearly out-of-control crowd — winds up ironically echoing Jesus’ own washing scene in this drama. Oddly, though, considering its dramatic power and enduring popularity in people’s memories — the Pilate hand-washing doesn’t appear in the other three gospels.
    But, pause for a moment in reflection on this amazing Thing: this basin. Think about the lines Pilate delivers over the basin. This is classic Amtssprache, isn’t it? “I am innocent of the blood of this just person!”
    LISTEN to the echoes. Hear them? Even now?

    Pick up major U.S. newspapers or magazines like Time or Newsweek and flip through news stories around the world. You’ll find stories about corruption as a commonly accepted condition of life in areas of Africa and Asia. And, closer to home? You’ll find headlines about abuse in U.S.-run prisons, or white-collar crimes on Wall Street, or American veterans suffering with sub-standard medical care — all conditions that the professionals in charge somehow manage to overlook until public outrage begins to boil.
    The Banality of Evil and Betrayal — perhaps recast as the Public Basin of Evil — is a powerful metaphor to remind us of this spiritual evil. And, unfortunately, it’s yet another reminder that our Lenten journey is no less than ...

    Yes, you know the phrase already — Timeless and True.

Questions for Reflection:

    What evil do we take for granted in our world today? In your own life, what evil are you likely to encounter this week that has become almost commonplace in our society?

    Many of us have had moments over a public basin -- washing our hands in a dramatic way. How about you? Have you been tempted to dramatically wash your hands of something that has proven to be frustrating in your life? What caused you to want to give up your responsibility in this matter?

HERE's our video version of today's scripture! You should see a video screen below. Click it to play. (If you don't see a screen in your version of this story, CLICK HERE to see the video at YouTube.)

COME BACK TOMORROW -- and for all 40 Days of Lent -- and take your next step along this timeless journey with readers around the world.
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