Come Closer

Come Closer

(Many of the people told him sharply to keep quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me!” Mark 10:48)

Blindness only happens when the light can’t get in,
and walls are erected to keep the holy from the ailing.
Dust explodes under the feet of the hopeless who hear better
than the seeing
and know better the feeling that the bottom is closer than
the surface walkers know.

Keep the rabble away from the quiet meditations,
keep the introverted crying while pentecostals shout,
liturgy can divide as surely as it unites,
and lifted hands with ingrown words lock hearts
tighter than we think.

“Keep quiet!” “Sing louder!” Stand up, sit down,
hymnal, dance around the pews at least one more time
and we’re sure to see the magician on the stage turn
our ailments to wine. We heard it happened in another
place, saw it posted, and overheard the miracles that
only occur to the initiated who are quiet enough.
Or loud enough. Or love liturgy. Or sing off key.
Or talk in tongues. Or never talk at all.

Fit my expectations and live!

But a daring few. Sorry; desperate. A desperate few disregard
the traditions and smudge the carpet with mud.
A blind loner finds the back bench and does not leave until
someone heard him shouting above the enforced sanctuary
with no talking aloud, where children are proudly herded upstairs,
and spares and strikes are reserved for Sunday evening conversation.

But an aching few whose pain keeps them from shouting; still,
silent and loudly, move past the requirements of the moment.
They sit in the middle, never making it to the altar (for the uninitiated,
that is the place at the front of the church, where people get saved for
certain.) They sit in the middle while masses swarm the altar
and yell in so many languages even the angels need interpretation.

This poor soul, so quiet and blind, is berated by one returning to his seat.
“How could you ruin the blessing, destroy the anointing, by sitting here
sullenly in this place?”

But shout or whisper, the desperate listener cries for mercy and hears the quiet
rebuke that says, “Come closer.” And, liturgy or adlib, the desperate wipe away
the habits of the faithful and

Usually find healing purer for both their ignorance and candor.

The Doorway of Suffering

“It was certainly our sickness that he carried, and our sufferings that he bore, but we thought him afflicted, struck down by God and tormented.” Isaiah 53:4

Suffering is one of those issues that makes it difficult to accept a loving God. The conundrum goes: If God is all-powerful, but He does not relieve suffering, then He cannot be all-loving. If He is all-loving, but cannot relieve suffering, then He cannot be all-powerful. But what if there is a different way to look at suffering and God’s involvement with pain?

First, it should be observed that we live in a world where suffering is possible. I just finished taking a walk. If I trip over a boulder and sprain my ankle, I will be in pain. God could have created a world without gravity, or boulders, or pain receptors. And, next universe, if you want to create one, give that some thought. But this is the universe in which we dwell.

My sprained ankle will heal, and the immediate pain tells me something is wrong and to tend to it. But what about meaningless pain? What about suffering that appears to have no purpose?

That, I believe, is the real question when we deal with suffering and God. For over ten years I have endured a daily headache that averages a pain level of six or seven out of 10. After numerous doctor’s appointments, tests and medications, I was diagnosed with a rare malady called New Daily Persistent Headache. You wake up one day with a headache that never goes away. Experts have little idea what causes it and it is extremely rare. So, I have wrestled with God over this “meaningless” pain.

Not only does it appear meaningless, it also has stripped significance and purpose from my life. I recently retired from active ministry nearly 10 years before I had planned. I simply could not continue conducting the duties of a pastor, manage the pain, and, well, remain somewhat sane.

What do we do when our suffering has no answer? How do we deal with afflictions that seem to have no purpose? I can reason that my suffering is still the result of a world where suffering is possible. My parents’ DNA combined in such a way to make me susceptible to this particular illness. I am not the only one to have a body that doesn’t work at its optimal level.

What if God, instead of relieving our pain, actually enters into it personally with us? How is this possible? The prophet Isaiah hints at it when, envisioning Jesus’ suffering, he says that He carried our sicknesses and bore our sufferings. Here we have a God who, no matter how else He deals with suffering, is not absent in it.

He does not come to us as if on a mission trip, visits our poor country of pain, holds a Vacation Bible School, bandages our scrapes, and then goes back home. He is not even a missionary from a privileged country going to live among the poor in another land. No, He becomes the poor, He carries the suffering of this world in His own being.

This is portrayed for us in the cross. Jesus was not some stoic that marched resolutely toward his destiny without thought or emotion. The night before his crucifixion he prayed three times that the cruelty of the cross would be taken from him. His distaste for the bitter cup caused him to sweat “drops of blood”. His agony began before the first whip sliced his back, the thorns pierced his head, the beam scraped across his open wounds or the first nail was driven into his hands and feet.

