All I know is that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.
And if that is what the ancient Egyptian believed, then we are, at least, cousins.
Hugh and I were in Egypt at the time of the sugar cane cutting. It is harvested today as it was thousands of years ago, cut by hand, with the great sheaves of green loaded onto donkeys’ and camels’ backs. Time intersected for us as we watched the people working, saw the lush green of land near the Nile, with the Sahara encroaching. Where there was no water, no irrigation, there was sand.
We saw the statue of Rameses II, made famous in Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias.” The enormous statue lay in pieces on the sand, and we recited Shelley’s lines: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
Our guide was of Islam, and her loving religion was impressive and, rather than making me feel estranged from her, made me feel very close. She was on fire with love of her country and its history, and surely she gave us the equivalent of an advanced college seminar as we moved from temple to temple, archaeological site to archaeological site. It was hard not to let our minds become a jumble of gods and pharaohs and warriors and priests and animals and the crowns of upper and lower Egypt.
What we saw told us more about ancient Egypt than it did about the eternal God, as all civilizations reveal more of themselves in their religious practices than they reveal of God. And I began to wonder what we reveal of ourselves as we struggle toward love and understanding of our Maker. What will be said of us in a thousand years if historians study our troubled civilization? What will they write about our forms of worship as they collect artifacts from our churches and cathedrals and temples? Will they understand that for us God is a God of love?
If the ancient Egyptians worshipped what they feared (as well as the celebrating baboons clapping their hands), we worship the God we love and trust. Or do we? Do we show that in our lives? In our care for and concern of each other? If we assume that anybody is outside the Maker’s loving concern, aren’t we revealing more about ourselves than about God?
There is probably much that we do not understand, or that we misinterpret, as we think of the Egyptians with their rams and scarabs and crocodiles. A friend of mine in the Middle East heard someone say in horror, “Oh, the Christians are the people who drink blood.” What a terrible misunderstanding. Perhaps many times we equally fail to understand other peoples and their beliefs.
For the ancient Egyptian there was love and trust in their faith as well as fear. The pharaohs were often referred to as “shepherds,” and the god Osiris was said to be the shepherd of the underworld. A pyramid text reads, “Thou hast taken them up in thine arms as a shepherd his flock.”
The shepherd imagery was particularly vivid to us because we were in Egypt at the time of the new lambs, the baby kids, the foals, the colts. The land was radiant with spring. We saw ancient water wheels being turned by water buffaloes, heads heavy with their curving horns. We saw the people working the land wearing their galabiyehs, those loose-flowing and practical garments which have been worn by working Egyptians for centuries. They are loose and comfortable in the heat; they give protection against flies, and against the sun.
“Thou hast taken them up in thine arms as a shepherd his flock.” Did that lovely image pre- or post-date Psalm 23? Was it not a prefiguring of our own Good Shepherd? For me it was beyond contradiction because Christ was, before anything began, always is, and always will be.
I saw a young woman wearing a red sweat shirt patterned with dozens of small white sheep, and one black sheep, and I thought of Jesus, the good shepherd, leaving the ninety-nine white sheep and going after the one strayed black sheep, searching until he found the black sheep and put it across his shoulders and carried it home. And he said that there will be more rejoicing over the one repentant sinner than over all the virtuous people who have not strayed. I pray that I, too, will rejoice in the return of the black sheep, and not be like the elder brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, who really didn’t want the father to forgive the repentant black sheep, much less give a party for him.
It is a human tendency to get caught in the self-righteousness of the elder brother, so that we don’t want the shepherd to go after the strayed sheep, but to stay in the pen with the virtuous flock. And that is just not scriptural. It is, of course, the forensic stumbling block. If we are forensic, do we then become black sheep ourselves?
In the ancient temples, we saw faces and legs of Egyptian gods scratched out by the early Christians as they took refuge there. Despite their acceptance of Christ as their Lord, we were told, they still believed in the old magic, and the face and feet were supposed to have the most power, so these early Christians took sharp stones and mutilated the paintings and carvings.
