14 Broken Crosses

I wrote this as a sermon illustration for my preaching class, but in the wake of yet another tragedy as we have seen in San Bernadino, California today, I think it might be the moment.

14 Broken Crosses

Lubeck is an ancient city. The town sits on an island, atop Roman ruins and medieval streets.
The cities seven churches rise above the landscape, drawing the eyes of the traveler from earth to the heavens. The most impressive of these spires is from Marienkirche, or St. Mary’s Church.
The church is full of history. Its bells rang out 400 years of Easters, Christmas’s, Weddings, and Funerals. Dietrich Buxtehüde spent his life playing and composing on the great organ which bore the famous Notke Totentanz or Dance Macabre which depicted the communities darkest days during the plague of the 15th century.

After 1938, Lubeck became enemy territory, as she guarded the waterway to the north German industrial town of Hamburg. On the eve of Palm Sunday, 1942, Allied bombers lead an air raid on the city. Marienkirche took a direct hit.The Totentanz organ was incinerated, the font was crushed and the bells fell from their tower. The church has been rebuilt, and parish life continues,
new bells peal out over the pastoral scene and tourists peruse the hallowed hall. In 2010, I became one of those tourists.

I first walked to the south tower, where three giant brass bells lie indented in the earth, a crumpled, mangled mass, undisturbed, as they landed the early hours of Palm Sunday, 1942. They remain as a memorial, as a reminder of when war hits home. I made my way up the nave, to the ambulatory.
There stands another marker, another memorial. Gunther Uecker’s 14 broken crosses, known as “Injuries and Bandages.”

The wood was repurposed, taken from stretches of barbed wired barricades in Flanders Fields following the “War to End All Wars.” It is now used to form fourteen broken crosses,
with their cross beams set askew. The stipes is bound with bandages, and a grouping of rusted nails accent the point at which they meet. The piece stands as the local Cross of Nails Centre, which appear all over Europe. A plaque on the wall, warns against the futility of war.

On Good Friday, I am often reminded of this image. The cross is a symbol of torture, of brokenness, of destruction. Yet we lift it high, we put it on our steeples, and wear it around our necks.
We mark our graves, and set it before our memorials. Every year we commemorate the Passion of our Lord, culminating at the cross.

Why do we return?
Why are we drawn every year, every week, every day, to the scene at Golgotha?

Because it is when we forget that we become complacent. It is when we allow tragedy to gain normalcy that we become culpable ourselves. It is important to look on the scars, to remember the pain in our life and in our world. So that if in our corporate sin we allow it to continue, we may be moved to pity, and compassion.

Return to Golgotha, feel your scars, and see the bandages.
Then turn to face the world and teach her something from your pain,
Only to return again and remember.

The Antithesis of Faith, Hope, and Love

Let you who have eyes, see! And you that have ears, hear!

"Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost....

To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. .....

In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure."

- Charlie Chaplain; an excerpt from "The Great Dictator" (1940)

"You have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure." Why? Nay, how, could one human being deny such freedom and beauty and happiness to another human being?  How can you allow fear to so possess you that you would even have the ability to dehumanize another, even a child; to shut the door in their face, and ignore who they are? That is not love!  Such action denies Faith. Such belief denies Hope. Such participation refuses to see love, to protect it, and to help it to thrive.

Look now, and see.  Who stands in the place of Christ?  Will you allow yourself to be ruled by men, or by the love of God? Will you allow yourself to see Christ in the face of the one you call "other," "stranger," "dangerous  unknown"?

Go! Seek! Search your hearts! Desire to fall within the all encompassing embrace the heart of God!

Seek Him who made the Pleiades and Orion

Seek him that made the Pleiades and Orion . . .

The last few months have been some of the most difficult of my life and time in seminary.  To begin 

with, my summer was spent offering pastoral care to the countless patients, families, staff, and colleagues at a major trauma hospital. The things I witnessed, shared, and experienced were simultaneous extremely difficult and full of blessings. I have been asked to deal with death, life, grief, joy, unbelief, and my own theology in ways I never thought would become manifest in my life. In the depth of my struggle I found myself in the chapel at two in the morning, crying before the altar and bringing to mind the words of Prince Hamlet in Shakespeare's famous play.

