Solidarity!

As a follow up to my post from Monday, I’m taking the liberty of paraphrasing some thoughts from Richard Rohr for today. What do the events Christians marked last night and today mean? Here’s some mashed-up Rohr, from his recent book Wondrous Encounters:

On the tenth day of the month, the book of Exodus says, each family was to procure a small year-old lamb. They were to keep it for four days – just enough time for the children to bond with it and for all to see its loveliness – and then “slaughter it during the evening twilight”! Then they were to take the blood and sprinkle it on the doorpost of the houses. That night they were to eat in highly ritualized fashion, recalling their departure from Egypt and their protection from God along the way. Thank God the Jews eventually stopped animal sacrifice, but it was meant to be a psychic shock for all as killing always is. You can see, however, that the human psyche is slowly evolving in history to identify the real problem and what it is that actually has to die.

A cultural anthropologist could explain what is happening here. The sacrificial instinct is the deep recognition that something always has to die for something bigger to be born. We started with human sacrifice (Abraham and Isaac), we moved here to animal, and we gradually get closer to what has to be sacrificed – our own beloved ego – as protected and beloved as a little household lamb! We all will find endless disguises and excuses to avoid letting go of what really needs to die for our own spiritual growth. And it is not other humans (like the firstborn sons of Egypt), or animals, or even “meat on Friday” that God wants or needs. It is always our beloved self that has to be let go of.

Good Friday illustrates the human tendency to kill others, in any multitude of ways, instead of letting our own illusions, pretenses, narcissism, and self-defeating behaviors die. We understand Jesus dying “for us” as a substitution “in place of” but rarely “in solidarity with.” But “in place of” is a heavenly transaction. “In solidarity with” opens an avenue for the transformation of our very soul. Whenever you see an image of the crucified Jesus, know that it is the clear and central message unveiled, the transformative image for the soul. Don’t lessen its meaning by making it merely into a mechanical transaction whereby Jesus pays a “price” to God or the devil. Don’t lessen its meaning by just making it into a transaction that changes things in heaven. The crucifixion of Jesus means everything potentially can change on earth.

God has always and forever loved what God created. It was we who could not love and see his omnipresent goodness. But on the cross the veil between the Holy and unholy is “torn from top to bottom.” (Matthew 27:51) An opening is created that we can walk through. We can “confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and favor.” (Hebrews 4:16) The bleeding heart of Jesus (which Catholics call “the Sacred Heart”) dramatizes that the curtain is open. It seems we needed an image just that shocking, dramatic and compelling to get the point, to truly see ourselves, and trust the Great Love.