In the crypt beneath Sacre Coeur there is a tiny chapel called, “The Chapel of Holy Piety”. Compared to the church above it’s exceedingly barren, a simple alter, one white marble sculpture of the Madonna holding the dead Christ, a few relics, two tombs with sculptures of archbishops, and, off to the side, a black onyx sculpture of Jesus. Jesus is laying on his back. He is dead, his body has yet to be cleaned, there is blood lingering around his wounds but his heart has stopped beating, his chest has stopped rising and falling, no breath escapes from his lips.
I was alone in that chapel for close to an hour. I spent a lot of time meditating on the sculpture. Sacre Coeur was a time of close communion, an intimate encounter with God.
I’ve never really told anybody but as I was praying and weeping and singing during my meditations one of the things I found myself praying for was that I, on my body, could bear the wounds of Christ. It was a strange prayer, I felt a little bit weird praying it, I’ve felt even more weird by the idea of telling anybody, but I prayed it nonetheless. There was something going on…
Anyway here I am six months later in Muskoka Ontario and I get into a conversation with a friend about what it means to journey with people who are suffering. What it means to take up a cross, what it means to grieve with those who grieve. As we are talking I also mention some of the dreams I’ve been having recently. She says she’s never had dreams like that. That night she dreamed this dream:
Her and I were walking into a party together. It was a mixed crowd, a large party, and there were people there we knew, and people we didn’t know. As we moved through the crowd I approached a girl sitting off to the side. Almost in slow-motion I reached out and touched this girl’s face.
“You have a cut here,” I said to her. Then I touched my own face. “I have the same cut on my face.”
Then in slow-motion I touched the girl’s back, touched a series of scars, of cuts, of marks all over her body and every mark she had on her body I had on mine.
The party progressed and I disappeared into the crowd. My friend found herself in a bedroom with the girl with the cut on her face. The girl was crying and asking my friend where she could find me.
“I don’t know, he comes and goes,” she said.
The girl was crying, and my friend was unsure what to say.
As she woke-up a voice in her head repeated, over and over again, “suffer with me. Suffer with me. Suffer with me.”
That was her dream. As I was thinking about it the other day I realized something. It is by entering into the suffering of the oppressed, the wounded, the abandoned that we begin to carry the wounds of Christ on our bodies. Just as Christ bore our griefs, carried our sorrows, was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquity, so we now carry the wounds, griefs, sorrows, transgressions, and iniquities of those around us. This is how we fulfill our vocation as the suffering servant. Yet, our wounds, like Christ’s, are redemptive. We are chastened for their well-being and by our scourging they are healed.
Surprised by Joy*
So Jude asks me, “Where is the joy in carrying our cross? Where is the joy that comes with dying? All this talk about grief and suffering, how does this idea of the joy of the Lord being within us fit into that picture?”
It's a tough question. One that I've struggled with a long time, and mostly ended up ignoring because I was never fully satisfied with the answers I could think of. Now I feel like I've started to discover an answer, it came through one of those, “can't see the forest for the trees” sort of moments.
As I told the guys at the shelter I was leaving, a lot of them made comments about how positive a presence I was, how I always had a ready smile, that sort of thing. One of my best friends there said to me, “Man, you're the happiest person I know.” I got to thinking about this and remembered how kids at the drop-in had said the same thing when I left there, “You've always got a smile for me… no matter how the day is going you're always happy to see us.” These people see me as a joyful person.
Which is funny because all my friends from Christian circles tend to see me as sad or critical or pessimistic. That's also the way I've always tended to see myself. I feel like I spend far more time “mourning with those who mourn” than “rejoicing with those who rejoice.”
And that's when it hit me. In my reflections on this I discovered the joy we have in the midst of carrying crosses. I feel like the cross I carry is often the suffering and grief of the homeless, abandoned and oppressed that I journey with. Yet these are people I love dearly. Of course I smile when I see them, it's a delight for me to see them. Of course I laugh with them, they're beautiful and brilliant. Therein lies the joy. I am journeying in love relationships. I love these men, these kids, these people, and – amazingly – they love me! How can the joy that brings me not be reflected in my relationships with them?
