Demonstrations of Love and Mercy

I have been trying to read poetry books in one big gulp.  Ideally, I'd then go back and reread, but I don't always get to that part.  I love seeing how lines and symbols and themes wind their way through a single volume.

Yesterday I read American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes--wow what a book!

I read it in the hour while my spouse was at choir rehearsal, the hour before church starts.  How strange to sit in the sanctuary and come across these lines:

Christianity is a religion built around a father

Who does not rescue his son. It is the story

of a son whose father is a ghost

In a way, it's true--but it's a different understanding of the crucifixion than the one I have and a different idea of God.  I don't necessarily believe in a God that can swoop in and save us--where does free will fit into that view of God.  And yet, just the way that humans can sometimes intervene in each other's lives and change a trajectory, perhaps God can too.

It's a powerful collection of poems, full of interesting lines and twists and plays on words, like this one "failed landlord with a people of color/Complex."  The book explores politics, race, parental relationships, the difficulties of U.S. history.

After church, we watched Love and Mercy, the film about two periods of Brian Wilson's life.  It was fascinating to watch the music making process of both Wilson alone and with the Beach Boys.  And I loved the story line of the later Wilson, the one where love can save a person.

Let me see if I can tie this back to the crucifixion place.  I believe that Jesus was crucified because the empire of Rome found him threatening; crucifixion was reserved for enemies of the state.  It's an interesting idea, that Christ's message of God's transforming love was so threatening to the empire of the day that they decided to get rid of him.

Could anyone have saved Jesus once he was on that collision course with Rome?  We could spend lifetimes debating that.  But I don't believe that God required Jesus be crucified as a blood sacrifice to get rid of humanity's sin.  I don't believe in that kind of God or in the theology of substitutionary atonement.

But I do believe in the power of love to save us.  Yesterday gave me some great examples, from the book of poems to the story of Brian Wilson to the gospel declared in church to singing with my spouse at the end of the day.

Now, to get the day old bread from Publix--another way of showing love to students who need that kind of grace.