The Harrowing of Hell

       Down through the tomb's inward arch
       He has shouldered out into Limbo
       to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber:
       the merciful dead, the prophets,
       the innocents just His own age and those
       unnumbered others waiting here
       unaware, in an endless void He is ending
       now, stopping to tug at their hands,
       to pull them from their sarcophagi,
       dazzled, almost unwilling. Didmas,
       neighbor in death, Golgotha dust
       still streaked on the dried sweat of his body
       no one had washed and anointed, is here,
       for sequence is not known in Limbo;
       the promise, given from cross to cross
       at noon, arches beyond sunset and dawn.
       All these He will swiftly lead
       to the Paradise road: they are safe.
       That done, there must take place that struggle
       no human presumes to picture:
       living, dying, descending to rescue the just
       from shadow, were lesser travails
       than this: to break
       through earth and stone of the faithless world
       back to the cold sepulchre, tearstained
       stifling shroud; to break from them
       back into breath and heartbeat, and walk
       the world again, closed into days and weeks again,
       wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit
       streaming through every cell of flesh
       so that if mortal sight could bear
       to perceive it, it would be seen
       His mortal flesh was lit from within, now,
       and aching for home. He must return,
       first, in Divine patience, and know
       hunger again, and give
       to humble friends the joy
       of giving Him food -- fish and a honeycomb.

       Denise Levertov

File under Faith.

3:39:16 PM    

The Suffering Servant

Yet ours were the sufferings he was bearing,
ours the sorrows he was carrying,
while we thought of him as someone being punished
and struck with affliction by God;
whereas he was being wounded for our rebellions,
crushed because of our guilt;
the punishment reconciling us fell on him,
and we have been healed by his bruises

After the ordeal he has endured,
he will see the light and be content.
By his knowledge, the upright one, my servant will justify many
by taking their guilt on himself.

--Isaiah 53:4-5, 11

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7:12:05 PM    

I Have To Keep Reminding Myself

You have heard how it was said: Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I say this to you: offer no resistance to the wicked. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well . . . You have heard how it was said, You will love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say this to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to rise on the bad as well as the good, and sends down rain to fall on the upright and the wicked alike. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even the tax collectors do as much? And if you save your greetings for your brothers, are you doing anything exceptional? Do not even the gentiles do as much? You must therefore set no bounds to your love, just as your Father sets none to his.

--The Gospel According to Matthew 5:38-39, 43-48

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8:05:32 AM    

The Passion of the Christ

I've been thinking about what I want to say about this movie since I saw it on Ash Wednesday. It's gripping, powerful, disturbing and moving. That goes without saying. I didn't find the film to be anti-semitic, but then, I'm not Jewish. I've also thought about how important it was for this film to show the true brutality of Jesus' death. If you want to know the clinical medical details, you can read this. Anyway, I found this post over at Walloworld which says it way better than I ever could:

The Passion of the Christ isn't a "pretty" film. It eschews what Hollywood typically looks for in a blockbuster hit - namely, enough of various components (action, humor, romance, maybe a little skin) to appeal to as broad a cross-section of the population as possible. One need look no further than last year's Pirates of the Caribbean to see what I mean in terms of Hollywood's favored paradigm.

But Gibson ignored all that: he told his movie his way, which was to emphasize not the goody-two-shoes Gospel of group hugs and inside voices but rather the bloody sacrifice of one man laying down his life not only for his "friends," but for all humanity. Liberals find no meaning in this, and so the violence and gore seems completely unnecessary - unlike, I assume, all the decapitations in Kill Bill.

However, I'm not sure that Coulter has it right when she says Christianity is a "blank slate" for liberals. Rather, they've creatd a sort of zero-sum vision of what Christianity should be, a vision founded upon a vague notion of behavior instead of faith. In the liberal vision of Christianity, nobody believes in the divinity of this guy, any more than they believe he actually sacrificed himself for anybody; that's just silly and gross. Instead, Christians are determined by how "nice" they are, how much they "love" one another.

The problem with this is that Christianity is not a stand-in for basic morality; all societies hold certain standards of behavior as fundamental, as is reflected by laws and principles that far pre-date Christianity. While the moral aspects of Christianity aren't incidental to the faith, they are there only as part of a larger whole: namely, faith in God and his son.

It's rather like the whole "great divide" thing: you can put all sorts of emphasis on Christians who stress that we must "love one another" and those who focus on "reaching the lost." But when Christ was asked what is the "great commandment," he replied:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commendment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 22: 47-40."

The idea that we can "love our neighbor" apart from the obligation to love the Lord is completely foreign to scripture. It is certainly possible to be a wonderful person in behavioral terms and not be a Christian. The problem liberals have is the suggestion that there might be a reason to be a Christian apart from being nice; they object to the notion that there's anything more than good manners involved in how we should live.

Amen brother. Amen.

File under Faith.

12:22:35 AM