So there the paradox finds its resolution. On one hand there is a genuine cross and a deep suffering that comes with journeying with people who are broken at a level I will never experience. On the other hand there is genuine joy and delight that comes with journeying with beautiful and brilliant people that I love and that love me.
—
*Taken from the title of a C.S. Lewis book. He means it in a different way but, dang, it's such an appropriate quote for this situation.
Empathy
I was sitting talking on the porch with an LIT and she was asking about my work and began telling me how her and her friends would volunteer at Sanctuary. She was talking about her desire to love people, her desire to help but her feeling of inadequacy,
“I meet these people, I listen to your stories and I think, 'how can I offer these people anything? How can I empathize?' I've always had it really good. I've never gone through anything bad.”
I've often struggled with feeling that way. I've asked myself the same questions, I used to think that I needed to run away, lose myself in the streets, go through every type of hell, so that then I would be able to come alongside of people who were suffering. Then I would be able to say, “I understand,” then I would be able to say, “let's get through this together.” Then I would be able to at least offer companionship, and they would not be so alone.
Of course to even feel such things shows how little we understand suffering. Say such a thing to someone who has suffered deeply and they'll look at you like you're crazy.
“You don't know what you're saying. I never want anybody to go through anything close to what I've gone through.”
And then, talking with this LIT, I realized something. It was Jesus who surrendered everything to enter into our suffering and bring us out of it. It is Jesus who can truly empathize, who can truly offer companionship and comfort. And then I realized, it is Jesus in us, Jesus in me, that the people I work with recognize. It is because I have Christ in me that I can come alongside of those who are suffering and offer them something. I always want it to be me who makes the difference, me who is significant, but really, it's Jesus in me that these people recognize, it's Jesus who makes the difference.
And that's why I can still do the work I do. That's why I can still journey with the people that I love, and that love me – without having to go through the hell that they have experienced.
Hope and Salvation
Well, I usually try and stay away from this sort of debate but my brother asked me about my thoughts on the “once saved, always saved” debate and I ended up coming to a completely new (at least to me) conclusion. Usually I just point out that people focused on this question are completely missing the point of what it means to live as a member of the people of God, so I was talking about that with my brother when I had this idea.
I think that it is correct to say we are once saved, always saved. However (and this is the kicker), the question then follows, when does salvation occur? And here's the thing – salvation has not yet been fully enacted. Not for any of us. The completion of salvation occurs when Jesus returns and enacts judgment over the living and the dead. Therefore, when judgment results in grace, when we are not damned to the experience of God's wrath, THEN we are saved. Until then we only have the hope of salvation. So of course it is once saved always saved. Once God judges in our favor we are saved, and once we enter into the consummated kingdom we are always saved. But until then we only have the hope of salvation.
All this, of course, makes us rethink the popular Christian understanding of the moment you ask Jesus into your heart being the moment when you are saved. Actually it makes us rethink a lot of popular Christianity's ideas about what it means to be a Christian. Maybe, all of a sudden, we're starting to discover what the point really is. The question of how much can I get away with now that I'm saved, is transformed to the question of how I should live as a member of a people defined by hope.
Loving Self?
I've often been puzzled by the command to “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Why is the “love yourself” part included? I've heard several speakers suggest that it means we should think of others the way we think of ourselves, appealing to the fact that we are all fallen and are often selfish, wanting only the best for ourselves. So, they say, we should want the best for others. They then go on to point out how self-love is then the first step toward loving others. If you don't love yourself then you can't love others.
