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During the mid-semester reading week, eleven Divinity students and Professor Edgardo Colón-Emeric went to El Salvador and Guatemala. The sacraments, particularly the Lord’s Supper, or la Santa Cena, figured prominently throughout the week. The group received communion three times during the week: once Sunday morning at la Iglesia Metodista Nueva Vida or la Iglesia Metodista La Providencia, because the group split up that morning; once Sunday evening at the youth service at la Iglesia Metodista Nueva Jerusalén; and once Friday night at Hotel Grecia Real on the patio outside Edgardo’s room.

The sacraments were also very prominent in all the martyrs’ memorial sites.  One martyr was remembered in particular, Archbishop Oscar Romero, who died while saying Mass, (the main service in the Roman Catholic tradition that always includes Holy Eucharist).  One collection of Romero’s writings in English is called “The Voice of the Voiceless” and it was by saying Mass, by offering up the loving sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, that Romero found one way to be that voice.  In the chapel where Romero was shot someone read aloud Romero’s last sermon, which was based on John 12:23-26 and includes this verse: “unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Likewise it was in Romer’s death that he was able to be an even stronger voice.  Romero’s house has been preserved intact, down to his car in the carport.  On one of the carport walls someone painted Romero sitting in on a rock at sunrise and with the stigmata – his hands and feet bore the marks of the crucified Christ. Romero not only presided over the broken body and blood, but he physically participated in Christ’s sacrifice as well.

Romero’s good friend Jesuit priest Padre Rutilio Grande had been killed in his car, along with two friends riding with him. Grande’s murder convincted Romero that the Church must speak out against the violence being committed both by the government and in response to the government’s violence. Padre Grande had been performing baptisms in Aguilares and was returning to the other church he served in El Paisanal when he was ambushed.  When we arrived in El Paisanal, on the 33rd anniversary of his death, priests were saying Mass in the town center, continuing the voice of God in that place.

Romero and Padre Grande were and are not the only martyrs of the violence. Six Jesuit priests and two ladies on their house staff were killed one night in 1989. In the middle of the University of Central America in San Salvador, where they lived, is the martyrs’ center. You can see the bullet holes and dried blood on their clothing as well as on a copy of Moltmann’s The Crucified God that one of the priests was reading.  The seventh Jesuit who lived with them, Jon Sobrino, was out of the country when it happened.  Sobrino has since described his work as taking the crucified people down from the cross.

Today’s violence in El Salvador does not stem from government-sanctioned death squads but from gangs. Pastor Juan de Dios Peña, the President of the Methodist Church in El Salvador and our host and guide for the week, related his own run-in with a gang last fall. He had traveled to a church to deliver Sunday school materials and other supplies.  While there, an 8- or 9-year-old boy walked in and put a gun to Pastor Juan’s head.  The boy was followed by about a dozen more kids, all gang members, and proceeded to tell Juan that he was going to die.  Then the kid sees Juan’s camera and demands it. Juan’s daughter, Gabriela, had taken pictures of herself on the camera that morning.  The film also held pictures of other Methodist churches; Juan worried for his safety, Gabriela’s safety, and the safety of those churches if he were to give over the camera.  Pastor Juan instead responded to the boy, “You know, God loves you.  No matter what you’ve done, God loves you.”  The boy replied, “No, God doesn’t love me.  And I don’t believe God exists, anyway.  I prayed to God when there was no food in my house and God didn’t provide food.  I prayed when there was violence in my house and God didn’t stop it.  There is no God.  Give me your camera.”  Pastor Juan responded, “You’re going to have trouble re-selling it.  Let me give you the money I have on me instead.”  He pulled out his wallet and handed over $20, all he had on him. The boy’s eyes lit up at the money.  He took it and let Pastor Juan, Francisco, and the rest of the church in peace.

Romero and the other martyrs were such seeds who died and produced more seeds.  The fruit they bore by being willing to die included the many youth and kids we met and in whose faces we encountered Jesus.  This is not suffering for the sake of suffering. It is suffering because Christ suffered. It is a suffering that Christ redeems. Christ calls us to follow Him, and some of us, like Romero and the martyrs, may die.  Others of us are called to lay down our life in other ways.  However, we all lay our lives down without fear for ourselves, because we lay down our life in the sure hope of the resurrection.  Amen.

I have always been mildly obsessed with the Eucharist. By my senior year of college, my friends had transitioned from calling me a “closet Catholic” to just a “bad Catholic,” especially when I was occasionally showing up at night Mass in Duke Chapel. I hated contemporary worship and joined a Facebook group called “Praise bands annoy God.” I was horribly allergic to anything other than mainstream Protestantism, so much so that I never uttered the word “evangelism” during my freshman year of college, instead parodying “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” by speaking only of “the E-word.”

With that in mind, it’s interesting to look at my Palm/Passion Sunday this year. At Orange United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill, the 9:00 a.m. Pathways service kicks off a full band (guitars, drums, etc.) arrangement of “Celebrate Good Times,” with the words changed to “Celebrate the Christ.” The band then launches into up-tempo arrangements of two hymns and closes out the first part of the service with a newer praise tune. The catch? The charismatic worship leader is my boyfriend of over a year, and I’m a vocalist on the praise team. I am the girl with a microphone and a tambourine that I used to mock.

So what? Plenty of young people discover contemporary worship and drop off the face of the mainstream, traditional Protestant earth. The thing is, I haven’t. When I finish singing at Orange, I head back to Durham to attend a service that in some ways is more high-church than those I grew up attending. My heart still belongs to hymns and liturgy and church choirs. Besides, I’m in Divinity School, so I’m constantly being made to think about (or simply being told) what constitutes “good” worship. And worship really matters to me:

“One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.”