The desire to withdraw from taking our pain was so intense he invited his three closest friends to be with him in those final hours. “Please, stay with me, guys. Stay here. Stay awake. Pray for me.” Today he might have left them behind in the living room while he went to wrestle alone in the den. Solitary there, pleading with Father God, he asked that the awful moment could be taken away. And yet, because of the love between Jesus and the Father, he acquiesced, saying, “But, your will be done.” And, because of His love for all who suffer, he said, “Your will be done.”

His sorrow must have only increased when he went back to the living room to see his three friends snoring away on the couch and recliner. Three times he asked them, he needed them, he wanted the companionship of those who would simply wait with him in his darkest hour; and they took a nap.

Over the next twenty-four hours Jesus would suffer excruciating pain, emotional abandonment and a true spiritual suffering so intense that he would quote the Psalms, “My God, My God, why have you left me all alone?” Though the Father never left him, the intensity of suffering caused him to experience the same black void that pain creates for every human.

I do not understand all of this mystery, believe me. And, it needs to be said that “suffering” and “sin” are not meant to be equated. People suffer for a myriad of reasons, and one should never assume it is the result of some lack of faith, wrongdoing, or curse.

But I do know that Jesus is in this suffering with me. He has not alleviated it. Being a Jesus-follower has not lowered my pain level. But it has heightened my empathy level. When Jesus took the suffering of the world on himself, that became the entryway into every individual’s pain. So, what if my pain is meant to be an entry into other people’s pain?

Notice that the Scripture says he took our suffering upon himself. If I only find solace for myself in this truth, then I think I am missing the entire point. Jesus did not simply take my pain; he took the world’s pain as his own.

So, as his follower, as part of what is called the “Body of Christ”, my pain calls me to use it as an entryway into the suffering of others. Once Jesus took the suffering of “us”, he eliminated “them”.

To be like him, my suffering should allow me to enter the pain of a refugee family at a foreign country’s border. It should be the door into the suffering of a friend fighting cancer, a homeless woman on the street, a gay high schooler who feels rejected by peers and perhaps by his own family. To be like Jesus means I feel the affliction when three Louisiana Black Churches are burned. I feel the sorrow of those who want to follow Jesus but have been hurt by those who carry his name. To be like Jesus means I run that chance of being misunderstood.

Suffering is hard enough. But, to allow yourself to empathize, to feel the pain of any and all groups, no matter who they are, may cause people to question who you are. It made them question Jesus’ identity, didn’t it? Isaiah says that we though “he was afflicted by God”!

I may not understand suffering. And, I get depressed plenty of times, feeling the hope drain from my being. I yell at God; I tell Him he doesn’t know what he’s doing. But, in the small, quiet corners when my brain is not on fire, I know suffering is a door. It is the very entryway for God’s love to me in Christ, and it is the passageway for my empathy toward others as his follower.

Smudged the Words

Smudged the Words

(You see, everyone will be salted with fire. Mark 9:49)

You cannot argue with the pain, wrestle it into submission,
make it understand the strain it has put on the simple admission
that life was hard before it came along.

It argues with every decision, it pushes you back upon the bed in the morning.
It says the shower will be too cold, shaving takes too long,
and the phone rings far too loud and often.

It buries your memories, mutes your love songs,
imprisons your prayers and incinerates your best intentions.

And then, passing someone groaning louder,
it insists you have no right to complain at all.

It whispers in hidden wavelengths, the way lovers keep
all their conversations to themselves. Invisible, it draws lines
across faces that once played with laughter, walked dogs before
and after a quick lunch with a friend. But jokes evoke silence,
and pets lay their noses on the lap of a human they used to know.

Pain sprinkles every day with edges, every night with dreams
where bridges are burned until morning turns the volume up again.

But pain cannot compete with a daughter’s surprise,
a partner with tears in her eyes,
a friend who sits, and only sits, more of a prayer
than the longest hallelujah or loudest speaking in tongues.
Pain is slain by a son who calls out of the blue,
and shares his dark painting too. And you both sigh
because you know you share the invisible side of a life
that ought to be easy.
Pain is paused when the letter is opened, the salutation
is familiar and the text scribbled so quickly that salty drops
smudged the words. And they stay embedded
in a single corner that pain once occupied as its own.

More Daffodils

More Daffodils

I wish the words could explode off the page in
an effort to explain
the blast furnace of pain
that eats at my ease within each
wavelength of my being.

