Love is an Open Tomb

He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down, and prayed, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." An angel from Heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. -Luke 41-44



Holy Week has always been my favorite week of the Christian calendar, even ahead of the magic present in Christmastime and my Wesleyan ties to Pentecost. No doubt this results from the closet traditionalist in me who gradually fell in love with Jesus through liturgy, hymns, organ music, open table Communion, and Maundy Thursday seder meals. But this year has been the first time that the meaning of Holy Week clicked with me.

For Palm Sunday I attended Trinity Presbyterian Church in Topeka. I only lasted fifteen minutes of the service before crying. I cry often, but I only do so in private. At times I've joked that my tear ducts cannot release tears if they detect other human beings within a 200-foot radius. But the dark hymns combined with the dark scripture readings combined with the gradual darkness of the room knocked down my ducts' defenses. It was the kind of crying that required tissues and futile stifling, the kind of crying that had me bowing my head so that no one around would notice.

As I look 128 days ahead to my departure to seminary in Chicago, knowing full well that this new step will incite a new series of challenges sure to scare the Hell out of me, the Gethsemane passage smacks me in the face. In the passage, Jesus cries out from under an olive tree for God to take this cup from him. I often pray the same prayer. At times, I want to run from my call like Jonah did. Sometimes I'd rather inhabit the belly of the whale than do what God has called me to do. But I am moved to know that Jesus is with me in crying out to God in fear and confusion. I am in no way equating the struggles I will experience on my path to and in the ministry with Jesus's suffering on the cross. But as someone who has cried out to God to call someone else, I am comforted that even Jesus has done the same.

But Jesus goes further by praying next that God's will be done. Even in his moments of despair, Jesus can pray this without pause. And that is what I can't do. I can utter the Lord's Prayer in unison with those around me with much more ease than I can proclaim them with conviction. I can say that I trust God, but I stew over the unknown. I hear the words leave my mouth, but my heart would stop beating before it would bleed to death. 

Jesus asks for God's will, and Jesus prays it better than I do. Jesus prays it with the knowledge of his death by crucifixion, and Jesus does not waver. Jesus asks that God's will be done so that he can die with us, so that he can endure the pain with us.

Perhaps even more remarkable to me than Jesus's choice to die with us is his decision to rise and live with us again. After Jesus dies, his body is placed in a tomb. We tend to think of tombs and burial grounds as resting places for the dead. This rest implies peace. It is a kind of peace that is well-deserved after living a life of agony in a world complicit in its own suffering. But Jesus leaves his resting place. Jesus leaves the tomb.

The open tomb moves beyond giving us eternal life and represents a sacrifice of peace. The open tomb illustrates Jesus's love for us as he chooses to return to a world of chaos and suffering with us once again. The open tomb demonstrates that Jesus will walk with us in our calls through the despair, confusion, and fear. 

Jesus's resurrection is a triumph over death, of course, but it is also a victory over the pain and suffering prevalent in our world, as Jesus is present every day in bringing the kingdom to us by working and living with us to curb the destruction. 

Love is Gethsemane. Love is crying out to God with us. Love is calling us anyway and walking with us in that call. Love is crucifixion in our place. Love is resurrection. Love is Easter.

Love is an open tomb.

On Language Matters and Why Language Matters

Some people regard language, when reduced to its elements, as a naming process only--a list of words, each corresponding to the thing that it names. This conception is open to criticism at several points. It assumes that ready-made ideas exist before words; it does not tell us whether a name is vocal or psychological in nature; finally, it lets us assume that the linking of a name and a thing is a very simple operation--an assumption that is anything but true." --Ferdinand de Saussure, from Part One in Course in General Linguistics



This morning I contemplated petitioning for a gender-neutral pronoun to replace the singular he/she in contexts where the gender of the subject is unknown. I want a pronoun that can replace the he when talking about God, and that can crush the false gender binary beneath its feet. Some have turned to the plural they in these circumstances. But I've determined I'm still uncomfortable using a plural pronoun in a singular grammatical construction.

Some would argue that this attempt would be futile, that the words we use don't matter nearly as much as our intention or the meaning that the words convey. But try telling a writer, an English major, or anyone interested in language and culture that words don't matter, and Saussurian responses about how language shapes culture will smack those claims right back in your face like a rubber band.

English instructors in high school used to reprimand us for using the thesaurus in Microsoft Word to beef up our language and score higher on the word choice section. In retrospect, that was probably less about condemning us for cheating and more about making sure we chose the most correct words in our essays to maximize the effectiveness of the writing. Similarly, as a poet, I'm no stranger to how changing one word can alter the meaning of the line, the stanza, or even the entire poem. 

And so it is with culture. The way we communicate and the words we use to talk about issues largely shapes the way we think about these issues, which influences behavior. 

The Holy Bible uses male pronouns to address God. As a result, churches placed the man at the top of a gender hierarchy and pointed to God-breathed scripture for back-up. Because the Bible said it, it must be ordained. But I believe that the Bible described God this way because of the society at the time, not because it was actually God's plan.

I bring this up not to incite dialogue about the meaningless chicken-and-egg debate, but to demonstrate how language can reject an entire group of people. It shows how language can tell women that there is no room for them to lead in the church, to be equally respected by parishioners, to be disciples, or to follow Jesus.

But the way we use language does more to a society than reinforce sexism in church. It also perpetuates homophobia, the phrase that's gay associating being queer with being lesser. It can also cause people to question their worth, fat and skinny attaching numbers and qualifiers to a person's function in society. It can also trivialize the experiences of survivors of trauma and humanitarian crises, feminazi and grammarnazi pairing zealous enforcement of equal rights or adherence to grammar norms with genocide by Nazi soldiers, respectively. It can also reward the systems and mechanisms that continue to subordinate and oppress certain groups of people. 

Because I love language, I also know that policing language at the societal level doesn't work and that censorship is, by nature, oppressive. I would never call for political-scale reforms that outlaw language use. But I've determined to pay attention to my language on the individual-level. I want the way I speak to reflect the passion I have for social justice, for peace, and for humanity. I want to demonstrate my respect for human beings and their experiences. I want to speak like I care.

I want a gender-neutral pronoun so that I can simultaneously feel closer to God when addressing God and to show that I know there are people who exist in a spectrum between man and woman. I want to know that there's room for me, just as there is room for all others.

It's not about being politically correct; it's about using our language to demonstrate genuine acknowledgment, acceptance, and respect for the people that our society pushes to the side and tells there is no room for you here. 

It's about using language to flip over tables and deconstruct temples.