Now That I Have Your Attention

On my first visit to the Spanish cathedral town of Santiago de Compostela, I was woefully unprepared for the art.  The Spanish love blood and gore and torture.  The death of a saint is depicted with all the pain and suffering imaginable.  God and death are the leitmotif of most Spanish art.  This, while still shocking at times, this I was prepared for.    

              In Santiago de Compostela, all the blood gore and torture are evident in the depictions of St. James, the namesake of the city, who is usually seen trampling Moors with his horse and ready to strike with his mighty sword.  The violence is not subtle. Having seen many other examples like this, I was not shocked.

              For the better part of a week going from church to church and museum to museum, you would have thought that the altar-crypt of the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela would not have shocked me, but I was dumbfounded.  I mean, there is gold, and then there is gold!  While statues of angelic attendants are not unusual, to have so many flying golden monster baby angels, well that threw me a bit.  It through me a lot.

              Just take a moment and look around.  There’s a little gold on this trim; the pipes are nice.  We have a green banner coinciding with the liturgical season.  And then, well not so much.  Certainly, no flying golden monster baby angels.  Not even one, let alone a whole band of them. 

              The altar-crypt in Santiago is a riot of color and shape and statuary; it is as if the hidden celestial gears of the universe were there for all to see, like a curtain of the heavens was pulled back and you glimpse the inner workings of the eternal.  All of this was to enshrine and surround the tomb of St. James.  According to legend, James called out to a group of monks to come find his bones, 1000 years after he died, and reinter him in this place.  For this act of devotion, he would bless the people of Spain and free them the grip of the Muslims, the dreaded Moors.  And he was good to his word.

              I sat in the back of the cathedral and tried to take this all in.  Tried to imagine why am I here, what is a self-respecting Protestant doing in a place like this?  Isn’t such lore and legend and violence the whole reason for being a protestor?  And yet, there was something pulling at me.  A pilgrim is supposed to go inside the crypt, pray to St. James, ask for a blessing, and head out.  A part of me wanted to do that.  But could I do such a thing?  Do I believe such a path of devotion is true and right?  Can I really pray to bones?

              Then I heard a voice in me.  A very clear strong voice begs a question, “do you want to be blessed?  Do you want to be blessed or not?”  The clarity pulled me to my feet, and I found myself walking straight into the cluster of golden flying monster baby angels.  Beginning the decent into the crypt so to pray to the bones, I didn’t see how low the stone mantle was and cracked my forehead. Literally cracked because I saw the blood on my hands.  And then in a moment of stupor, frustration, confusion, I yelled at the ceiling.  “Hey, I got it already.  Not here [pointing at my head], here [pointing at my heart].”  You don’t have to figure it all out to be blessed.

              Whenever I consider the challenge of growing in spirit or recovering the health of the soul and the body, I go to that moment in Santiago.  I do because in many ways it is the key, the dynamic, the lived structure of change.  To grow in faith, to be born anew, to find freedom you must turn everything upside down, you must upend the apple carts of what you believe.  You must be willing to consider what you thought was right may just be wrong.

              In Spain, I needed to turn over what I believed about blessings, the living and the dead, the way art and devotion are not a rational path, but a profound contradiction.  Did I want to be blessed even if it meant entering a crypt holding a legend surrounded by golden statues and crazy angels all the while St. James rides his horse to defeat the Moors? Yes.   

              Look around the sanctuary again.  To say yes to that question, I had to turn this sensibility, this way of looking at the sacred, this aesthetic of devotion, I had to turn it all upside down.  Certainties, things I trust, definitions I hold dear: they needed to be turned upside down. To be born anew, you must die to live.

              Last week I mentioned how much I enjoy getting to preach on the nativity when it’s not Christmas.  I do because there is so much in these stories that doesn’t quite fit our advent joy and nice presents wrapped with a bow.  They are a little messy. For instance, the paradoxical contradiction of Jesus’ birth, that up would come down, the mighty brought low, the powers that be would be robbed and left powerless, these themes border on anarchy and chaos and thus have no place in a Christmas message.  Inviting wayward in-laws, outcasts, and ancient grudges to dine in your home is enough chaos thank you.  Christmas doesn’t need more crazy.

              But there is so much crazy in our stories today.  Kings don’t bring presents to peasants; and the birth of a baby in Bethlehem doesn’t fill the powerful with fear.  That is upside down.  That the angels of heaven would descend as a multitude, a host, and give the good news of great joy to the people most unlikely to be believed, is crazy talk.  Tell notorious liars an outlandish tale is not a good communication plan, not good marketing.  It is upside down.