'What a piece of work is man! 

How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! 

In form and moving how express and admirable! 

In action how like an Angel! 

in apprehension how like a god! 

The beauty of the world! 

The paragon of animals! 

And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

               - Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act II, scene 2

Though my semester has been one of relative calm and joy, I have been stressed with the continuing presence of the question, "why am I here?" In writing sermons, processing systematic theology, as well as considering my pastoral call and capacity in the classroom and the hospital room I frequently find a multitude of fault. 

An unavoidable feature of discernment and priestly formation is the voice of doubt for ones own vocation. My defense has become the practice of busy avoidance. I think for many in seminary who have recently experienced the breaking that comes from hospital chaplaincy internship, this is a common means of defense.  We keep ourselves busy! We find other ways to serve! We throw ourselves into our studies! We think so much, so as not to think. 

I have recently felt as if I keep failing at my vocation because of words on paper. It is strange, because my harsh judgement of myself is not of actions, but of my rhetoric around processes for actions not yet practiced. I tell myself, I should know better, while at the same time thinking so as not to think.  The most recent line of inquiry from an academic standpoint has been, "Why Creation?"

This evening, I returned home early from orchestra rehearsal.  As I stepped out of my car, I looked over the roof of my house.  The leaves of the trees around the property have for the most part, now fallen with the coming of winter. As a consequence, the sky becomes more easily visible. After many days of rain and fog, this was a rare, crisp, clear, fall night sky.  I walked through the house and made my way to the back yard.

In my back yard is a pond.  I made my way to the embankment and found my favorite constellation, so bright it could have come to life.  The house lights on the other side of the pond reflected in gold streaks across the deep darkness of the water. Orion began to make his rising above the tree line.  I stepped back within myself, took a deep breath and began to absorb the spectacle. 

In my silence, the voices, the scenes, the memories, the pain all began to flood in order to fill the space. Creation despises a vacuum.  In a recent test I was asked to ponder, "Why Creation?" and that became my focus in defense. But than I recalled the words of Prince Hamlet.  As I looked at the glittering darkness above me; as I gazed at the "vast expanse of interstellar space" I thought "what am I?" What a piece of work is man? Why did the God who created all this, create me?  Why does the God, who is as we say, "King of the Universe" even bother with me? For some reason, I was created, and God does bother with me. So my focus became, "now what?"

The Daily Office is a beautiful practice of prayer that I have the blessed opportunity to practice every day.  Whenever I am officiant I make use of the following opening sentence based on Amos 5:8

Seek him that made the Pleiades and Orion, 

that turneth deep darkness into morning,

and darkeneth the day into night;

that calleth for the waters of the sea,

and poureth them out upon the face of the earth:

The Lord is his Name.

As I gazed upon the Pleiades and Orion, which so gloriously lit up the skies above me, I rolled over these words, "Seek him that made the Pleiades and Orion," and I began to seek him, with deep earnest. I began to spin and lift my eyes higher and higher. When I stopped to ponder this great mystery, a shooting star streaked across the expanse of the heavens and all I could laugh and smile from the warmth that filled my heart. In that moment, I knew. 

I seek, I struggle, I comprehend, and I wallow in confusion.  I study, I learn, I wrestle, and I confess. I hunger, I thirst, I sing, and I weep. 

In the end, it amounts to nothing, except that for it all, I am a witness to the glory of God.

I am a witness to the glory of God.

I may not be able to fully articulate the historical and infinite theological arguments which are made in a sorry attempt to explain God, creation, and our place in the mess of things.  But I have felt the love of God, and seen the splendor of his creation.  I am a witness to the glory of God.

My vocation, and all of our vocation, is to share that witness, to seek him who made the Pleiades and Orion, and to bring the light of his glory to the world. He glories in his creation, he glories in me, he glories in you.

Do not be troubled and do not be discouraged. 

Seek him that made the Pleiades and Orion . . . the Lord is his Name.