Later, in the Coptic museum in Cairo, we saw stone carvings made by the early Christians which had been similarly mutilated by the Muslims.
What are we human beings telling the future about ourselves in what we proclaim about God? Are we saying something loving and creative, or are we being arrogant and spreading fear and suspicion? Are we furthering the coming of the Kingdom, or are we setting up barriers and road blocks?
As I read the papers, listen to the news, I am concerned about what we are telling the future about ourselves, as Christians fight Muslims in Lebanon, as Protestants fight Catholics in Ireland, as acts of terrorism are performed in the name of religion. What are the Right-to-Lifers telling about themselves as they heave bombs into abortion clinics? What are women telling as they proclaim absolute rights to their own bodies?
The Quakers have a way of meeting, without contempt, those with whom they disagree, or those who threaten them. There’s a story of a Quaker who heard noises in his house one night, and went downstairs to find a burglar busily stashing things into a pillow case. The Quaker said, “Friend, I would do thee no harm for the world and all that is in it, but thou standest where I am about to shoot.” The burglar left.
And yet, there are Protestant and Catholic women who cross battle lines in Ireland to pray with each other. I wonder if that will happen in Lebanon—Christian and Muslim women praying together for peace. White and black women praying together in South Africa? It’s not impossible. To cross battle lines to pray is a dimension of the cross which women have long understood. And perhaps it is a special symbol of the cross to cross battle lines?
For the human being the cross is an ancient symbol, used thousands of years before Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. The Bushmen of South Africa painted small red crosses in their caves, and it is thought that these small, apricot-skinned people originally came to South Africa from Egypt. They listened for guidance from God in the tapping of the stars. Sometimes on a cold, clear night I think I can hear their tapping, too. The Bushmen were not separated from the stars, or the coinherence of all of creation. Other peoples have tried to exterminate these tiny, untamed people. Surely their loss is felt in great waves throughout the galaxies, an agonizing butterfly effect.
Jesus of Nazareth could not be tamed, either, and so he, too, had to be wiped out, hung on a cross in the dust and the heat and the flies. Those who cannot be tamed are disturbers of the universe, and without them we would be infinitely poorer. But because they are a threat to the control of local governments they must be put down, ruthlessly.
The true universe-disturber has no arrogance. The arrogance and vanity of the terrorist is chilling. It takes humility and faith in God’s loving concern to cross battle lines, be they geographical or ideological.
I was given a small Mexican cross, a copy of an ancient one, many thousands of years old, and it, like the cross of the African Bushman, gives me a feeling of continuity and hope. The second person of the Trinity was with us “before the worlds began to be. He is alpha and omega, he the source, the ending,” as the
ancient hymn says. All of God has always been part of creation, part of the story, taking us in the everlasting arms as the shepherd clasps the lost lamb.
I don’t want a closed-in religion of smug sheep, a religion in which all the answers are given and honest questions are discouraged. I don’t want a religion which allows me to feel superior, or which gives me the truth denied to others.
So what am I looking for? What is my hope?
First, I must accept that I am broken, as all we human beings are broken, but that my creative urge toward healing and health is strong, and that I can be healed with the blood of the Lamb (how lovely that Christ is both shepherd and lamb!). I want to be willing to do God’s will, but not to superimpose my will on el’s. The distinction is not always easy. I want to help the battered bride to become beautiful. I want to be ready to meet the bridegroom, and so be part of the heavenly kingdom and the redemption of all things.
Sometimes something small and unexpected will turn on a brilliant light for me. Every other summer for the past several years I have taught a writers’ workshop at Mundelein College. Many of the people who are taking this two-week course for credit are teachers, going on for their Masters degrees, or their Ph.D.s. One afternoon in the large room overlooking Lake Michigan, where we sat in a circle, we spent an hour sharing stories which meant something to us. One of these stories was that of the old man by the river who did not recognize what God sent him. A few of the stories brought healing tears. And one, for me, brought glory.
