Lift high the cross
Shekelton, John
cleavage is made between the idea of the objective and the subjective. One of the points Oates wanted to make in her piece is that it isn't that simple, and she is right. But was the Bible ever...
...The tall cross was up next to the old altar, held up by two white-robed ministers...
...I think the usher who was at the rear of the line of adorers had the same fear as I. He leaned over to speak to the woman in the wheelchair, gesturing over to the side...
...He still had a mild tremolo, and I heard the words of Jesus vibrating as if they were sung for the first time with an exhausted emotion...
...I wondered how many burdens other people around me had raised up, lifting high their own crosses as the cross of Jesus passed over...
...At the cross she bent down as the rest of us did to kiss the shiny wood, one man at each arm supporting her...
...Matthew has Jesus speak from a mountain (to be like Moses...
...And on Good Friday we celebrate that mysterious link between us and the dying Christ...
...In front of us in Minneapolis sat a small family--father, mother, ten-year-old son...
...Was he lying about history...
...We are talking about something more than history here...
...I was on edge...
...She shook her head and stayed in line...
...This day was different...
...It is an exalted cross, although it lies flat out...
...I remembered seeing Roger Schutz, the founder of Taiz6, at the end of vespers...
...This approach to what we read and what we hear has always been part of biblical understanding...
...The ministers and choir, most robed in white, walked throughout the church, some feathering incense into the air...
...The father, like so many Americans, bore too much weight for his frame...
...What we have to see is that the prodigal son and his merciful father are, in a way we must learn to understand or miss the point of Christianity, more real than (say) Warren Harding or the Teapot Dome scandal...
...A liturgist friend whispered into my ear about imperial Rome...
...His reach could not encircle her...
...Our hopes are without horizon yet our lives are severely limited and our understanding clouded...
...Is this not an essential question of our Western, psychological religion...
...She had turned around to look back with the rest of us as the cross bearers approached our section...
...I passed by him, only several feet separating us...
...The young man followed along with her as she rolled fonvard...
...This has to do, finally, with recovering a way of understanding that we have lost...
...Life is a drama of personalities, relationships, insights, and denouements...
...I wondered if years of prayer and contemplation had intensified the core of him...
...Was the black man next to me tired of racism and cultural segregation...
...Was she crying...
...Whenever I had heard the phrase "lift high the cross," I had imagined the upright beam of {he cross pointing to heaven, held high as a beacon or banner to guide the crowd or as a sign of victory, something that Constantine would have understood...
...Commonweal 9 March 27, 1998...
...Not even a fundamentalist would deny that there was no historical prodigal son--but Jesus says, "There was a man who had two sons...
...His arm was too short...
...That one out of work...
...Or did people raise up their strengths, their willingness to help, their confidence, their love...
...I heard again the solemn, heavy sound of the old man's song...
...But was the Bible ever intended primarily as "history" or "literal truth," and can this be separated from "metaphorical truth...
...When she reached the foot of the sanctuary, I wondered if the red-garbed priest might have the cross brought down to her...
...I have a new image now...
...It was natural to them, I guess, like grapes on their hills or sheep in their fields...
...Halfway through the singing of the Taiz6 chant, the mother leaned forward slightly...
...The Passion was sung by choir and cantors...
...I was surprised that the brooding, city-wide atmosphere had sifted into the vast space of the Basilica of Saint Mary in Minneapolis...
...It struck me that most of us were there on Good Friday, saddened that our arms cannot embrace everything we experience or make whoIe what is broken...
...After the singing of the Passion, the ministers moved back into the center of the church where there hung a tall, simple plank cross...
...Whom do you seek...
...Next to this richness, a distinction between literal and metaphorical truth seems pretty thin...
...There were at least six steps leading to it...
...I remembered Taiz6 which I had visited as a young man...
...I looked around at others...
...I wondered how- they knew the craft of it...
...Luke puts his different version of the same set of teachings on a plain...
...And because of the limitations of our own mindset, we can run the danger of saying that if it isn't "fact" or historical, it must be "merely" metaphorical...
...This could be the most important meaning of tradition, which means "what is handed on...
...Like Jesus, we suffer...
...What matters is what is said: love your enemies, forgive one another as God has forgiven you...
...There is not enough of us, yet there is so much of reality...
...Origen knew that Paul did not write the Epistle to the Hebrews, but he knew that what mattered was the text, not the author...
