Blass for Short

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday: Sunday of the Passion. Two services, both times being tantalized and seduced by Luke’s report of Jesus’ victorious entry, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey to welcoming shouts of “hosanna” as we lot sing “All glory, laud and honor.” Lifted up joyfully, only suddenly to be brought down mentally, emotionally and dumped, left in the existential crisis of our human brutalization of God the Son. Going through this twice tomorrow morning, at noon I will come home too beat down even to think. I will have a large glass of red, then fall into nap, a long sleep that I pray will not torment me with dreams. 

Every spring at this time, we beat ourselves up with the gospel stories of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, sadistic abuse and horrifying death at human hands. We do not face, or we overlook, or we are too naive even to see, that paradoxically, according our own theology, the sacrifice of Calvary was God’s own doing, the will and work of our God’s own self, lex orandi lex credendi:

All glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who made there, by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full,  perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious death and sacrifice, until his coming again. (BCP 334)

Wielding shame, guilt and fear, the church, our theology, create and continually through stories reinforce our identification with Henry the “good” criminal obviously on the left side of Jesus. Luke calls him ὁ ἕτερος which means “the other.” So he is Heteros, Henry Heteros the straight man, which by specious logic, like the rules of CalvinBall, I reckon the deriding thief must have been named either Ortho because he was on the right side of Jesus, or Homo. No, actually Luke says ἐβλασφήμει he's the Blasphemer, so I'll name him Blass for Short. But this is not Sunday School, so I’ll observe the Yield sign and steer back onto the main road. 

Shamed into self-flagellation, we see ourselves at least partly in the guilt-ridden Heteros the Straight Man on his own cross filled with shame as he hangs there stark- butt-naked in full public display, dripping blood, urine and feces, filled with guilt that because of his sins he deserves this cruel and unusual punishment, not only the expectation of justly due now but eternal retribution in the afterlife, for his condemned behavior. So this is us; but in that we are narcissistically driven to point the finger at others, historically we turn shamelessly in mindless fury upon the Jews and blame them as "ChristKillers."

My theological stumbling block is that looking back over my sins from that first dirty diaper right up to this very moment when my sin of the morning is finally breaking down to lenten temptation and eating this chocolate 1928 Chevrolet 

that I was given for keeping Xpistos in Xmas, and that I loved so much I vowed never to eat — I identify more with Blass for Short than with Bud Abbott over there on the Left. Furthermore, at my day of judgment, I’m pleading “not guilty” to being anything or anyone other than Adam in the Image. Once again, ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω.

What, who me, Blass for Short? I really don’t care, at this late moment of +Time+ this is where I am.

DThos+