A teacher of small children told us of a child who said to her, “Jesus is God’s show and tell.”
How simple and how wonderful! Jesus is God’s show and tell. That’s the best theology of incarnation I’ve ever heard. Jesus said, if you do not understand me as a little child, you will not be able to enter the kingdom of heaven.
That child’s insight works more powerfully for me than dogma. When I am informed that Jesus of Nazareth was exactly like us except sinless, I block. If he was sinless he wasn’t exactly like us. That makes no sense. Jesus was like us because he was born like any human child, grew up like the rest of us, asked questions in the temple when he was twelve, lost his temper in righteous indignation at the money lenders in the temple, grieved when at the end his disciples abandoned him. I want Jesus to be like us because he is God’s show and tell, and too much dogma obscures rather than reveals the likeness.
If Jesus is God’s show and tell, the wonder, the marvel is that Jesus and the Father are one. Not I, says Jesus over and over, but the Father in me, the Father who is such love that he is willing to be in the story with us.
Alleluia.
But God’s show and tell includes the cross. For us all.
Many years ago when our children were small, I encountered my first Episcopal monk, a priest of the Order of the Holy Cross. Although I am what is called “a cradle Episcopalian,” I hadn’t known that there were Episcopal monks or nuns. This was a gentle young man who had just come back to this country after several years in Liberia, and who had been brought to Crosswicks for tea by a mutual friend. He said, “Don’t be afraid to make the sign of the cross. All it means is: God be in my thoughts, and in my heart, and in my left hand, and in my right hand, all through this day and night.” That was another illumination for me. It helps me to ask God to be in me, to be in my head and my heart and my left hand and my right hand. That may tell more about me than about God, but I am not ashamed to admit that I need God in me, in all of me, in my down-sitting and in my up-rising.
While I was in bed last summer, bleeding, hurting, a friend sent me a tape of a record of Hildegarde of Bingen, A Feather on the Breath of God. Hildegarde, a medieval abbess, was on fire with her passionate love of God, and she was not afraid to use passionate language to express her love. Listening to the singing on the tape was another part of my healing. Hildegarde’s love of the Creator and of creation reminded me of Ikhnaton, the only pharaoh we know about who worshipped one God with adoring love, Aton, the sun, the giver of life. Ikhnaton’s hymns to Aton would have been understood by Hildegarde. Perhaps they sometimes sing together now.
The sun is feared as well as revered in desert countries, where the fierce rays of the heat of the day burn and parch, and only the annual flooding of the Nile keeps Egypt’s shores green. Ikhnaton wrote love poems to his one God which, as our guide recited them, reminded me of John of the Cross as well as Hildegarde of Bingen. During this young pharaoh’s brief reign he rejected polytheism, forbidding the worship of many gods, and turned all the passion of his adoration to Aton. This inevitably shook the domain of the powerful priests and they had to get rid of him. They murdered him.
He had some kind of glandular imbalance which deformed his lower body, swelling his abdomen so that he was pear-shaped. But unlike other pharaohs he allowed sculptures to be made of himself as he actually was, rather than demanding the usual glorified image—what the pharaohs wanted people to think they were like.
I was awed by Ikhnaton’s bravery in overriding the extremely powerful and ruthless priests of the old gods, and proclaiming the one God. I was awed also by his acceptance of himself exactly as he was, without one plea. Our guide, too, felt drawn to him, saying that he was somewhat like Sadat, defying danger in order to remain true to what he believed—and that was the greatest compliment she could have given him.
I knew, as I stood looking at the statue of Ikhnaton, at his sensitive, intelligent face, that there is nothing he could say, nothing Hildegarde of Bingen, or John of the Cross, or Lancelot Andrewes, or any single one of us can say about God which is adequate. What we say about God may explain us, our warm- or cold-heartedness, our humility or our vanity, our loving forgiveness or our resentful demands for vindication. But it cannot explain God.