...Nothing so dramatic occurred...
...That one hungry...
...I watched her position her feet on the ground, attempting to find her balance, I supposed...
...They lowered the cross from the ceiling and detached it from its metal fixtures...
...As the cross passed near me, I leaned over, not so much to support it as to touch it...
...John Shekelton LIFT HIGH THE CROSS Joining the Savior on Good Friday went to Good Friday services last year on a cloudy afternoon...
...What we have to understand is that something as real as the Resurrection--which I believe truly happened--cannot be confined by history, which is only our account of things...
...He stretched his thin arm across her shoulder...
...I was so used to the Sunday joy of the place, the grace of the marble statuary, the excitement of the congregation, and the radiance of the stained glass windows on a sunny morning--bright like a summer garden...
...The rest really is distraction, because the more you hang around these words, the more you can see the consistency and understand that the different nuances also instruct, like midrash...
...Two ushers held her by both arms, and the three of them carefully ascended the steps...
...There are truths that are historical, and more than historical...
...He was greeting someone, but I looked at him closely, i remember his eyes being clark and luminous at the same time...
...The faithful trudged in, hunkered down, kept their coats on...
...I had been amazed then how" harmony warmed up the air when the people sang...
...Lift high the cross...
...I heard good singers adding intricacies to the tune...
...It was not the beauty of the old monk's voice that haunted me, although his singing was fine...
...The point is not to add new history to old history, or to claim that the Exodus account is deficient as history...
...The service began with a processional measured by a pulse of kettle drums...
...At the beginning of the adoration of the cross, the congregation sang the Taiz6 chant: "Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom...
...It's a simple chant on a couple of notes with a little walk up and down at the ends and middle of the line...
...It is energized by many hands, a piece of wood floating over a sea of regrets, fears, sadness, faith, hope, and courage...
...I saw an HIV positive man I know hold up the cross...
...The part of Jesus was sung by a young man...
...The son turned to look at her...
...What if Jesus himself never said it, but this was Luke's way of getting across part of Jesus' teaching...
...Or would she raise her voice and make some commentary about handicap access...
...There is a reali~ beyond our accounting, and we need a language richer than the language of history to begin to get at it...
...The ministers were bringing the cross down so they could pass it over the congregation--literally...
...His eyes sang as eloquently as the old monk's voice...
...Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom...
...Precisely...
...An elegant and aesthetically pleasing metaphor may be dead wrong, and a homely one right on target...
...John Shekelton lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota...
...Was that one alone...
...When the cross approached, buoyant and alive--even dangerous--she raised her veined hands high, cupping them slightly, sig.Commonweal 8 March27, 1998 naling, it seemed, that she was ready to bear the whole weight of the cross as it passed over...
...After reaching the foot of the sanctuary, the woman set the wheelchair's brakes and slowly lifted herself out of the chair...
...When Jesus spoke of the prodigal son and his merciful father, or of the Pharisee and the tax collector, he was telling stories...
...The visual effect was like the movement of a centipede turned upside down...
...Facts and history do not exhaust reality, and metaphors either point to something true or they do not...
...After the fourth repetition, I started to hear harmonies...
...Was the dark-haired woman in the chic white coat battling cancer...
...Toward the end of the adoration of the cross, a middleaged woman in a worn wheelchair, her head wrapped in something white, rolled up to join the end of the line...
...Quem queritis...
...In one commentary on the Exodus, the angels who rejoice when the troops of Pharoah are drowned are told to be silent by God: "How dare you rejoice when my creatures, the Egyptians, are dying...
...At each of the four quadrants of pews, they sent the cross above the crowd, individual congregants keeping it aloft and moving it along with their arms...
...The mother was lean and attractive...
...It draws out emotions and returns a balm...
...The son was quiet through most of the service...
...The point here is not history...
...As he sang I heard another voice in my mind...
...I have a 1960 recording of the Passion from the Abbey of Saint Pierre de Solesmes in which an elder of the community sings the part of Jesus...
...Perhaps there was a ramp up to the altar hidden at the back...
...There was quiet...
...and there are truths that can be expressed metaphorically, but they are more than metaphors...
...Was this a protest...
...When I touched it I thought of all that was wrong in my life, and tears began to form in my winter-weary eyes...
...As the ministers carried the cross to our quadrant, I noticed an old woman in a faded blue-cloth coat two pews ahead and to my left...
Vol. 125 • March 1998 • No. 6
