How the Christology of Broadway Saved Me

A story has power. A story that resonates with your soul sings in concert with your heart creating space for growth; and a story well told reverberates through time.  I often find truth not only in the library that is scripture; but in the expressions of God evidenced by those artists who creations extol the knowledge and wisdom of God.  I am grateful for artists.  I am grateful for those souls who bare themselves before the burning and pure presence of God.  They are akin to David—dancing naked before the holy of holies.  They, without regard for convention, bring the pure Imago Dei into view.  Art saves me time and time again.  Victor Hugo was this artist when writting his essays which formed into the narratives we now know as Les Misérables.  He expressed God’s truth through his creative word crafting.  Indeed, he stated as much noting that “Wherever men go in ignorance or despair, wherever women sell themselves for bread, wherever children lack a book to learn from or a warm hearth, Les Misérablesknocks at the door and says: ‘open up, I am here for you.’” Hugo created this work to stand in opposition to a narrative prevalent in his and our time today.  He crafts and fashions an image of the Christ that is often lost in practice.  It is an image of Christ from which we, like the Father, turn our heads unable to look on at such suffering.  Yet, in Hugo’s work, when we meet Gavroche, Jean Valjean, Cosette, Fantine, or Éponine, one meets Christ.  The Christ that makes sense to me--the Christ who is not the hero of our fashioning.  

The Christ of our making is one that builds faith not tempered by sorrow, grief, loss, pain, and suffering. It is a faith unwittingly built on a sandy foundation; one on which I have seen many houses come to collapse. For in this false gospel that is preached, there is no room for a broken savior.  Often this foundation is one laid on the back of a person or even a personality.  Once the inevitable occurs, they walk away from any expression of faith, contemptable to any truth.  They are lost.  This experience lived out in those I love have brought me to a point of questioning. They, like I, can no longer tolerate the pretense required to maintain the thin veil of faith.  It is a faith that lacks the deeper substance.  It is here, in this place of doubt, where Hugo introduced me to the true Christ.  One that does not step in and save the day right at the moment we want; but one that lets Éponine die without knowing the love she sought; one that lets Fantine slip into the quiet of death having not seen her daughter again; and one that watches Gavroche die in the streets of Paris in his childhood fighting for dignity.  It confounds those who chant the mantra of the Christ they imagine; however, to those who know suffering, it resonates deeply.  To the clients that walk into my office, they have understanding. Understanding not taught upon a pulpit; but one taught through their own measure of horror.  It is in that place where one can hardly be looked upon that they gain something deeper than truth—they find the Truth in the suffering Christ.  

Hugo lead me back to Isaiah’s description of Christ— “a man of sorrows; a man acquainted with grief.”  Here is suffering.  Here is Christ.  On this Christ, one can build a faith that can stand the storm coming.  It weathers the loss that has yet to be experienced and the pain having yet born out in our lives.  It is a gospel not lacking hope.  It is a a gospel that stretches hope beyond the confines of this lived experience.  It is the hope that lasts when one stretches out to take hold of that which cannot be grasped this side of eternity.  In the musical derivative of Hugo’s work, a lyric that ends the narrative is sung by those characters who die in the midst of their suffering.  

do you hear the people sing?
lost in the valley of the night
it is the music of a people who are climbing to the light
for the wretched of the earth
there is a flame that never dies
even the darkest nights will end and the sun will rise

they will live again in freedom in the garden of the lord
they will walk behind the bloodshed
they will put away the sword
the chain will be broken and all men will have their reward!

will you join in our crusade?
who will be strong and stand with me?
somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?
do you hear the people sing?
say, do you hear the distant drums?
it is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes!

I would invite you into this deeper truth; and for you to dive into this knowledge of a savior who suffers still.  I give you a caveat before leaping into this hope.  You will suffer; and you will let go of the cheap hope without the sureness of your foot underneath; but there, in the wavering, you will see the light that does not dim even as your eyes close at the last!

~The Christ I Know

I Know thee, Christ. 

Flesh and spirit part 

As sinew from bone;

It’s piercing marked with iron thorn.

Agony of cleaving and it’s release;

It’s pain felt and heard and known.

How might I know thee but in great affliction and delight? 

One kneads the other—working its yeast to bloom. 

And I, in love and fear, am scorned and lost in it’s merit. 

Redemption without salvation; no rescue from its sting. 

Experience yields to understanding. 

Wisdom forms in polarities. 

One without it’s other is lost:

Strangely entangled are these.

Proclaim the Christ who hangs

—bleeding, pierced and abandoned! 

We now are known and seen by

Brother sufferer; lonely wayfarer. 

I know thee, Christ.