Jesus shouldn’t have been born in a barn on the outskirts of town; the prince of peace should have been born in a palace and the angelic pronouncement should have come to the high priest and his entourage, not stinky shepherds out in the cold.

              Up is down, certainty is chaos, heaven and earth are all mixed up and confused.  Again, this is not a good Christmas lesson.  How many of us have gone to a Christmas gathering and being warned to behave, to be on your best behavior, no crazy?  Well, maybe that is not your experience.  It is mine.  Don’t make any waves; don’t get people upset. 

Here is the thing: the birth stories of Jesus are supposed to be upsetting, not comforting.  We lose this element in our nice art, our porcelain creche all in ivory.  The closest we get to the chaos in this story is the annual children’s pageant.  Only here do we come close to the anarchy of the birth.  The blessing of God was coming for all people, peace on earth, a savior.  Hurting people are going to be rescued.  This is the good news, only the good news comes in ways that are upside down.  Hence, Jesus will teach again and again, to save your life you must lose it.  Turn it upside down. Not modify; not adjust.  Lose.

In 2008 we had a wonderful opportunity while we were living in Mzuzu, Malawi, to bring a moment of radical, life changing hope to the poorest of the poor.  Just outside the city in unhabitable land where many people live in hovels and mud huts, this place is called the dambo. In the dambo there is no running water, no electricity, no bathrooms, no concrete floors.  All the hovels have dirt floors.  Most of the people living in the dambo are orphans being raised by grandmothers.  It is not uncommon to see a grandmother with five to ten children sleeping on mats on the ground, cooking over an open fire, and fetching water from a fetid creek nearby. 

On a few occasions during our summer in Mzuzu we ventured into the dambo to deliver iron sheets for roofs, beds, food, and in some instances the best gift, simply being present.  For the people of the dambo the visit of a Mzungu was good news, but if you bring iron sheets to keep the rain out of their hut, this was good news of a great joy, even better news. 

After making one such a delivery and being amidst waves of joy, we decided to walk to the other side rather than drive out.  Along the way, my daughters knocked at the home of a teenage girl who sang in a choir with them.  They were all together last night and told the young girl that they were coming to her neighborhood.  The grandmother who greeted them at the door apologized that her granddaughter could not come out.  During the night she got sick, and she died.

At first this just too much to take in.  We asked a friend to make sure we were hearing the grandmother correctly.  After a brief exchange our friend Sam told us, yes, she got sick, and she died.  Then he added, yes, it's sad.

Although there are a lot of moments in Malawi when I felt the world was upside down, that one, that one sticks with me.  How could this be; how could such a tragedy, a teenage girl simply dies in the night because she got sick, where the day before she was singing with my daughters in a choir?  Car accident?  Okay.  But just got sick?  A healthy young woman.  And such was a sad thing.  Not an end the world, fall apart, call for an investigation, how could this be moment.  Just sad.

It's one thing to see and feel tragedy and realize how lucky you are, how blessed you are, how much you have and be very mindful it is not deserved, it is grace.  This I have felt, you have felt; everyone has those moments where you realize how much life we have, how fortunate we are.  In the dambo, at the home of the young girl who got sick and died and it was sad, this was not such a moment, a moment of gratitude.  This was chaos. 

This was a moment where I had to wonder, what if I have it all wrong?  What if my definitions of life and love and caring and compassion, what if what I see as up must come down?  What if all my definitions are just not good enough?  Because there was nothing in me that could fathom, "yes, it's sad."

The dambo is not a good place for Christmas sermons.  Yet, the dambo is, in essence, where the angels went to tell the good news.  The magi wandering the desert, upsetting the order of Jerusalem, follow a star and are filled with joy in a place where up was down and the powerful are brought low.  The prince of peace born a peasant on the outskirts of the outskirts of town, to an unmarried woman and an old man.  This is not a logical or sensible path.  But this is good news to those who are truly hurting, for those living in places like the dambo, where things are sad, that God is here is good news.  The world may for once turn right side up.

For us, though, these stories need to turn our world upside down; they need to challenge what we understand.  Are we willing to die so to live?  When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. But what if you got a lot?  Are we able to let the world turn upside down? Do our answers of life work in the dambo or do they need to be laid aside?  Is our good news good enough?  Amen.