If you’ve been at Duke Divinity School very long, you probably guessed that quote comes from a book by Dr. Stanley Hauerwas. And if you’ve been in Dr. Chapman’s Old Testament class this semester, you may remember hearing how Amos connected liturgy and ethics. How we interact with God in worship shapes how we interact with people in the world.

What I’ve found in the past several years is that me being able to participate in and worship through different styles has helped me connect with a broader variety of Christian people and has made my own approach to worship richer. I grew up in traditional Methodist churches, but since coming to Durham five years ago I have worshipped in a predominantly African-American church. For a few years in undergrad, I was regularly attending Catholic Mass. Learning to appreciate contemporary worship (which, by the way, is the primary means of worship for a lot of American Christians) has been the next step for me. I still think much of what gets played on K-LOVE is garbage. Fortunately, my boyfriend only uses musically and theologically solid praise songs—he even regularly arranges hymns for the band. Being in conversation with him through the worship planning process has been educational, as it has made me think creatively about how to make non-traditional worship still reflective of its tradition (in this case, the Methodist tradition).

The fact is that a lot of churches do contemporary worship really badly. Sometimes it’s because it’s a small church trying to attract young folks but without the resources to do it well. Sometimes it’s a church that’s so big and successful that Sunday morning has become more of a rock concert than a worship service. But these problems are not unique to contemporary worship. I used to malign the entire genre for its emphasis on presentation, but then I remembered that I once quit a wonderful choir in a high-church setting precisely because I felt like it was more about performance than praise. In all forms of worship, there is a careful balance to be struck between offering something worthy to God and becoming too focused on how good the sermon or the music is. To take things a step further, it’s really more about why we care about excellence in worship—is it to be noticed and to garner accolades, or is it to glorify God and to build up his church?

Too often, worship style becomes a dividing line when the truth is that different traditions have much to offer each other. More than that, churches get divided from each other—and internally—by their approach to worship. They say Sunday morning is the most segregated time of the week, and that doesn’t just apply to race, it often applies to generational gaps and cultural preferences, too. No matter the worship style, the challenge is the same: to make a genuine, faithful offering to God without letting it be tainted or qualified by our own pride. Sappy, sentimental hymns and pointless prayers exist in all styles of worship; organ music does not make your praise more heavenly and holding a guitar does not make Jesus more relevant. How we worship matters greatly, but let’s see what we can learn from different approaches, and let’s not forget that it’s not about us.

[Ed note: The quote attributed to Stanley Hauerwas above comes from his book The Truth About God written with William Willimon.]

“Can you teach us to memorize something?”  It was a question I never expected. My questioners were two fourteen-year-old boys who earlier that morning had been jumping off large rocks with sharp sticks in their hands and antagonizing a bees’ nest.  This was my summer field ed placement, a camp in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, leading backpacking trips.  The boys had been acting exactly as one would expect fourteen-year-olds to act, but the next minute they were asking questions about the Trinity and the Incarnation and then to memorize Scripture.  Perplexed but elated I spent the next three miles of the day’s hike doing a call-and-response memorization of the prologue of John.  And they loved every bit of it.

It was a teaching moment I could never have predicted, could never even have imagined in my wildest dreams—especially in upstate New York, where the Bible is not particularly taught, known, or appreciated.  But it was also a learning moment.  The paradox that these boys embodied—that of both jumping off rocks and crying out to the Rock—struck me then and now as nothing short of beautiful. Is this what it means to be truly human?  To engage our physicality and also our noetic capacities? To be abundantly silly and deeply serious?  To play in utter exuberance and joy in this life God has created, stretching our muscles and expanding our lungs in exuberant, jovial shouts as well as to embrace the One who created our muscles and lungs and the whole of us?

It seems to me that this is the kind of life, the kind of humanity, that we were created for.  More importantly, this is the kind of life Jesus has redeemed us for.  Many of the church fathers spoke of salvation as being recreated and restored to our original glory as humans made in the image of God, and I imagine that original glory meant a wholeness I glimpsed in these two boys. Jesus’ taking care of all the most significant movements of history frees us to play and revel in what he has given us.  His command to love God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind calls us to engage our minds as well as the rest of us. It strikes me, then, that when we aren’t living this kind of life, we aren’t really living. If we’re neglecting the jumping and playing, or the asking of big questions, or the silliness, or the wonder and praise of God, then we’re not being fully human. If we’re not taking time to enjoy one another’s company over a cup of conversation while we also spend good time reading the church fathers, or if we fail to work hard and write good papers while we also take time to stretch our legs and play, or if we forget to laugh deeply while we live deeply, we’re not living into our salvation.

It also strikes me that these boys could do all of these things at once.  They didn’t have to jump for a while and then ask questions or memorize Scripture; I watched them run and jump while asking questions about the Incarnation and salvation and hike and play hacky sack while reciting John’s prologue.  To them, there wasn’t such a thing as a “secular” part of life and a “spiritual” part of life.  To them, it was all just life. What if we understood that more often?  Could spiritual formation be something that happens in our classes, and not merely something we attend an hour a week for our first year of divinity school?  Can we worship while playing basketball or Frisbee? Can we laugh and be silly while studying atonement theories and looking up words like “extracalvinisticum”?  I am inclined to think that we can, and indeed, that we should.

