Reflections on Columbus Day inspired by a reading of Joshua 3:7-17
Jeanyne's Blog
The lectionary text for October 2 is from Exodus, and it's the ten commandments. How do we orient ourselves to these ancient rules in 21st-century life? Once upon a time, no one swore in front of women or children; now many women swear as casually as they say "good morning." And is it taking the Lord's name in vain to write OMG on a Facebook page? Especially when LOL is in the same sentence? Some of the commandments were no-brainers then and they are no-brainers now. Don't lie, don't steal, don't kill.
Holy Saturday is a weird, in-between time, usually neglected in the Protestant tradition. But it, like Good Friday, is integral to Easter. In the early church, it was the day that Jesus “descended into hell” to bring out the souls of the righteous. But Holy Saturday is for us the time of waiting, of uncertainty, of anxiety. One door has closed, the other has not yet opened. What is this strange hallway between them? Is it really, as noted humorously in an earlier reflection, hell? It sure can feel like it. But psychologists and anthropologists have another name for it.
Everything within us strains for the end of suffering, the restoration of wholeness and health, the liberation from hardship and injustice, but this one, long day—Good Friday—we are asked to resist the rush to closure. We’re invited to identify with Jesus’ suffering—not so that we can be martyrs—but so that we can take that next crucial step with him, the step where we acknowledge our fear but nevertheless choose to put our trust in God. That is the essential bridge between Good Friday and Easter.
At some point Jesus had to make a choice: continue on his present, increasingly dangerous course, or cut and run. The gospel accounts put that ultimate decision in the Garden of Gethsemane. There he confronted his impending death, and in a wrenchingly human moment, confessed: ”O Lord, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”
Years ago, after one of those awful high school shootings, I heard that the principal called his colleagues in Columbine, asking for advice. What’s the best way to get through something like this? he asked. Only one way, he was told: time. In other words, you just have to go through it. There are no special techniques to help students and teachers rush through recovery. There’s no way to hurry the process. It’s what we all know, but wish weren’t so: there is no way past hard times except through them.
Yesterday I wrote about what sinks to the bottom of lakes, so today it seems only fair to write about what gets dredged up. I grew up in a house on a hill, and at the bottom of the hill was a small lake. When we first moved there, the lake was shallow and muddy, and the land around it was not quite a swamp, but not quite ready for grass, either. So one day the earth-moving truck came, and the big bucket with its iron teeth dredged the lake bottom down about ten feet and brought all that mud to the surface.
Fishing, as you might imagine in a state with thousands of lakes, is a big deal in Minnesota. The season opener—on Mother’s Day!—is practically a holiday. Certainly ministers are expected to understand that some of their parishioners will be worshipping on lakes rather than in pews that day. . . and maybe on other Sundays throughout the summer, too. And the really die-hard fisher folk don’t let a little ice and snow stop them. Whole communities spring up on lakes in the winter. When the ice gets thick enough, the trucks pull fishing houses onto the lake.
When my grandfather died, we discovered what many of you have perhaps found when a loved one dies. He had marked the passages in his Bible that he wanted read at his funeral. At the top of his list was the 23rd Psalm.
“Put your question before God,” she told me. “Ask. Trust that you will get an answer. And God will answer you.” So I asked—a variation of “why me?”—the most basic of queries put before God. And I waited. A few weeks later, I had a dream about a synagogue I had visited the previous year. This synagogue, in St. Paul, had an exhibit of artifacts from the Holocaust. In one glass case I had seen a scroll, about three feet tall, with silver spindles, and the charred remains of a Torah that had been held between them. The placard told a simple but terrifying story.
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