A friend once asked me, after reading
my poetry,
“But where”, he said, “are the flowers and the birds?”
(and that was before the onset of fire-blades to my brain.)

Hidden deep in the suburbs, my walks are a chore;
living next to the mountains, I still saw less than more,
and the daffodils lasted only until the
next nervous tic in my mindless rearview mirror.

What I’m trying to say, to make plain,
is that these words are the tip of what is submerged
in sad electrical impulses that have lassoed even the
most lofty refrains of cathedral hymns.

Sunshine does me good until I go inside,
beaches make me happy until the door is closed.
It seems I’m predisposed to a setpoint I have not chosen.

And yet, I’m chosen and loved (human and divine).
But it seldom changes the flow of muddy ink that
paints me into these corners. I am pursued, not the
pursuer. There is love nipping at my heels.

But I’m boxed in, cowering and chilled, inside
dreams and visions I do not choose. A best friend
retreating, the better hopes receding behind the
vacancy hollowed by blackness and pain.

I would offer more daffodils if they would buy a longer smile,
more poetry if it would paint it all so clearly that

No one would offer solutions, pray my absolution,
ignore me, abhor me, but would
stand up for me when I said,

“I wish there were more flowers and birds
on my page than there are in my mind.”

Ages Since I Climbed

Ages Since I Climbed

"Six days later Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, and led them up a high mountain, where they were alone. As they looked on, a change came over Jesus." Mark 9:2)

I must confess, it has been ages since I climbed a mountain
of any significance.
I hate to complain, but the rivers and the plains,
along with the curbs and concrete of the suburbs
have left each day that passes grieving and lazy
without a hiking companion.

I wouldn't stay there long, at the apex of the journey,
perhaps long enough to see the eclipse of the sun
by the brighter transformation of the One I have tried
to love so long.

I told you long ago I would wander wherever You led.
I've been through the dark valley, stuttered on the desert echoes,
watched wheat ebb and flow, canola grow like mustard waves.
I've jumped when they said jump, and fallen over dead when
the scene demanded it. I've frozen my toes in sliding snow
wearing only my Sunday shoes. I've made friends whose souls
were mated to mine; and lost the same friends over politics,
cigars and beer.

They call it a family, Jesus; a family. Then why, when we disagree,
does this family become silent, change their addresses and keep me at
such long arm's length that I can't hear their words for listening.

But now age and health demand I stand as seldom as I can.
And yet I'd like to climb, find the time to. I'd love to share the path
with you. A night or two; I'd need to take it slowly. A friend or two,
one's I've known since we only knew Jesus was our friend.

Maybe I haven't lost you; maybe I'm afraid you think I'm no longer on the hike,
because I've adopted some travelers, received new brothers,
embraced outcast sisters, and shunned the warlike expressions of
a Jesus who wants to kill just about everybody who doesn't climb
at a space very close to the end of time. Maybe I'm just afraid
you think I'm not climbing the same mountain as you.

It has been ages, Jesus, since I've climbed a significant peak.
But on sidewalks and asphalt, tiny ekklesia and the emptiest skies,
I still want to follow, to wander, to meander more in Your lonesome ways
than a thoroughfare crammed with cocksure doctrines
and duct taped compassion. Just dig me deep as I travel on,
and catch the tears I weep when I miss the rest of the family.

Crumbs

Crumbs

But she replied, “Yes, Lord, I know, but even the dogs under the table eat what the children leave.” Mark 7:28

It is one of the strangest encounters that Jesus has in the gospels. It is recorded in both Mark and Matthew. Jesus traveled outside of Judea (read “Israel”) and went to the Gentile area of Tyre. Mark tells us that Jesus wanted to be alone, and sought out a house for just that purpose. As always, it was impossible to hide him.

As soon as he arrived a Greek (read “unaccepted Gentile”) woman approached Jesus and bowed before him. Her daughter was being harassed by an evil spirit. There is no greater anguish than a parent whose child is suffering. This woman crosses all social boundaries in search of an answer for her daughter.

Gentiles were “dogs”. And not “puppies”, but scrounging dogs, in the minds of most Jews of the day. Anyone outside of Israel was considered unclean. Nationalism and ethnic pride kept those “dogs” at arm’s length. Being woman and a Gentile, this woman was breaking every rule in the book. But that’s what desperation can do. Desperation will drive you to see your need met, even from outside your comfort zone.