As I reflect on the paradox of my campers, I think of something Fredrick Buechner wrote: “We are moved also by those precious moments when something holy seems to break through into our lives both to heal us and to summon us to pilgrimage” (Longing for Home). That morning on the trail through the Siamese Ponds Wilderness Area in the Adirondacks I saw something holy break into my life in the most unexpected place, and it called me to pilgrimage. God called me to follow the way of these crazy fourteen-year-old boys, which is in fact the way of his Son, who himself was once a fourteen-year-old boy. Christ has made it possible for us to live this way, desires for us to live this way. So let us find some rocks, call out to the Rock, and begin to live.

I lived last year in a neighborhood known by people outside of the community, and even by some inside, for its drugs, gangs, poverty, and violence. In fact, the house that we resided in used to be a boarding house – which was a veiled way of talking about a transitory location for those looking for some kind of comfort in drugs, sex, or just a roof over their heads. There is a lot next to our house that is long, skinny and weed covered – the neighborhood association is not sure what to do with it – and it is exactly the kind of lot that you would tell your kids to stay away from and that would necessarily bring down adjacent property value. A friend of ours from the neighborhood buried a dead cat that was found on our sidewalk there. In the process, he discovered, or was reminded, that even feet down in the dirt it was filled with broken glass, cigarette butts, old tires, bottles, candy wrappers and even the occasional appliance. The lot was a mess.

One of my roommates decided to build a garden right there on that lot that we did not own. He spent a week filtering the dirt through the wires of an abandoned shopping cart to make it safe to grow seeds in. The plot was maybe 3 feet by 2 feet and framed by discarded white boards. Thanks to the labor of our housemate, near the end of spring our house was able to enjoy salad greens that were grown in the lot. It was an unlikely little ray of hope in the midst of abused and trashed land.

I see what my roommate did with that tiny garden plot as embodying the aspects of the kingdom that Jesus describes in two parables: the first parable is of a farmer scattering seed on the ground. The parable says “he does not know how” the seed grows. However, what I suspect the parable is saying is what the farmer actually does know: that he can do only so much in the growth of the seed. It is the work of the earth, sun and rain to produce and bear the fruit of good wheat. The second parable is of the mustard seed and is meant to be read right in line with the first. In it a tiny seed, contrary to our notions of relative input and output, produces one of the most lush and helpful plants in the garden. The wheat is not so different; like the mustard shrub and most other plants, it comes from a relatively small beginning. The mustard seed is the same as the wheat because, like the wheat, it grows not on its own but because of reasons not completely understood even by the most learned farmer: the richness of the earth, the heat of the sun, the work of the animals, and the biological inner workings of the seed. Three aspects of the Kingdom of Heaven are illustrated by these parables: faith, hope, and patience. The last one, patience, is probably the hardest one for us to get, as it rests upon hope and faith.

The farmer in the first parable does a completely unremarkable thing. He sows some seeds. The farmer plants the seeds, knowing he is not responsible for yielding the whole product and that there are things that he cannot control. This is faith. Faith is to know that ultimately someone or something else is in control of the outcome, or omnipotent. We have a part to play – to plant the seeds. The farmer should plant the seeds well, deeply, with sufficient room to grow and in soil that has been properly rotated, lain fallow for a year perhaps, and is respectful of the many systems around it that sustain it. Still, ultimately, no matter what the farmer does the seeds will grow or not grow.

Faith is freeing. It relieves us from an impossible burden – saving the world. Faith in God means that we believe that God’s plans have already been accomplished through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Faith means that, guided well in how to plant our seeds, take care of the land we are given and graciously care for our plots we are not burdened with the tasks of causing the inner workings of the seed to grow.

However–even the demons believe in God; how is Christianity different? The mustard seed provides a response to that – hope. Hope seems to be a dangerous word these days–what do we really have to hope in? When one quarter of this county in poverty, women and men scour want ads for work, and violence ravages many nations across the globe, we have to ask: is hope naïve?

One type of hope is–it will tell us, given an apparently “bad” situation, that those bad things will magically get better. This type of hope offers shallow words of comfort to victims of suffering and insists that there is always some solution. I like to call this type of hope “optimism.”

God is not optimistic, God is sure.

God’s is the hope of sitting with people who are brokenhearted even if we cannot do a single thing for them. This is the hope that gives when asked, not knowing what really may come of it. It is a hope of certainty, a hope that when we act faithfully a shrub will emerge. Not any shrub, either, but a beautiful, lush, sheltering shrub that we may not know how it will grow. Hope is to not only know that you do not have control over the outcome but to delight in it! The outcome belongs to the most gracious, loving and just being that exists: God.

It may be difficult to justify spending time with people, being with others without a particular task at hand. We have an inclination to only do things that see immediate results. We want to give five dollars to the girl in the grocery line instead of befriending her to wonder why she is struggling financially. We form committees with those “less fortunate” in order to empower and help them, or send the homeless off to shelters. But the church, in the words of Mother Theresa, is not called to be successful, but to be faithful. Success will come at some point as a result of being faithful, but it is not that for which we ought to strive. To choose to be with others instead of doing for them plants mustard seeds that are solely based on strong hope and sure faith. They allow us to witness in the most important way: to live so that, were there not a God, our lives would not make sense at all.