Scaredy Cat

I confess. I most often cover my ears and look away when I’m watching a scary movie.  I learned my lesson from watching the movie “It” which haunted my nightmares for years.  Pennywise the clown has lurked in my mind and has crept into my dreams even now that I am thirty-two years old.   It’s a silly thing.  Reflecting now, I probably would undo having seen the film.  Some experiences are better to avoid; especially given the effects which follow them; however, fear can also keep us from the wonderful experiences of life.  We cannot avoid all chances.  

Fear is a powerful thing.  I would say that it singularly is the most effectually prevalent force in all of humanity save God’s enacting grace and love.  The shadow of fear stretches over almost every encounter in some measure or form—from avoiding a simple conflict to completely socially isolating.  Its prevalence can be seen in minor insecurities to extreme avoidances.  I see it everyday in my clients; I see it everyday in my friendships; I see it everyday in my family; I see it at my church, the internet, and everywhere.  Fear is celebrated by some, denied byothers, and still embraced by many.  It often prevents us from achieving our calling or drives us away from each other. It is a tyrant that rules with an iron fist.  Yet, fear is the very thing that believers are called to counter.  It is our great enemy.  Scripture address fear more often than it does almost any other foe.  The phrase “fear not” or some derivative shows up almost enumerable times (I’ll leave it to the biblical linguists out there to count).  

How do we beat it you ask? Love.  Or at least that is the Sunday school answer—  “Perfect love drives out fear.”  But like you all; I don’t know how to love perfectly.  As a one liner—it’s great but in practice I am dumbfounded on the how. Love is the mutual connecting we enact. Perfect love must be the balanced connection in relationship.  Yet, perfect love comes with a caveat.  We must give up our natural inclination to reactively pull away—to attempt to guarantee our safety.  But perfect love comes with no guarantee.  To love perfectly, we must overcome this fearful reaction. In other words, we must give up our need to control.  Control, or at least our attempt at it, is how I see fear being played out.  The problem is that control is something that we never truly have; and it most definitely is not a part of love.  Control cannot be love.  It drives people apart.  Control hardens our hearts.  Control is a lie.  It’s a lie we tell ourselves to convince ourselves that we have nothing to fear.  So, like me watching a scary movie we cut off our perception in denial thinking that we are safe.  It is a lie.  C.S. Lewis said it best saying

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  To love is to be vulnerable.” (Lewis,The Four Loves).

C.S. Lewis nails it.  Fear drives us not to connection but isolation; while love drives us towards connecting byencouraging vulnerability, pushing us towards a more perfect love.  God did this in becoming us—the ultimate vulnerability, the ultimate perfect love.  This love drives fear from shadowing our hearts; it drives into loving connection.  I must confess; I’m not very good at this.  I still am a scaredy cat.  I still cover my ears and close my eyes when fear presents itself.  But, I do know perfect love; and by this love I will seek to drive out my fears to emulate the perfect love of Christ.  I strive for this knowing that it is a work characterized by fear and trembling.            

Orphaned

My friend gave me a rather silly nickname of “Peter Cotton Nips.”  The aforementioned portion of this affectionate title comes from a pair of bedroom slippers that I wear that my friend calls my “bunnies” due to the strangely placed lining on the exterior heel that serves no purpose but to aesthetically appear as a rabbits tail.  Strange, I know.  The latter comes from an experience I had related to my friend recently.

 

I finally gave in to my wife’s begging and surprised her with a kitten this past summer for our anniversary.  He had been abandoned and left in the garage of my coworker at only two or three weeks old.  He was so small and was not weaned from his mother—an orphan with neither his natural mother nor an adoptive human one.  I took him.  I had him to myself for almost a week prior to giving him to Charley as she was out of town for her work.  I would hold him while in bed at night, and he would “nurse” on my cotton tees as though it would serve as a surrogate both for those parts I do not have and a mother he did not.  Well, I became “Peter Cotton Nips” and a cat owner to boot. 

 I have grown affectionate with Scout, and as a “father” to this growing kitten.  He still “nurses” on both Charley’s and my shirts before he goes to sleep.  I would presume this is more for comfort and a sense of security than any real nourishment, as cotton does not usually produce cat’s milk.  Why would he continue with no actual benefit?  My guess is that he is looking for the connection he would have gotten if he had not been abandoned from a healthy and whole feline family.  It does not surprise me.  I see this in my counseling practice all the time.  Children and adults alike are looking for this security, identity, and love, which has been denied to them left in the metaphorical garage of broken families, friendships, or a depraved society.  Alone and naked, they try suckling at the false hopes of all sorts of empty roads that lead nowhere.  Try as they might; they never get milk from cotton tees.  Yet, every day they try to distract from the reality of an empty garage. 

