I am taking 2 wonderful seminary classes, and I'm so happy that I get to end my MDiv on this note, with two wonderful classes in my last term, no drudgery work. Last night's class is a New Testament class called "Birth, Death, and Back Again: Christmas and Easter." It looks at Christmas and Easter texts without the in between, and I am loving it. In my first year, it was offered, but it was onground, so I couldn't take it. This semester, it's virtual. It's not offered every semester, so I'm glad that I had a chance to take it--an advantage to taking a slightly slower route to graduation.
Last night we discussed Matthew 2: 1-23, the visit of the magi, the flight to Egypt, the massacre of Bethlehem boys, and the return. It was the kind of class meeting where I took extensive notes and thought, I need to remember these details for next year's Christmas season sermons.
Of course, the most powerful part of last night's class is one that I'll probably use more in funeral sermons than in Christmas sermons. We talked about Herod's slaughter of the Bethlehem boys under the age of 2 and asked the question of why Joseph gets a dream that saves Jesus, but the other parents in Bethlehem don't. Does God allow genocide?
My professor, Dr. Laura Holmes, finished our discussion of the death of the innocents by reminding us that salvation/redemption/liberation comes with a high price, and not just for Jesus; there's lots and lots of damage to those around him.
In other words, Jesus came into our world that is ruled by empires, by genocidal despots, by the people in charge who are scared and thus make terrible decisions. I realize that that on some level, my professor's response doesn't answer the question. My own answer, as people who read every blog entry of mine will know, is that God isn't all powerful and that evil forces do have a lot of power, and that those two facts often lead to bloodshed, which is not what God wants, but God can't always prevent it.
I admire my professor's ability to give us insight and encourage class discussion. I hate the classes that are too focused on student presentations. I am paying for the professor's expertise--if I wanted to be taught by peers, who may or may not have extensive experience, I can do that much more cheaply than a seminary class. Last night we had both expertise and really insightful class discussion.
When class started, I thought about one of my all-time favorite poems I've ever written, a poem that imagines what might have happened had the magi showed up at the Southern border. The final poem had multiple strands: Epiphany, the perpetual crisis on the border, the crisis between east and west that ultimately led to the taking down of the wall between East and West Germany, a bit of the underground railroad. As the class went on, lines of new poetry kept bubbling up in my brain. Happily, I had a blank legal pad nearby, so I wrote them down. It was wonderful to feel inspired.
I am not sure I can transform those lines into anything that I like as much as the poem that I'll post below, the poem that was published in Sojourners in 2020.
Border Lands
I am the border agent who looks
the other way. I am the one
who leaves bottled water in caches
in the harsh border lands I patrol.
I am the one who doesn’t shoot.
I let the people assemble,
with their flickering candles a shimmering
river in the dark. “Let them pray,”
I tell my comrades. “What harm
can come of that?” We holster
our guns, and open a bottle to share.
I am the superior
officer who loses the paperwork
or makes up the statistics.
I am the one who ignores
your e-mails, who cannot be reached
by text or phone, the one
with a full inbox.
When the wise ones
come, as they do, full of dreams,
babbling about the stars
that lead them or messages
from gods or angels,
I open the gates. I don’t alert
the authorities up the road.
Let the kings and emperors
pay for their own intelligence.
I should scan the horizons,
but I tend the garden
I have planted by the shed
where we keep the extra
barbed wires. I grow a variety
of holy trinities: tomatoes, onions,
peppers, beans, squashes of all sorts.
I plant a hedge of sunflowers,
each bright head a north star.
No comments:
Post a Comment