This is why I see my roommate’s garden as a pretty good in-breaking of the kingdom. The garden was not planted to feed the entire community, or give teenagers something to do in the afternoon – both very good things – but instead did something beautiful, time consuming and good. He transformed a small part of a dirty lot, in some sense against the rules of the neighborhood association, but with the hope that it would be used for good. He had faith that it would grow something, hope that it would come into something good and is still sitting with the patience of what will come of that tiny garden plot, in a week, a year or ten years. One of our Latino brothers uses the phrase “Paciencia Ardiente,” or “ardent patience.” This is an eager patience that realizes our integral and loving part in the kingdom, but a kingdom that is ultimately brought about not through our work but through the infinite love, patience, healing and justice of a relational God. This means planting your garden now and loving the garden, the earth, and the people who surround it instead of holding your own expectations. God is not optimistic, God is sure, and God’s wisdom is not human wisdom.

You may be used to hearing faith and hope used with the word love. Love is supreme, but often misunderstood. God loves us with a love that does not expect specific outcomes, but enjoys imagining fruit of goodness. It endures things that do not make sense, and lives with hope even when hope seems completely undeserved. That is why I leave love out, not because it is unimportant but because if you embody faith the size of a mustard seed, patience that humbly endures while still hoping a hope that refuses to shut off the possibility of good, you may be pretty darn close to love. You may be pretty darn close to the kingdom of God.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” As the officiant speaks, hands in the congregation trace a simple pattern: forehead, navel, left shoulder, right shoulder. Twenty years ago this scene would only be played out in Catholic and high Anglican services. Today it is becoming more common in other Protestant denominations, particularly Methodism. Why the rise in use? What is at stake here?

I first discovered the sign of the cross at the Anglican observance of Morning Prayer at Duke Divinity School. At the time, it seemed to fall into the high church category. I did not know the significance or when it was appropriate. So I just filed it away as an interesting part of someone else’s tradition and moved on.

After this initial discovery, the sign appeared more and more in the weekly chapel services as well, especially during communion. Several students would make it before or after receiving the elements. Note to any potential seminary presidents: this is the result of hiring an English Anglican (Dr. Sam Wells) as dean of the chapel and his wife (Dr. Jo Bailey Wells) as a professor. Anything of this sort was relatively uncommon before the Wells’ arrived. Since it was not part of my background, I turned to Dr. Jo Wells for the Anglican understanding. Contrary to my expectations, there are no required moments for making the sign. “Some people,” she explained, “end the motion on ‘Son’ higher or lower than others. The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer suggests places when the sign would be appropriate to use but never requires it. The main focus of the sign is a reminder of baptism.” While this explanation sounded intriguing, the sign of the cross still felt very Anglican. I continued to do research but did not foresee myself adopting it as a practice.

Not long after my talk with Dr. Wells, I came across the sign again. Reconciliation United Methodist Church in Durham, my local church, incorporated the sign into its worship one Sunday. The sermon text for that Sunday was on exorcism, another topic many mainline Protestants find uncomfortable. Rev. Sue Eldon, the associate pastor, explained that the worship planning for the service showed the need for teaching it. They planned a prayer of exorcism, inviting the congregation to make the sign of the cross over themselves as they were prayed over. One question remained: did the congregation know anything about the sign? Not at first, Eldon explained, but they did after she decided to make use of her children’s sermon as a teaching moment for the whole church!

For Eldon, introducing embodied practices such as the sign of the cross is an important part of both worship and catechesis, allowing us to enter into God’s presence not only with our minds but with our bodies, too. The incarnation of Christ, Eldon argued, ought to change how we talk about Christianity. Ours, she said, is no longer merely a spiritual religion but a bodily one too. Using the sign, then, moves prayer from words and thought into action. This last point is the most important. “Making the sign of the cross shapes you in holiness in ways that prayer alone cannot,” she told me. Practices give you something to fall back on when you need it. She referenced the pilot who landed his plane in the Hudson several months back. In an interview, he said that he had been banking good practices for forty years, and that he cashed them all in that day. The sign of the cross, in a similar way, trains our bodies and minds to place ourselves under the care and grace of Christ’s cross, in a way that imprints itself deeply onto our souls and becomes part of who we are.

At this point, I wanted to know how else the sign of the cross was used. With my curiosity fully engaged, I contacted Rev. Dan Benedict, a retired United Methodist pastor. Rev. Benedict continues to work towards restoring a more sacramental emphasis in Methodist worship, and wrote an article for the United Methodist Church website about the sign of the cross. Benedict told me that he uses it at several points during the average Sunday morning service, including baptisms and communion. “I don’t remember anyone objecting or having a negative reaction,” he said. “People recognized that I am a high church guy. The Methodist church tends to be eclectic and generally low church so I don’t do it all the time.”

Of course people do have questions. Especially as a visiting pastor, Benedict warned, there will be people unaware of what you are doing. So, in order to guard against parishioners thinking that the sign of the cross is just some sort of odd “Catholic thing,” Benedict related how he explained it to his congregation: “Through baptism,” he explains, “we are in covenant with one another and God. The sign of the cross is a common indication of that covenant. It is our obligation and blessing to mark ourselves with the sign.” He suggests any pastors considering using the sign among congregations unfamiliar with the practice to offer a similar explanation. “People will accept most anything if you explain it to them,” he said.

I still had one more question: If you can use the sign, and people will go along with it, why should you? Benedict, just like Eldon, emphasized the importance of including the body in worship. Protestantism began as a word-oriented religion and not much has changed. “As we move into a more postmodern time, the whole culture is shifting towards multi-sensory experience. Any church that sticks with a merely rational approach will be increasingly isolated. People desire a full body experience. Churches should get liturgy into people’s muscles and nerves.”