I could let the metaphor end drawing the line dividing those who are in faithful practice and those who are not; however, the truth is I am an orphan.  I have left the comfort of my family and found myself abandoned in a world that seems full of cotton tees and nothing of substantial nurturance.  The discrepancy I have with many of my clients is that, in my orphanhood, I have found an adoptive home.  My adoptive Father is one who can offer more than my t-shirt does to Scout.  He calls me into relationship that roots itself deeper than I could perceive on my own and gives me identify, connection, and love more fully into my personhood.  I am remade to fit the family line and the family name.  In this, I call Scout my brother—in that we share a remaking of our family; and God whispers to me as Charley and I do to Scout that “We make you whole; we are your real family.”        

*Photo Credit: to Rhonda C. Bohart Photography

To Live is Christ...

I see pain daily. Suffering is the defining theme of the woven narratives that I sit and encounter.  Children that have been raped, neglected, and abused; women who have been taught that they have no value or worth; men who are stuck in cycles of shame and anger—this is the brokenness that I endure throughout each day.  I had to learn to create some measure of distance from their stories to be able to be the aide that I have trained to be for them; however, the truth is often I suffer with them.  Those stories often haunt my waking day—images of the gruesome discovery of a suicide victim are there; women who have been violated; children orphaned both emotionally and physically.  I suffer.I am a man who loves fun and humor; however, this calling is not one for the faint hearted.  It calls me to a measure of shared sorrow.  It challenges me into those questions that have few satisfactory answers.  Why? How could God allow this to happen?  How can God be love when He seems indifferent to all this pain?  The truth is simple.  My job brings me closer to the One who is most “acquainted with grief, a man of sorrows.”  Somehow in our suffering we are united with Christ in His.  Paul seems to hit this point most clearly stating that “we rejoice in our sufferings” because in them we find the honing of our nature to be more in the likeness of Christ [my paraphrase].  Our suffering produces His character in us.  I do not mean to espouse the falseness in seeking martyrdom but rather not to shy from our call to suffer and cry out in the Spirit for God’s saving intervention. 

This is what distinguishes our suffering from those without the hope of Christ.  We have the faithful One to cry out to for help.  The Psalms epitomize this distinction.  They invite us into this back and forth of despair and hopefulness.  It gives voice to our struggle through our state of the Kingdom—“already but not yet.”   We cry out that “darkness is my only companion” and then turn to exclaim “I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, for ever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.”

Our faith also gives us a renewed perspective.  We see beyond the thin veil of our lives.  We see into our future resurrection—our rebirth.  Paul writes that we are “co-heirs with Christ; provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”  Suffering leads us to this hope in our glorification.  We strive against death but yearn for its release from the burden of a life that surrounds us with suffering.  I love Andrew Peterson’s exposition of this very tension.  He writes

            How long until this curtain is lifted?

How long is this the song that we sing?

How long until the reckoning?

You are holiness and grace

You are fury and rest

You are anger and love

You curse and you bless

You are mighty and weak

You are silence and song

You are plain as the day,

But you have hidden your face--

For how long? How long?

And I am standing in the stillness of the reckoning

The storm is past and rest is beckoning

Mighty God, how I fear you

How I long to be near you, O Lord

How long until the burden is lifted?

How long is this the song that we sing?

How long until the reckoning?

And I know that I don't know what I'm asking

But I long to look you full in the face

I am ready for the reckoning

So we yearn in our suffering.  We hope in our suffering.  And I will count my suffering as life in Christ sharing his sufferings.    

Forgetfulness

My grandfather does not remember me. It is a hard thing to reflect on the moments I have shared with him and realize that while I hold onto those experiences he cannot because of his dementia. To visit is difficult because much of what made my grandfather my grandfather is through our shared experiences. It is how I have known him. He looks at me now with a bit of vacancy. As a believer, I hold to the reality that his spirit remains and is more vibrant and enduring than his failing cognizance. However, it feels like a loss. Memories are important. Memories enable our learning. It facilitates our ability to grow as individuals and, ultimately, it is the sinews of our makeup. Our experiences form our identity and memory serves as a foundation on which we continue to build as we continually experience and grow.

Memory is not untainted. My grandfather’s experience reaffirms this reality. I cannot remember except through my own framework, and my framework has its own tint. In my relationship with my wife, this tint is seen most vividly as I clearly omit those offenses I have inflicted on her so easily and can enumerate even the most trivial offense she has committed against me. My memory fails. Instead of serving the purposes of God in my marriage, it serves to sew discord. As a therapist, I see the burden of memory in those that have experienced trauma. The long fingers of memory stretch from the past and paint our relationships with others, our identity, our ability to love, our health, and all of our being—that which we are. Memories can serve the dark as well as the light. Without self-discipline and forgiveness, we become slaves to our memories. We do not allow for mistakes to be made, and we perpetuate the sins committed against us into sins that we commit on another. The abused become abusers. The victim of violence becomes the perpetrator of it. The offended becomes the offender. Memories become the catalyst for a cycle that has no end.