Probably the Egyptian priests thought they were correct in killing Ikhnaton, just as the high priest thought he was doing the right thing in condemning Jesus to crucifixion. To wipe out anyone from God’s love is a form of murder, even if it is not literally acted out. One way or another, most of us commit some form of murder every day, and we need to repent, and ask for forgiveness, so that we may turn to love in a world which is anything but fair.
Then I thought of the parable of the workers in the vineyard, and how we really don’t think it’s fair for the owner of the vineyard to give the man who worked only the last hour the same wages as those who worked all through the heat of the day. After all, it’s not fair! But when we insist on that kind of fairness, aren’t we thinking forensically? This kind of thinking inevitably leads to a forensic view of Jesus and the cross—a view which may be long on justice, but is short on love.
If we receive nothing but justice, untempered by mercy, not one of us will be invited to the heavenly banquet, not even those who teach that the banquet is prepared only for the selected few.
It won’t do. What about all those ancient Egyptians with their longing for resurrection? What about Ikhnaton and his love of the one God? Can there never be a party for them? Will not God bring out the silken robes and order the fatted calf to be prepared? What about those who worshipped what they feared—the vulture, the cobra, the crocodile? And the baboons, clapping their hands for joy at the rising of the sun?
Will all those born before Christ be excluded from the party? Didn’t God make them, too? I don’t have any answers here, just a lot of questions and hopes, about a God of love who prefers parties to punishments.
I don’t understand why the idea of emptying hell upsets some people so. To be upset about it is to think forensically, and while we all suffer from a touch of this, we can surely recognize our own lack of generosity. If we don’t, how can we enjoy the party any more than did the prodigal son’s elder brother? Do we, too, want to go out and sulk?
I don’t need to know how God is going to make it all come out all right in the end, but it is God, not us creatures, who will see to the coming of the Kingdom, and el is not going to fail with Creation, not with me, not with any of us.
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God be in my thoughts, and in my heart. In my left hand and in my right hand. Atone me. At-one me with you and your love. Help me to pray for those I fear as well as those I love, knowing that you can take my most ungracious prayers and give them grace. Whenever we pray, we are tapping the power of creation, and that’s a mighty power. There are a lot of battle lines to cross in order for us to pray with each other, and with the rest of the world, with those who do not agree with us, with those who worship God in ways we do not understand. But that is all right. We do not have to understand. We do have to try to turn to love, to know that the Lord who created all, also loves all that which was made.
It is easy for me to pray for the Egyptologist who taught me so much. She loves God, and so we have that in common. That is enough.
It is far less easy for me to pray for the terrorists, or even for those two men who sat in the courtroom last January and wished the jurors no good. It is not easy for me to pray for the forces of evil in this world expressing themselves through their lust for power, their greed, their corruption in high places. But if I take the cross seriously, that is part of the demand. These are people for whom Jesus died.
At this point I’m not sure I want those two men who stared so malevolently at us poor jurors to come to the party, but it won’t be complete until they are there, come to themselves, turned, returned to love, part of the at-one-ment.
Somehow I am helped when I remember the baboons clapping their hands and calling for joy that the sun is coming up again over the horizon, that night is over, and the Light of the world is bright.
During the years when we were raising our children and living in Crosswicks year ’round, being part of the community of the Congregational Church in the center of the village, there were no symbols of any kind in the church. Today there is a plain wooden cross. A quarter of a century ago that was taboo. When the minister said, “Let us pray,” we did no more than slightly bow our heads: Any more would have been capitulating to Rome. When I directed the choir in a Latin anthem, we half expected the roof to collapse on our heads. Following the calendar of the church year was unheard of. The word liturgy was not in our vocabulary.
A Stone for a Pillow Page 16