This is not just an attempt to turn Methodists into Anglicans. John Wesley decried the sign of the cross as “superstitious,” although this may have had more to do with the anti-Catholic movement in England than any personal convictions. Nevertheless, the United Methodist baptismal liturgy in the Book of Worship does mention the sign. The liturgy includes the possibility of laying on hands after the water in order to make the sign of the cross at the invocation of the Trinity. It’s a small reference for people who would like to see it used more, but it’s important to know that it’s part of our tradition.

Personally, I have come to use the sign a great deal. At the invocation of the Trinity, I make it as a witness to the Triune God. The sign has also become a part of my devotional practice in communion, both before and after receiving the elements. For me, these two acts encompass my understanding of what happens during the sacrament. The sign before acknowledges the presence of Christ in the sacrament. I leave it to others to determine how this works theologically but I believe it to be true. The sign after receiving reminds me of the grace present and of my thankfulness for this freely offered gift.

It is too early to know if the sign of the cross will continue to grow in the Methodist church. I hope that it does. I certainly think it is important for the church to engage people’s bodies in worship. We are not just minds, taking in the words, but created beings. We should no more separate our minds and bodies than we should the Father and Son. So too, the sign reinforces our high calling as Christians. As Benedict described it, it’s a “reminder of my baptism and my putting on Christ, of accepting his claim upon my life and Christian witness.” The sign of the cross is a simple ritual that bridges the gap between worship and the world, between body and mind. Hopefully, as United Methodists, we can all begin to take simple steps like this in our worshiping life together, as we grow ever more fully into a people called out to worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with our whole lives.

It has become a powerful Good Friday tradition in many church communities to end the Lenten journey with reflections upon the “seven last words Christ.”  Jesus’ final fragmented statements have offered comfort, challenge, insight, inspiration and hope to weary Holy Week pilgrims nearing their paschal destination, and are considered to be all the more important for having been borne to us upon the winds of Our Savior’s final breaths.

And yet, on this day Jesus is not the only one whose dying speaks.  This is also the day when Sin, in beholding the Crucified One, is confronted by his condemnation.  This is the day Death dies.  And yet, these forces refuse to go silently into the night.  The Old Man hurls protests of His own against the New Humanity that confronts him from the cross.  Many of our churches recognize this voice in their practice of collectively reading the Passion narrative on Palm Sundays.  When the congregation reads together the words of the angry crowd, we participate in giving voice to the “last words of the Old Humanity.”

In his Homiletics, Karl Barth claimed that, “certainly something has to be said about human sins and errors.   Yet it ought to be from the perspective of sin forgiven and error removed.  Sin undoubtedly has to be taken seriously, but forgiveness even more seriously…Sin must be spoken about only as the sin which is taken away by the Lamb of God.”  It is in this Spirit and with this intent that we offer these six meditations on the “Last Words of the Old Humanity,” not to obsess over our brokenness, but rather to more clearly envision the Gospel of this gift of grace granted in the dying of Jesus Christ on this Good Friday.  To Him be the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever.  Amen.

I. “Away with him!  Release for us Barabbas!” (Luke 23:18) by Carole Baker
II. “But they kept shouting, ‘Crucify him, crucify him!’” (Luke 23:21, ESV) by Tyler Atkinson
III. “Hail, King of the Jews!” (Mark 15:18) by Tyler Garrard
IV. “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross!” (Mark 15:29) by Margaret McWilliams
V. “He saved others; he cannot save himself…He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to.” (Matthew 27:42) by Maria Swearingen
VI. “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come and take him down!” (Mark 15:36) by Matthew Nickoloff

Note: These “last words” are taken from the Synoptic Gospels, and by no means exhaust all of the possible selections.  We envision these reflections as an open invitation for readers to discover other “last words” and to make their own meditations as we together contemplate the paschal mysteries.

I. “Away with him!  Release for us Barabbas!” (Luke 23:18)

by Carole Baker

Peer pressure-it isn’t something we leave behind when we walk across the stage to receive our high school diploma. It may be a phrase adults use with a hint of nostalgia, but even as adults we continue to face it–and give into it– every day. We want, just like we did in high school, to appear relevant and savvy. Maybe it’s less these days about wearing the right clothes, or hanging out at the right Starbucks, but we’re still trying to say the right things, read the right books, drop the right names, etc. It takes more than an informed conscience to resist the crescendo of collective assent. The wave picks us up and before we know it we’re on top, having no where to look but down. Like those swept up by the growing call for the release of Barabbas, rather than the man who had no charge against him, we too would rather embrace camaraderie than jeopardize our good standing among peers. I imagine, however, that though the prevailing voices calling for Barabbas’ release won out, they were not the only voices in the crowd. I imagine Jesus stood there able to hear some voices crying out for him. But who would be so bold, so brave, as to throw themselves against the wave-risking their reputation and possibly even their life?  Who would speak out, not for the self-satisfaction of intellectual dissent, but purely out of the conviction that Christ is who he said he is? Who would love this man so deeply that their desire for self-protection would be consumed by their love of truth? And how on earth could such a love be possible?

We are incapable of resisting the crowd until something bigger takes over us. When this happens it’s nothing short of a miracle–something only God can do. And he did. Indeed, the love that enabled the few voices to cry out for him that day when Christ was handed over is the same love that raised him from the dead. Only this love can overcome the fears that ensure we’re beholden to the crowd. And only this love is big enough to keep us from drowning when the wave of assent comes crashing down as quickly as it was built.

Carole Baker is a Research Associate at Duke Divinity School.

