Entering God’s Special Room

I was sitting in the church library, just settling down with a book I found on the shelves—“Abraham” by Bruce Feiler. I had just opened it when I overheard the voice of an anxious mother “Remember this is God’s special room,” she said. “And you’re going to be nice and quiet and respectful right?”

“We’re going in now?” replied a small child. I thought I heard a sense of awe, that this small person had been prepped for the moment that he or she would be entering “God’s special room.”

I don’t know who the voice of the mother belonged to but I do know she was teaching a lesson—when we go into God’s special room, we are nice and quiet and respectful.

Just as this little person was learning how to enter God’s special room, we adults had spent the previous hour in Sunday School studying the Stations of the Cross. We were doing the station where Jesus is stripped naked of his clothes by the Roman soldiers. In prayer, in contemplation, in meaning, in application to real life, it is like humiliating another human being. We went through the station where Jesus is nailed to the cross and the one where he dies on the cross.

We discussed the correct meaning of His death: a) Jesus died for our sins b) Jesus gave his life as a ransom for many—to deliver many? c) Jesus’ death is a perfect example of humility. d) Jesus died because of our sins. e) All of the above. We talked about how the cross didn’t show up as the dominant symbol of Christianity for like 450 years. We talked about the logistics, how Jesus—and others of his day—were actually nailed to a cross, how they suffered and died.

In any case, the death of Christ has lots of meanings and I suspect through just living life and study and prayer the subtler points emerge. I was thinking about this after the 10:45 service, as a group of us had gathered at the first Station of the Cross, with the intent of praying all 14. The crosses, made by different parishioners, are placed along a path through the woods behind the church, up the hill and back down again.

I’ve never walked the stations so I approached the exercise with great expectation for some sort of spiritual epiphany, emotional tug, a welling up of compassion, perhaps. But until The fourth Station—Jesus meets his mother--all I felt was a comfortable closeness as the 10 of us took turns reading, as we prayed together. As the dead leaves crunched beneath our feet, surrounded by the bare trees, as we exchanged a glance or smile and recited words and stopped before each station.

Since I had signed up to lead the group, I asked Elizabeth Wong Mark to read at this fourth station, which was made by her husband and son—Steve and Connor. The cross is draped in the fabric of the clothes that Elizabeth’s mother was wearing when she died in December. I do not remember a single word Elizabeth read but I remember vividly the very tangible relic of her mother’s death, the physical reminder of grief, of love and remembrance. Her mother was not present, yet this symbol of her death—and therefore her life—was very present.

So I’m probably wrong but I can’t help but think the only good reason to study the death of Christ, to try to connect with it on some personal level, is because to do that, requires understanding what it meant that he lived.

To get at that meaning, to understand the complexity, the nuances, I think requires questioning and immersion at some level and learning from those who are more spiritually, intellectually and theologically mature than you are (meaning me).

And of course there’s plenty of opportunity for growth. I particularly look forward to our Lenten Lecture series this coming Friday night and Saturday morning. The title is “God on Trial: The Earthquake in Haiti and the Indictment of God.” The speaker/teacher/lecturer is Joe Monti. And because it’s Joe, I know that not only will questions arise, but they will be blurted out and bump up against each other like Sunday School on steroids. And because Joe is patient and like a walking seminary, I’m pretty certain he won’t mind one bit.