Entering Holy Week this year I'm finding myself entering into an ongoing reformation of how I look at the palms - the supper with friends - the betrayal - the condemnation - the execution/lynching - and yes, even the resurrection. I previously have written about my adventures in coming to grip with a spirituality as a life-practice/adventure. Therefore, I wrote about this event.
The foundational story of this new understanding of my spirituality came in a news story in the New York Times that made its way across the country. It has become the way I now define urban spirituality and the spiritual journey that awaits all of us - just as we are and just where we are. Here‟s the story that has deepened my sense of God available within a life that is so ordinary and present I often forget to pause and be a part of its fullness.
A fifty year old construction worker, Wesley Autrey, was standing on the platform of one of New York City’s subway stations. He had his four and six year old daughters with him. And then - in the twinkling of a moment - a young man, Cameron Hollopeter, fell to the subway platform during a seizure. Autrey and another woman went to his aid. Once Hollopeter seemed to be stabilized, he stood up but stumbled and fell off the platform and down onto the tracks. As the lights of an approaching train entered the far end of the station, Autrey jumped from the platform, pulled Hollipeter between the train tracks, and laid his body on top of Hollopeter’s. The train was not able to stop before it reached the two men. Several cars passed over them before the train finally did come to a stop. Those two men were in such tight quarters beneath the train that Autrey later showed people his wool hat that was stained with grease from the bottom side of the train.
This in itself is an amazing story – it was news. And yet, the stream of life that was moving through that subway station in those intense moments was much deeper and overflowing than Autrey’s leap onto the tracks. The joy of God’s Reign was brilliantly shining through those moments of intense action and profound silence amid the cacophony of urban subway sounds.
You see, in the moments of Hollopeter’s seizure and then the men wrestling down on the tracks and being pinned beneath the moving train, his two young girls were left up on the subway platform in the care of others - strangers. When the train finally came to a stop, Autrey yelled, “We’re okay. I’ve got two daughters up there. Let them know their father’s okay.” Not only did Autrey leap into the moment at hand in order to uphold and honor the life of another person, he expected that others would honor his children and would keep them safe. For that moment, the universe and all that is and will be - was blessed with the presence of the image of God alive in the flesh. The Reign of God breaks in and becomes incarnate among us no matter where we might be. Those who enter into the life of the Reign of God enter with the expectation that there will be others leaping into its life – the city of God was present in all its promise and saving power.
Holy Week is now a reminder that we are invited to leap into the life in which we are already present. It is not waiting for a designated time or going to another place. Yes, it is good to make plans as to when we will dive in and be with others to serve and to be served. We must also beware that between the times and places we plan to take part in the healing of humanity and the care of all we are walking and living and standing within the potential life of the Reign of God just by being human in the places at hand. Holy Week is full of Jesus' adventures of life in and around Jerusalem and the Temple and the Place of the Skull and the Empty Tomb - but that was his life all along the way. Life happened all around him. There were no agendas as to how he would engage the day. There was only the notion that he was a Child of God walking in the midst of life as it is everyday - but, within that notion, there emerged a life into which he willingly entered. Therefore, the moments of the Gospel stories are not fantastic, they are simply the ordinary made brilliant by his way of being engaged without hesitation - like Wesley Autrey leaping onto the track and expecting others to leap into the story at hand as people with a vision for the welfare of others.
When I am not sure of what to do in the midst of the ordinary time of the Reign of God that is all around me, I hold three words very close to my heart. They were offered to me by a teacher and neighbor: Leland Elhard. Those words are: vulnerability - availability - mastery.
The moment at hand longs for us to be vulnerable. It is the movement from being self-consumed and turned-in-on-self into a moment in which we drop our armor, let go of who we want to be or what others expect from us, and letting loose of everything - for the well-being of the other. That is for me a frightening move - even if all I do is merely consider the move and do no move.
The moment at hand longs for us to be available. Take the steps - make the moves that are necessary for us to engage others. Availability can be celebration - it can be service - it can be that presence that is enough to heal - it can be the risky step, especially if it is into the life of a stranger.
Those moments in which we are able to be vulnerable and available we are in the midst of the Holy Weeks of our lives. In those moments, the way-things-are-supposed-to-go are not blindly followed. My new way of saying that to myself is I'll have none of that anymore. That is, the structures of the day that keep us from being fully alive within God's Reign must be ignored and I need to jump onto the track and lay my life on the line. Before you think that I do that or have ever done that (as I am still alive -and I am usually a coward), I want to refer back to Jesus' actions along the way - the hearings - the cast out of demons - the resistance to the reigning religious structures. Each small step - each action and word that disrupted the world as he was moving along the way - was one in which he was inspired to bow and bend in order to be wholly present to reshape the life in which he entered.
Those moments in which vulnerability and availability come together in the times and places of ordinary life will at times reveal the mastery of life within the Reign of God. That mastery may look like a complete failure - a complete blunder - a complete misstep and miscalculation. It is usually called death on the cross. This mastery is not permanent - it is not lasting - it is easily turned into something else - usually a success story the promises that we never need to be vulnerable or available - or a story that promises personal security forevermore.
Too often, Holy Week and the Resurrection that follows, leads to no mastery at all. We embrace the story but never take it on as our own - in, with, and under this day at hand. Yet, when we see it breaking into the day, we are amazed -caught up in a moment of awe - drawn to tears. To see and hear and touch moments in which the Reign of God is demonstrated through lives vulnerably available for and with others - reveals the wonder of our humanity. Like Autrey leaping to be with Hollopeter, there was no calculation - no risk assessment. There is simply the life of God's Reign that pulls back the curtain of empty religious games and hands us another place and time to enter that which is often called eternal life. Hallelujah.
TRRR
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