II. “But they kept shouting, ‘Crucify him, crucify him!’” (Luke 23:21, ESV)

by Tyler Atkinson

I am struck by the repetitious nature of the crowd’s cry, “Crucify him!”  It reminds me of a recent trip to Target, in which I heard a young boy screaming to his mother, “Toy, toy, toy!”  The constant screams and roars were agonizing.  Having heard the cries first, upon seeing him I realized the boy was cute and appeared harmless.  How could such a cute child rage with such fury?  While in the checkout line, I responded to my wife with the kind of indignation to which we all can relate: “That boy has not stopped screaming for the last half hour,” which means, “I wish she would take him out of the store!  We’re trying to shop in peace here!”  Only after the damage to the membranes in the ear canal was assured, the mother gave the boy what he wanted.

It is easy to read over the Passion narratives without pausing to dwell on the durative force of the crowd’s cries.  Like the mother in the store, only after the constant screaming of the crowd does Pilate assuage their rage.  When we “enter into the narrative,” we are forced to reckon with the reality that we do not stop screaming until we see Jesus on the cross.  We are like angry children not getting our way, except with all the nastiness that grown-ups are able to muster after years of practice.  But, we are quick to think we are beyond begging to put Jesus on the cross.  Like the little boy, we appear harmless. It is easy for us to cover the nastiness of our sin, especially when we are taking theology classes and preparing for ordination.  We are tempted to abstract our sin to passive rejection rather than the aggressive pursuit of execution.

When we read that the crowds keep on yelling for Pilate to crucify Jesus, we want to progress quickly that we might make it to the resurrection.  Like my agitation at the boy’s screaming and the mother’s not sparing us the racket, it pains us to feel the weight of the yells.  It is hard to picture our selves in the midst of the crowd with our fists in the air and our teeth grinding away, stomping around like an angry three-year-old.  Yet, Luke forces us to dwell there for a moment.  In a world where we so desperately want to be spared the noise of unsatisfied children, we must listen to the constant yells, “Crucify him, crucify him!”  I am thankful for the screaming child in Target, for his temper tantrum was but a smattering of my own scowls at the Son of God; and I am reminded even more of the radical mercy of God in Jesus Christ in converting my “hell no’s” to Pilate’s suggestion to release Jesus into a joyful “yes” to the Gospel.  God’s forgiveness in Jesus has overtaken not only my rejection of the Son of God, but even my plea to execute him on a Roman cross… “Grace that is greater than all my sin!”

-Tyler Atkinson is a second year M.Div. student at Duke Divinity School

III. “Hail, King of the Jews!” (Mark 15:18)

by Tyler Garrard

“Hail, King of the Jews!”  Frederick Buechner says we should translate it, “Head Jew,” just to make sure everybody gets the joke.  The soldier’s cry against Jesus is our cry too.  Embarrassed by his humility, we loudly proclaim him King without ever considering what it meant for him, or for ourselves, to wear such a crown.  For Jesus, to be King meant to subject his body to the will of those who, only a few days before, half-heartedly cheered and placed branches at his feet.  It meant being beaten and whipped.  It meant giving up the existence he knew for one he did not, relinquishing the last breath of a life that had given so much life to others.  It meant death on a cross, abandoned by his friends and his family.  What does it mean for us?

For most, living a cruciform life will never involve bearing the shame Jesus bore.  I would, however, like to think Jesus’ question, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” means more to us than simply talking about the need for social justice and occasionally purchasing a cup of fairly traded coffee.  But, at the same time, Jesus, the Christ, saves us from this expectation.  He meets us where we are and says, “You do not have to do this.  I have done everything.  My grace is sufficient.  It is finished.”  Those are comforting words that pierce the heart of a broken world where, more often than not, the goal is thought to be to be the best, the brightest, the richest, the smartest.  Christ saves us from this, from ourselves.  He meets us in the midst of great fear and heartache and brokenness, and shows us what it means to be King in the Kingdom of God.   He becomes the King that we do not want to be, the King we cannot be.  Thanks be to God.

Tyler Garrard is a second year M.Div student at Duke Divinity School.

IV. “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross!” (Mark 15:29)

by Margaret McWilliams

Good Friday is a good day for silence.  It’s the day, more than any other on the liturgical calendar, when I want to sit in sackcloth and ash.  The grey smudge imposed upon my forehead six weeks ago won’t quite cut it on this side of Lent.  And this isn’t because I suddenly remember how I didn’t pray enough or give alms or deny myself like a pious devotee.  All those things are true about many of our Lenten experiences.  And those things probably remind us of ways we build “temples” to secure ourselves to keep a safe distance from Jesus.  Lent isn’t about failing or succeeding to keep a kind of New Year’s Resolution.  We know this deep down…even if Easter can get lost in the ecstatic return to old comforts (like eating dessert on a daily basis, which I’m the last person to argue against).