That's never really made too much sense to me. I mean, if our journey with Christ is about surrender, and sacrifice why would something based on selfishness be the foundation of one of our central commandments? And then I realized that maybe Jesus means that commandment exactly the other way around. Maybe he means that the grace we show to others should also be the grace by which we view ourselves. For a long time I struggled with accepting God's forgiveness for my sins. I was able to forgive others but I always felt guilty, always felt like I was somehow worse. I think what Jesus is saying is that we need to recognize that we live under the same grace that we extend to others. That means that we come to the exact opposite conclusion: loving others is the first step toward accepting ourselves. If we don't love others we can't love ourselves.
The Things That Kill Us
I've frequently heard a proverb that goes something like this:
“Sometimes the things we want most in life are the things that will kill us.”
It's often used to illustrate the need to want the right things. The illustration of drug addicts is often used to reinforce this point, these people want the wrong thing and it ends up killing them. The emphasis is therefore on the first word, “Sometimes what we want will end up killing us.” Therefore if we want the right things we'll live a long and happy life. I've started to think this statement is completely misleading. I've started to think that maybe we need to remove the “sometimes” from that saying.
“The things we want most in life are the things that will kill us.”
I think that if we want the right things in life, they also will be the things that kill us. As Christians, we are called to follow Jesus and that means taking up a cross, and that means dying. Following Jesus will kill us. Want the right things and we may end up living the opposite of a long and happy life.
All of us, in one way or another, are laying down our lives for something. It's just a question of what we're dying for.
Selling Indulgences
The poster shows a young girl, obviously street-involved, huddled in a doorway. She is wrapped in a twenty dollar bill the size of a blanket. The bold lettering beside the picture proclaims, “WE CAN’T HELP STREET KIDS WITHOUT YOU.”
There is at least one other poster in this series, this time it is a young man sleeping on the side walk beneath the shelter of a giant credit card that is leaning against the wall and stopping the rain from getting to him.
It’s series of ads for Covenant House.
I feel like we’re selling indulgences. We’ve given up on the general public actually caring about homeless kids, so we just try to get to their wallets. They may feel a twinge of guilt every now and again but it’s not enough to make them do anything… but it could be enough to get them to throw a couple dollars our way – especially with the help of a few eye-catching ads.
The slogan, at least, is true. We can’t help street kids without you. But it’s not your money that will make the difference. It’s you, your physical presence, that will make the difference. These kids need love, a listening ear, some sort of positive relationship. At the drop-in we would see 180-250 kids every day. There would be 5 staff to work with those kids. And we would try hard to love those kids, we would try hard to journey with them, to hear their stories, to get to know them all. But the odds were too overwhelming. The majority of the time you just end up doing damage control, making sure the place stays safe. It’s sort of like being the catcher in the rye… only there’s a stampede headed your way. We really can’t help street kids without you.
I mean, these kids are dying. When we pass them on the street we’re looking at a dying kid. Some die fast and others die slow but most of them never really have a chance.
Scene change: imagine yourself at the beach. You notice that there’s a fierce undertow, the water’s sort of choppy and it’s okay for the adults but you notice an unattended toddler has wandered into the surf. The child is drowning. What do you do? Pack your bags, write a cheque to help make the beach safer and then get the hell out of there? Of course not. If you see a baby drowning and don’t reach out and pull it out of the water you actually share in the responsibility for that child’s death.
It’s no different with street kids. Stop giving money to make yourself feel better. Start learning what it means to love. Start learning what it means to be a Christian.
“What are your multiple sacrifices to me?” says the LORD. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed cattle. And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats… Bring your worthless offerings no longer… they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. So when you spread out your hands in prayer I will hide my eyes from you, yes, even though you multiply prayers I will not listen. Your hands are covered in blood.
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from my sight.
Cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
Seek justice,
Reprove the ruthless;
Defend the orphan,
Plead for the widow.