Matthew tells us that she calls Jesus, “Lord, Son of David.” Outside the faith and nation of Israel, she recognizes what many in Israel had not; here was the Messiah, the Lord. And she was unafraid to beg him for his help.

Perhaps, upon hearing that Jesus was in town, she hurried through her duties, asked about where he was staying, and scurried to find him. If only she could find him before him moved on somewhere else. Her mind was a mix of hope, anxiety, expectation and faith. “I’ve heard of Jesus. He has healed many. I think he even healed a Roman’s kid. If for them, then why not for me? But I am a woman, and a Gentile from Tyre. Their prophets have foretold devastation for our region…”

As her thoughts spin, she sees him. Immediately she bows before him with her request. But his answer is like a spear to her heart.

“It’s not right, you know, to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” He told her his message was first for the children of Israel. In the micro-second it takes for a thousand thoughts to echo in our brain, the woman must have shrunk back, wanted to cry, started to blush and perhaps wanted to run. But two things kept her body still: the desperate state of her daughter, and one more, nearly indiscernible thing.

Was that a gleam in his eye when Jesus talked about throwing the food to “dogs”? Surely this compassionate man, who stayed all day, wearing himself out physically and emotionally, to heal all who came to him, surely he wouldn’t really call me a “dog”, would he? Besides, there was that tone of voice. It was like he was saying, “I know what they call you….’dogs’”. She wasn’t sure, but it seemed like he gestured in the direction of Jerusalem as if to say, “that’s what they call you, isn’t it?”

She took courage. She saw more in his eyes and heard more in his tone of voice than the mere piercing words. And she decided that, in some way, he was inviting her forward, not pushing her away. She had heard the words before, with anger and hatred rising at their sound. But when Jesus said it, it was almost like an inside joke. “You know, and I know, there just simply are no ‘dogs’, sister, no matter what others say.”

So, she breathed deep, leaned into the wordplay and ventured one step closer: “Yes, Lord, I know, but even the dogs under that table eat what the children leave.”

Crumbs. That’s all she wanted; crumbs.

She had met Jesus. Before she had only heard about him, and all of it was good. All of it encouraged her to seek him out. But now, face to face, that voice, that invitation to spar, making her an equal, it all convinced her: There is so much grace in this man that even the crumbs are more than I will ever need.

That’s what happens when people truly come face to face with Jesus. The fear is dispelled. The hubris melts. The anger is dispersed. Because, even if all you ever get from Jesus is a little splash from the pool, it is enough. It really is. There is always more where that came from. His grace is both endless and potent.

I don’t think we meditate on the potency of His grace enough. But, for me, that is what this story illustrates. We read it without seeing the look on Jesus’ face nor his tone. But she saw it all. We read what sounds like a rebuff. She heard it as an invitation to engage. We read it as Jesus being stingy. She heard that anything Jesus gives is more than enough.

It isn’t that Jesus measures out a little here and a little there. No, He is lavish. But, from our viewpoint, we must stop looking for the big events. Along with this dear woman, we can be satisfied with “crumbs”, because the crumbs from Jesus’ hand are more powerful than the greatest abilities the earth can provide. The smallest piece of bread that falls from his hand is both more grace than I even need, and the promise that all he ever gives is every-increasing grace.

So Jesus tells her, “If you can answer like that, you can go home! The evil spirit has left your daughter.” Arriving home, she found her child lying quietly in her bed, perfectly at peace.

None HIgher

None Higher

(“’It’s what comes out of a person that contaminates someone in God’s sight,’ Jesus said.” Mark 7:20)

They built the platform taller,
it was the tallest,
none higher;
they built the platform so high
the speaker could see far beyond the
gazing spectators who got their news from each other,
their religion from helium,
and their opinions from thought balloons
posted out of context and stable as yesterday’s air.

They played the music louder,
it was the loudest,
none shriller;
they played the music so shrill
the people knew to hail the chief and
sing along with the bouncing ball, enthralled by the
words strung like confetti bracelets,
insults hurled like bolo necklaces
from school-yard bullies as unstable as preteen romances.

We would have sworn on the Bible,
the Bible, and only the Bible,
that this was a fine day,
it was the finest;
none brighter.
We would have sworn on his words
like we quote Jesus,
like we quote Jesus who founded America,
who founded it better than the founders who found
it best; until now.

We should have slowed our walk, reversed our gait,
rethought our rapture and revived our first love
who loved wayfarers more than walls
and lived among the tenements not towers.

He walked the road slower, though the crowd was louder,
the cross was heavier, and the tears earthier; he walked
death to life while the
platform-builders went about their business.