Today isn’t about you or me.  Yet this Lenten journey has been about us in an important way.  We have been preparing for this Passiontide.  Somehow, with sighs too deep for words, the Spirit within us has been forming our hearts to receive a God-forsaken God.  As we reach the cross in Mark’s Gospel, the unbearable blow of divine abandonment courses through Jesus’ veins; yet He is the One whose majesty, according to Karl Barth, is His lowliness.   Perhaps we shake our heads in horror at this whole scene, at the restless groans of God-crucified, hanging beaten and blasphemed, mocked and misunderstood by the flesh of His flesh.  But before Mark lets us bolt for the nearest exit, he reminds us that head-shaking is exactly what the derisive passers-by did at the cross and in David’s lament quoted by our Lord in His darkest hour.  My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?…All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they shake their heads. Have we no part in today’s taunts and tragedy?  We would shake all the ash off our heads and hate this Jesus who disrupts our temple enterprises, who challenges our idols of security and power.  Friends, Good Friday is good because God doesn’t abandon us to the temples we construct.  Christ Crucified is the temple; He is the shape of our new life together.  God doesn’t seek to destroy us.  He longs to lavish us with the REAL thing, the REAL relationship, which involves REAL flesh-and-blood participation in His hallowed humility.  Have mercy on us, O Lord, in our intemperate love of worldly comfort and impatient longing.  When we are quick to save you and move from the cross in our rush to Easter, we misunderstand your majesty.  Make us temples shaped into your beloved image that our lowliness might be transformed into Yours.  Amen.

Margaret McWilliams is a second year M.Div student at Duke Divinity School.

V. “He saved others; he cannot save himself…He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to.” (Matthew 27:42)

by Maria Swearingen

Deliverance.

Freedom.

Liberation.

Salvation.

These are words we long for.  Even those of us who have never had chains on our hands or whips to our backs.  They are words we believe in.  They are words we profess with zeal.  They are the mortar of our castles, the yeast in our bread, the mission statements of our constitutions and institutions.

We cherish them, feed them, coddle them, adorn them, wave them like palm branches.

But, when DELIVERANCE is raised before us, bound and beaten and whipped, we quietly wonder if it will be strong enough to crawl through our grip of security, of order, of confinement.  We anxiously gawk at it in anticipation waiting for a holy spectacle, hoping that our front row seat near the cross will be worth it this time.  Inwardly, we question what we’ve approved, what we’ve done to this man, but outwardly, we proclaim our consent.

“He saved others; he cannot save himself!.”

Will he save himself?  Was he truly our DELIVERANCE?  Did we strike FREEDOM?  Did we batter LIBERATION?  Did we crucify SALVATION?

“Let God deliver him now.”

Are these words of malice?  Are they words of sorrow?  Are they words of skepticism?  Regardless, when sitting on the pages of our Bibles and our hearts, they are contusive.  They are cutting.  And they are terribly ironic.

Was Jesus delivered on this strange day, where powers and principalities licked their chops and the Holy of Holies bled like me?  Did God deliver this one who knew, like a lover knows the rhythmic breath of her beloved, the One who sent him?

Will he SAVE himself?  Will God DELIVER him?

We are too angry, too bothered, too concerned with our own definitions of those words to even care.  We are too tired, too confused, too afraid to FREE him from our inability to taste the things of God.

We are too blind, too deaf, too slathered in the shades our own constructs to live beyond them.  And this man writhes in anguish as we toss our thoughts, our concerns, our questions his way.

“He trusts in God.”

In God we Trust.  Unless he hangs before us, twisted and torn.  Broken and breathless.  Terrifying and small.

And so our mission statements are leather-bound and pocket-sized…catalogued in the pits of our own making.  Lost to themselves.  Bound by our power to kill FREEDOM.

How shall we be saved when SALVATION is stained with blood?  How shall will be saved when DELIVERANCE is bound by our ropes and nails?

We wait at the foot of the cross.

Maria Swearingen is a second year M.Div at Duke Divinity School.

VI.  ”Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come and take him down!” (Mark 15:36)

by Matthew Nickoloff

Before us, a human being rages against the coming of the night; his primal scream of anguished abandonment and nascent nihilism echoes against the leaden sky.  Death crouches at the door, TS Eliot’s “yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-pains,” preparing him to “prepare a face to meet the faces” he will meet, to lift and “drop a question on your plate,” the final, heart-rending question that secretly lurks within us all:  eloi eloi lemah sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Baffled by the infinite depths of mystery, the crowd responds as only people who have no answer can respond: with hermeneutical explanation.  Such authentic grief, such heart-rending honesty momentarily unmasks the gleeful savagery with which we had so mindlessly suffered our murderous rage.  Such a cry of dereliction exposes all our derelictions as cowardly and empty.  All of our projects and pursuits are revealed as nothingness.  What is this fresh account, this new narration, this strange perspective?  It does not fit into the disciplines we have known, does not readily parse with our scientias, does not submit to the violence of our intellectual rigors!  It must be explained.

We cannot tolerate so intimate an engagement, an appeal over our heads to the God we would rather forget.  And so we follow, with J. Alfred Prufrock, down “Streets that follow like a tedious argument/Of insidious intent/To lead you to an overwhelming question:” “perhaps he is calling for Elijah!”  Yes, this strange lunatic stretched before us upon the canvas of the cross, he seems to be contextualizing himself into the Old Testament narrative!  Fascinating!  Let us continue to look upon his pain, his intriguing interpretation of his situation, let us see if Elijah will come!  A fine dissertation topic, a brilliant sermon illustration, a story to tell to the boys down at the bar!  Finally, something real, prophetic, actual!

How often have I stood before the sick and dying during a hospital visit, caught the tears of a suffering loved one, read the account of an injustice or a torture, and sought to fix for myself the dilemma in which I find myself being confronted with that which refuses explanation by offering such “reasons why?”  Do I not, in the process, make a spectacle of the suffering, a fetish of torturous injustice, a project out of paradox?  How deeply I desire for something to happen without the commitment entailed by that happening to enter the happening myself!  Does the mere invocation of a prophet’s name or tradition or subversion serve anything other than to buffer me from the disaster of a direct confrontation with the Living God?   Is it enough to speak of “the poor,” to read “Dr. King,” to look for Elijah in places where I refuse to enter and suffer myself?  Easier to stand back and interpret, to await the spectacle, to speculate as an armchair prophet, and forget the nails and hammer in my hands.