– Isaiah 1.10-17
January 12/04: Night
I was on the south side of the Seine, a little to the West of L’Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame de Paris, where the streets connect at strange angles and just before broad thoroughfares disperse and narrow in the depths of Montparnasse and the Latin Quarters. I was tired from walking all day, my left shoulder was bothering me and my knee was swollen – and I was hungry, but after scanning the menus of the nearest brasseries I was looking for something cheaper. Night was already wrapping the city in grays and blacks. The street lights casting reflections from shop windows and the water that glistened on the cobblestones. One block south of the river I slipped into a McDonald’s and was engulfed in a neon glow. I felt like I had walked out of history and became a character in a video game. And yes, John Travolta’s character in “Pulp Fiction” was right, they do call a Big Mac a Royale with cheese. I sat by the window and tried not to notice the rotating posters attached to the locked-up newstand just outside. The French version of Maxim has no problem showing naked women, and the French, apparently have no problem putting those naked women on billboards. As I devoured my meal I noticed the girl sitting in the corner. She had her back to the window, maybe the same age as me, her hair down to her chin. She was crying, crying hard but trying just as hard not to show it. He shoulders shook every now and again and she deliberately tilted her head so that her hair hung in front of her face, her hands clutched in front of her mouth. I think the fellow across from her was breaking-up with her, or maybe she had discovered his infidelity. Once he tried – tentatively – to take her hand, and holding it, pull it away from her face. She jerked away from his touch. A second time he touched her cheek with his fingers, wiping the tears away. She didn’t move. She wouldn’t acknowledge his touch.
I remember feeling that way once, when the world seems to shatter and break and I no longer recognized landscapes that once seemed so familiar. I remember longing for such a touch and also not being able to respond to it when it came, knowing it wasn’t the same – the touch was no longer intimate, it was apologetic, not passionate.
When I left the girl was still crying, still sitting bolt upright, and the guy was still looking sorry, looking like he wished he could fix everything but knowing he couldn’t.
Paris, they say, is for lovers. A city full of beauty and romance. I guess the harsh neon lights of a McDonald’s end up being an appropriate setting for heartbreak. There you don’t see cathedrals and statues, parks and old winding streets lined with apartments that seem to lean toward each other. There you only have tiles and sticky table tops, bright colored uniforms and glossy ads for coffee and salads – and garbages that are in constant need of changing.
That night I sat for a long time on the Pont Neuf watching the river carve a black path through the heart of the city.
Christian Snuff Films
I detest the movie “The Passion of Christ.” It grieves me; it makes me feel sick. I would not suggest that anybody, Christian or non-Christian, should go and see it.
As far as movies go I think it's comparable to “Irreversible” a French film that came out about a year ago. “Irreversible” is a movie about rape. It contains a graphic rape scene that goes on for nine minutes and ends with the attacker kicking the woman's face in. The director defended his film saying that all the details of the event had to be displayed in order for the audience to realize the horror of rape. He argues that we have been so desensitized that we need something to jolt us back to reality. I say that he's a liar. It just shows how apathetic our culture is. A friend once said to me,
“It's one thing to know that there are monsters out there who commit such acts, it's another thing to realize that all sorts of people are going to the theatre and paying money to watch those acts performed in front of their eyes.”
If we really cared, we wouldn't watch such movies. After all wasn't the proliferation of violent sex in the entertainment world one of the causes of desensitization? It doesn't make much sense to then use that exact media to try and do the opposite, “let's make it MORE violent so people will start carying”… while charging people money to view the result. If we really cared we would realize the impact that even whispering the word “rape” has; viewing a movie that exposes all the details would be preposterous. But we don't care.
And all this leads me back to “The Passion.” All these Christians that are going to watch Jesus be brutalized, all these Christians coming out of the theatres weeping, “Oh, I didn't realize it was so hard.” For some it's the whipping that really did them in, especially all the parts in slow-motion. It's like some sort of Christian snuff film – all these Christians getting off on the suffering of the one who speaks of himself as their Lover. We just love violence, we love gory details. We love the horror they arouse in us, we love to discuss them over coffee afterwards. Maybe they make us feel like better Christians, “Oh, look at the way I wept over Jesus' death.” Little do we realize that by paying to see such things we are actually doing the opposite. Going to see “The Passion” is tantamount to joining the crowd in yelling, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”
So I won't go and watch “Irreversible” to try and understand what it was like for my friends who were raped (oh, and we all have friends who have been raped – look at the stats. We just don't know because they've never felt like they could trust us… probably because we continually betray them by watching things like “Irreversible”…). What I will do is enter into relationship with them as best I can, I will learn from them, laugh with them, and cry with them.