Today is September 11, 2011. Ten years from the day violence ended many American lives. The call heard on every television channel, radio station, online article, commercial, tribute, and memorial is that “we will never forget.” We rush to immortalize this atrocity. I wonder if this is not our fatal mistake. I wonder if this memory will become the trauma that reshapes us for evil because we see through our tint of hurt and hate. I hope that we do not allow this tainted memory to become our identity. God has a divine ability to forget our sins. He says to us that he will no longer choose to remember those great acts of violence we commit toward him and towards our neighbors. The memories of our sin are the barrier that keeps us from communion with God and others. God’s answer to this barrier is to simply forget them. It is His choice to lay aside this defining evil in us and forget. As a believer trying to emulate Christ, I seek to forgive, but I also seek to forget. I can acknowledge the pain and trauma without perpetuating it. I do not want to be redefined by this evil. So I seek out this divine gift of forgetfulness—this Divine dementia—and trust to the perfect memory of God’s love.

Denial

I’ve taken on the habit of getting home and turning on the tube (or idiot box as my Dad refers to it) after work these days. Between getting home after dark all winter, being snowed in, and just pure emotional exhaustion from work, it’s all I want to do. The results are a jealous (for time) wife, an extra 15 lbs, and a general disengagement from life. I guess its how I turn it all off, the pain I confront daily. I will admit that it’s a poor coping skill, but I guess it feels better than the alternative—carrying it with me. Nevertheless, I have decided that this, my security blanket of isolation, must be carried to the altar; and Lent has offered me this opportunity.

Much like most seasons of the church calendar, I was not acquainted with Lent before being turned on to the liturgical helps of our faith. It seems a practice that wades against the tides of the outside world. Lent truly stands in opposition to what the world espouses, nature begins to quietly reveal, and our self-gratifying selves might crave. As winter begins to recede and spring encroaches on us, we clothe the altar in black and fast. Alleluia is hidden in the somberness of the reality of our brokenness and sin. We enter into a season of reflection and confession. We are not worthy of our salvation is the only conclusion we must come to in our hearts. This is the point. The world rejoices in the hope of spring, yet we pause to remember and sit in the scarlet squalor that was our pride.

It should not be a false humility nor a self-abasing chastisement, but rather a denial of the common practice of ignoring the reality of our fallen state. “The World goes not well” is this sobering reality. So we fast. We pray. We make confession. We deny ourselves our comforting disengagements to face the world, though the tide ebbs against us. We reacquaint ourselves with the purposes of God: truth, grace, and repentance.

So, I come home and face the brokenness. I fill my time without the anesthetic. Its dull sting reminds me to petition God again for salvation for my family, my friends, my clients, the world, and myself. Yet, I do so not in despair, but rather in light of Easter’s nearing. So let me simply confess that “the world goes not well, BUT the kingdom comes."

Freedom in the Form

I remember going to First Love Ministries for the first time. I was really uncomfortable. The charismatic tone of the worship was off putting for the likes of me—a traditional Southern Baptist. I did find something there that I had not really had before; a feeling of being wanted and accepted. A man named Charlie quite literally reached out to me and grabbed my arm. He told me that he loved me. I wept hard that night.

So I went back and regained my faith in that little house tucked away in Perry, Ga. Yet, the truth is that it was a forced fit. I loved the people. I met God weekly in the faces of that community; however, worship was strained for me. I wanted to force God to show himself to me as I watched those around me experience the fullness of the Spirit. I was a dry well. It’s not that I didn’t believe that Holy Spirit was moving in their life; on the contrary, I could see them living it out in their love for people. I am just a cynic. If it was going to happen to me it was going to have to be real. So dry.

Throughout this seminary experience Charley and I stuck with the familiar. We attended a wonderful little Baptist church in town. However, when we felt the need to move on from that community we decided to stop and rethink our understanding of church. I have always felt drawn to form. I was the goof who loved the rituals of my fraternity more than the parties. In my faith, this also holds true. My Baptist background gave me a love for the Word, but left me wanting for worship; my time at First Love gave me worship, but left me wanting for direction; and my time in seminary humbled my dogma, but left me wanting for a practical faith.

For me, a lot happens in my head. I am drawn to compelling exegesis, worship that speaks to my experience, and the bigger picture of my faith—the community of believers, past and present. I love feeling the connection with my faith in the tangibles too. After a few months sabbatical from church, Charley and I visited higher liturgical confessions. Through prayer, trial visits, meetings with trusted advisors, and ultimately, our comfort, we settled in at St. Aiden’s Anglican church. I no longer feel like a dry well. Instead, my prayer life has taken off. I reflect on God throughout my day. I meet God in worship with my entirety—the physical and spiritual. I feel a level of comfort in approaching God that I have never known before. Don’t get me wrong it’s not an infallible practice, but I have discovered a freedom in this form, this holy work.