True grief refuses to be contained by the answers of naïve seminarians; as I have too often been forced to learn and accept, my well-intended efforts are not enough.  Christ hangs before us upon the wood of distanced nuances, refusing to be made a spectacle, defying classification, exposing the absurdities of educated explanations.  The cross is the ultimate resistance to all such foolishness, inviting me instead to take the risk of stepping forth from the noisy mob to sit in the ashes, within the echo-chamber of the derelictive cry, to listen to the voice of another, however strange and inexplicable it may seem.  The spectacle of Jesus tears me forth from the spectacle in which I am participating, and bids me come and die, that I might discover with Him, in the depths of His death, the life which lives beyond all explanation.

Matthew Nickoloff is a second year M.Div. student and co-editor of Confessio’s Dispatches from the Front.

Prejudice is a subtle tyrant. Responsible for racism, sexism, elitism, denominationalism, and a host of other -isms, our prejudice has become quite talented. Like a parasite its best defense is to assure its host of its own nonexistence. Prejudice is quick to bring the prejudice of others to the eyes of its bearer, but it is careful to simultaneously preserve an illusion of self-righteousness for anyone it inhabits. Coming to Duke Divinity School has not erased this weakness in my own life, but now it is starkly different.

Duke stands astride the line that divides “conservatives” and “liberals.” This language is frowned upon at the Divinity School, but we use it anyway. Duke patiently acknowledges the far left while solemnly neglecting the words of the far right. It is a place of moderates, or at least a place that strives to perform in such way that the only term one can use to define its theological orientation is “moderate.” As an indirect result of this orientation, certain groups of people are ostracized. At Duke we prefer to think of it as a type of enlightened ostracism; we justify the way we talk and think about the fringe groups, whether Bible thumping fundamentalists or radical liberals. But in the end it still feels like prejudice.

Coming from Birmingham, AL, I’ve done my best to immerse myself into Duke and the myriad of its complex theologies, social criticisms, political agendas, soteriological concepts, and the notion that evangelism is almost always imperialistic, but when I hear someone laugh or smirk at the mention of Southern Baptists, something inside me wonders if the laughter is justified. Terms such as “evangelicals” receive about as much respect as “fundamentalists,” and we scoff at both, critiquing them for the way in which they strive to preserve faithfulness to something as simple as the Word of God, a book I find myself opening less and less outside the rooms of our Old and New Testament courses. Despite certain theological problems I now have with the Baptist Church, I ironically miss the days when Scripture mattered much more than it now does for me here at seminary.

After a semester at Duke I find myself more Anglican/Catholic than Baptist, but old questions still linger. Many of the situations in which I hear evangelicals criticized are for the mention of topics we do not usually discuss in the halls of Duke. The gross nature of sin, the doctrine of hell, and evangelism probably draw the hottest criticism, at least in the dialogues I have experienced. The last of the three, of course, usually stems from firm convictions regarding the first two. I find myself wondering why these topics, and others like them, tend to merit so much criticism.

Is it acceptable to believe in hell at Duke? Do we ever talk about sin’s gross consequences? Do we believe one should still spread the Gospel? From my limited experiences it certainly seems the case that such thoughts are to be discouraged. Tolerance is the word of the day, but only those who reciprocate tolerance are to be tolerated. Intolerance merits intolerance. As such, anyone professing belief in a hell or the need for evangelism, which presupposes that non-Christians are still in need of Christ, may be appropriately ostracized by an otherwise tolerant community. Regardless of our issues with these topics, what does this say of the Gospel or of the Church? When tolerance becomes a vessel of intolerance it becomes difficult for us to see the Cross. Self-righteousness replaces Christ’s righteousness, we forget to love our enemies, and the ontology of the Christian life disperses to make way for the divisive influence of prejudice.

To be sure, we are living a dream here at Duke Divinity School. This place is a treasure trove of academic, spiritual, and emotional reflection. Couched in the midst of these pleasures I fear that I often forget the work of the Gospel, the same work which brought so many of us to seminary in the first place. As I sit typing this article, missionaries and clergy all over the globe are laying down their comforts, their own dreams, and even their lives for the chance to proclaim the Gospel. They are evangelists from all traditions, backgrounds, and callings. Is it right for us to label those who labor in this work as imperialists or as people who are perpetuating a cycle of domination? Who am I to judge them from my leather-bound, comfy seat at Duke Divinity School?

As scared as I am to confess to you all, I still believe in hell, I believe people are dying in the world having never known Christ, and I believe that to be a bad thing. Does that make me an imperialist? Am I intolerant? I hope not. Christ, I pray not. Are these beliefs tolerated at Duke? Are conservatives to be tolerated at Duke? Tolerance appears too weak a word for Christians; love would prove a stronger bond. There are exceptions for tolerance. There are none for love. Is this not the Gospel, that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son? God does not tolerate us; tolerance is too passive a thing for God. God loves us, so much so that God could not tolerate us as we once were but changed us all into the likeness of His Son. Would we rather love or tolerate at Duke Divinity School? If we still choose tolerance, I fear our prejudice has simply evolved into a state of intolerant tolerance.

Brad Acton, a first-year M.Div. candidate, is Co-President elect of the Divinity Student Council.