And I won't go and watch “The Passion” to try and understand what it was like for Jesus on the day that he died. What I will do is enter into relationship with Jesus, I will learn from him, laugh with him and cry with him. And I will enter into relationship with those who are being crucified today, with those who are broken, those who are abused, those who are betrayed. I will journey with those people and there I will meet my Lord and my Lover. There I will discover my complicity in their crucifixion. There I will learn true empathy.
You want to get a feel for what Jesus went through? Stop watching Christian porn and start following him.
Fire in the Wilderness and God in Exile
It all goes back to an experience I had late last December.
I had taken the bus back from London, where I had spent a few days with my family. The bus got in early in the evening but winter was full-blown and the darkness of the night had already settled around the city. I decided to walk home, since I was still living downtown at that time. I started walking on Dundas street passed lighted restaurants and Christmas decorations that hadn’t been taken down yet. Over Christmas I had spent a lot of time thinking about the glory of that moment, of what it meant to have God break into history in that manner. I had spent a lot of time longing that God would break-in again in the same way. That another exodus would occur. The verses I couldn’t get away from were in Isaiah 63 and 64:
Look down from heaven and see from your holy and glorious habitation; where are your zeal and your mighty deeds? The stirrings of your heart and your compassion are restrained towards me. For you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not recognize us. You, O LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name. Why, O LORD, do you cause us to stray from your ways and harden our heart from fearing you? Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage. Your holy people possessed your sanctuary for a little while, our adversaries have trodden it down. We have become like those over whom you have never ruled, like those who were not called by your name. Oh that you would tear the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence – as fire kindles the brushwood, as fire causes water to boil – to make your name known to your adversaries, that the nations might tremble at your presence. When you did awesome things which we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, nor has the eye seen a god beside you, who acts in behalf of the one who waits for him. you meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, who remembers you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, for we sinned, we continued in them a long time; and shall we be saved? For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name who arouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us into the power of our iniquities.
But now, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, and you are the potter; and all of us are the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD, nor remember iniquity forever; behold, look now, all of us are your people, your holy cities have become a wilderness, Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful hose, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire; and all our precious things have become a ruin. Will you restrain yourself at these things, O LORD? Will you keep silent and afflict us beyond measure?
Powerful words. Words that I felt (and still feel) define our experience as the people of God today in Toronto (in Canada, and even North America).
As I neared my home I walked passed the housing projects at Dundas and Spadina. As I was passing them I noticed a fire breaking-out on the sidewalk about twenty feet in front of me. I quickened my pace and discovered a cardboard box stuffed with paper. It had only just started to burn and was only really getting going by the time I stood beside it. So, I stomped it out and kept on walking.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was strange that a box would be burning in the middle of the sidewalk. It was especially strange that I didn’t see anybody light the fire and then run away – I was close enough that I should have seen somebody. I couldn’t shake the feeling that God was trying to teach me something.
It wasn’t until a few hours later when I was sitting at home on the couch that everything clicked. The key was the story of Moses and the burning bush. I started thinking: what if Moses had reacted differently? What if, instead of approaching reverently, Moses had spent all of his time trying to extinguish the fire? He would have missed God’s presence, he would have been so preoccupied in doing the right thing, doing damage control (who knows, maybe that fire could have spread and damaged his flocks or their grazing lands…) that he would have missed what God was doing. And then I thought about how I had just stomped the fire out and kept on walking feeling like I was being a good citizen – look at me, putting out fires. That’s when I came to a realization: I was so preoccupied with thinking about exile that I just couldn’t see God’s presence at all. And that’s when it hit me, that’s when something huge clicked:
God goes into exile with his people.
And that, well, that changes everything.