40 Days 2018

It wasn’t until I read The Last Week by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan that I came to understand just how much my childhood view of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem missed the point.

Rather than a nice story about the crowds hailing Jesus as King, this procession marks the intensifying clashes between Jesus and the Roman and religious authorities, which ends with Jesus’ execution a few days later. Jesus is not a passive bystander following the whims of the crowd here; he is the orchestrator of the events that unfold.

Borg and Crossan point out that two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day during Passover in the year 30 . . .

Bedtime duty. Currently a multi-hour endeavor. Kisses, chattering, hugs disguised as full body tackles. (30 minutes). Currently, two out of four fall asleep easily and quickly. One child is willing to sleep only under precisely managed and negotiated conditions—dark room, one drink of water, one parent, preferably of the mommy kind. (30-60 minutes).  One child has been recently initiated into existential anxiety via the fear of nuclear annihilation. Physiology and psychology, deep breathing and essential oils, I use all my hard earned knowledge and summon all my Mother Presence, then I release my child into the lonesome valley. Repeat process as necessary. (15 minutes-3 hours. Varies by night).

This chapter is a celebration of pleasure. That’s right, a Christian celebration of delightful, sensuous, pleasure—and not in the once-a-year sex-sermon way. This is, as will be familiar now, a focus on the ordinary-everyday experience of pleasure—“the slight bitterness of tea, the feel of sunshine on the skin, a ripe avocado, a perfect guitar lick, or a good plot twist” (129).

Also familiar will be reciprocal relationship—Tish calls it “symbiotic cross-training”!—between the school of the ordinary and the school of gathered worship. She once again ties these two together. 

‘They say’ that people paste on a fake cheerfulness at church and hide the uglier truth of their reality beneath the ubiquitous “I’m fine, thank you,” or a plastic, “Happy Sabbath.”

But it simply isn’t true. 

First, I would like to posit that smiling while you’re struggling is not a sign of being fake. Plain common sense tells us that it’s not usually the best choice of action to begin weeping in the coffee line. 

Second, some situations are better suited than others to emotional vulnerability. People carry their lives with them wherever they go and most of us are just waiting for a safe person in a safe moment to allow these things to be seen. To allow ourselves to be seen. 

Church, at its best, is a call and response between friends, a sense of belonging. That’s how Tish puts it in Chapter 9. But it can also be in community that we hurt each other. I spent a good portion of my life in an Adventist community where who I was allowed to be was often, well, squished. Smushed. Corseted and quieted. If I had questions—perhaps I just needed to listen more. If I was unsure—muster up more faith. If I needed a safe place to express pain—perhaps I wasn’t long-suffering enough. Angry? God forbid. There was little room for anger in that space. I learned that in order to be accepted, I needed to match the pleasant and subdued exteriors of the congregation around me. It didn’t take many years for me to leave those confines and swear off of church forever.