Lent Reader

Have you guys read any of this? Its the reader we have for sale in the bookstore. Truth be told, I didn't buy one until yesterday ... I thought I could just read the ones for sale ... but once I realized I was 80 pages in and really liking it, I thought it wrong to keep reading a book that was for sale.

Anyway, I knew I would like the entries by Bonhoeffer, Kierkegaard, Lewis, etc ... but there are tons of writers I have never heard of who are powerful to read. Stephanie, there is actually a Geoffrey Hill poem in here (Lachrimae Amantis).

The one I read this morning is by Barbara Brown Taylor. She writes about the Christian temptation to shift the killing of Christ off to the Jews and Romans, as long as they remain the villians, then we are off the hook. "Unfortunately, this is not a story that happened long ago in a land far away. Sons and daughters of God are killed in every generation. They have been killed in holy wars and inquisitions, concentration camps and prison cells. They have been killed in Cape Town, Memphis, El Salvador and Alabama. The charges against them have run the gamet, but treason and blasphemy have headed the list, just as they did for Jesus. He upset those in charge at the courthouse and the temple. He suggested they were not doing their jobs. He offered himself as a mirror they could see themselves in, and they were so appalled by what they saw that they smashed it. They smashed him every way they could."

She goes on to write about how dangerous it is for religion and politics to become mixed up ... but just before we get off the hook again (saying, but I am no Caiaphas or Pilate or Herod) she cuts in; "They may have been the ones who gave Jesus the death sentence, but a large part of him had already died before they ever got to him -- the part Judas killed off, then Peter, then all those who fled. Those are the roles with our names on them--not the enemies but the friends. ... Peter said. 'We weren't friends, exactly. Acquantances might be a better word. Actually, we just worked together. For the same company, I mean. Not together, just near each other. My desk was near his. I really don't know him at all.'"

And this was the part that hit me the most: "What happened then goes on happening now. In the presence of his integrity, our own pretense is exposed. In the presence of his constancy, our cowardice is brought to light. In the presence of his fierce love for God and for us, our own hardness of heart is revealed. Take him out of the room and all those things become relative. I am not much worse than you are nor you than I, but leave him in the room and there is no room to hide. He is the light of the world ... A cross and nails are not always necessary. There are a thousand ways to kill him, some of them as obvious as choosing where you will stand when the showdown between weak and the strong comes along [Judas chose the saftey of militia, guns and handcuffs] others of them as subtle as keeping your mouth shut when someone asks you if you know him."

Then, since she is writing this to be presented on Good Friday, she concludes: "Today, while he dies, do not turn away. Make yourself look in the mirror. Today no one gets away without being shamed by his beauty. Today no one flees without being laid bare by his light."