[Oe List ...] Jaime for ST Thursday

[wangzhimu2031 at aol.com]

Gethsemani and Golgotha


 
I usually do some mundane chore duringmy thinking time.  From my second floor tenementdwelling that I now occupy 30 days ago after I moved out of the faculty room atShenyang Aerospace University’s Friendship Villa, the chore takes the form ofsweeping the steps and mopping the dirt off three floor landings, at least, twotimes a week.  
 
Twelve steps down the ground levelare basement rooms used by local entrepreneurs to warehouse cartoons of goods.  This week, I decided to tackle the bowels ofmy buildings’ accumulation of dirt and years of stairs’ sweepings, and while Iwas carting out mounds of dirt and trash from the basement floor to the groundlevel landing on to the trash bin outside, a young businessman in leatherjacket came to retrieve a couple of huge boxes with his dolly.
 
He might have noticed that he nolonger needed to gingerly avoid trash on his way down, and in fact, could feelthe cement steps under his shoes without worrying on slipping down from theaccumulated loose dirt.  It was on hissecond trip, after exchanging words with one of the tenants who might havementioned that I was the foreigner who lives on the second floor who has thiscrazy obsession of wanting to keep the place tidy and clean, i.e., scrappingthe unsightly pasted ads on the stair walls and doors as well as leaving pottedplants on the stair’s windows and landings, that we connected.
 
On his way out the young man motionedto me and opened his jacket proudly pulling out from under his shirt a silvercrucifix necklace.  He was not aProtestant because the crucifix was not bare. The icon of the suffering Jesus crowned with thorns made me suspect thathe’s run into a padre or two madres (they always seem to go by pairs)in his wanderings, and had heard not a few catacomb stories when the faithfulwere forced to keep identity a secret.
 
I had mixed feelings.  Raised in the evangelical/revival tradition,I reflexively appreciate those who hold convictions.  Yet, there was more pride than faith in his demeanor,and I would not have been surprised had he attributed whatever success he hadon commerce, not unlike his Korean kindred, on the sunshine attributes of hissovereign, “Thank You, Jesus!”
 
A few days before, I had lunch withformer students (who always insist on going Dutch), one named Kiwi who receivedmy former VA car tag “Kiwi One”, my erlao po  and I once got in honor ofour daughter Andrea conceived in Wellington NZ years back.  The tag handover was delayed a month becauseKiwi broke her waist.  Hospitalized, sherefused the surgery offered and in the process discovered the power of quiet meditation.  Though influenced by Buddhists, she decidedto use the theistic language of the intervening other to describe her“miraculous” healing and the source of her new strength.
 
Being a former theologian challengedfor half a century to shun the theistic metaphor, I was, nevertheless,delighted that she articulated the existential sense of the awe and theawesome, being herself an awed one.  Sheis in good company.  In writing of theevents told them, Luke portrayed a wavering Jesus in his “let this cup runnethnot over me, but thy will, not mine, be done.” Mark had a more plaintive and traditional cry on the cross: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” (My Lord,my Lord, why have thy forsaken me?)
 
Our pictures of the vigil inGethsemani and the crucifixion at Golgotha (aka, the Skull), heavily influencedby Iberia to pacify natives in their use of the sword to further the cause ofthe cross, are the image of a quivering Jesus in deep doubt, on the one hand,and a victim betrayed and forsaken, on the other.  This is not a complete picture.
 
In my own clarity, the image set inthis whole Holy Week scenario begins with a big hoopla of a triumphal entryinto the portal of powers, and then a willful demonstration of the coerciveinefficacy of death in determining the meaning of life.  Put bluntly, Jesus was not a victim as wailedmany times over on the 14 stops to the Stations of the Cross. 
 
Luke was clear about Jesus:
 
“When you see a cloud rising in the west,
yousay at once that it is going to rain,
and soit does.
Andwhen you feel the south wind blowing,
yousay that it is going to be hot,
and soit is.
Youfrauds!  You know how to interpret thelook of the earth and sky.
Whycan’t you interpret the meaning of the times in which you live?
Andwhy can’t you decide for yourselves what is right?”
 
That, perhaps, was thesource of my discomfort with our proud young businessman with the crucifixnecklace.  I do not think he ever got thechance to plumb the depth of the cost of discipleship, as the DietrichBonheoffer once did, and paid with his life for it.  At the core of “faith” is the humandecision.  Jesus decided.  He chose to be crucified.
 
Now, as for me, fromdust I might have come but in dust, I shall refrain.  So please, pass the broom and the mop, and Itrust you will get those plastic wrappers off the street and into the trashbins!  To paraphrase old Mom, “tidinessis next to awesomeness”!


j'aime la vie

yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!

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