Author Archives: Sharon

Good Friday and the Sorrow and Kindness of God

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Reflecting on the Cross

The tears you shed, my sorrowful friend, are purer than the laughter of him that seeks to forget and sweeter than the mockery of the scoffer. These tears cleanse the heart of the blight of hatred, and teach man to share the pain of the brokenhearted. They are the tears of the Nazarene. ~Kahlil Gibran

Reflecting on the cross is a way of opening to the world’s suffering and to the pain and pathos of God. It carves out a space for holding a sense of God’s love and intention for the world while at the same time facing the reality of suffering, sin, and evil in the world as it is. This integrated dual focus puts things in perspective and is an antidote to being paralyzed by grief or entranced by the intrigue and drama that pass today as “the real world.”

In prayer related to the cross, I face what happened to Jesus not because of some transaction between God and humankind but because of the way he lived his life and faced death and because his living presence is still here, illuminating all who seek communion with him.

Reflecting on the crucifixion and the events leading up to Jesus’s death means not glorifying his death or absolving those responsible but remembering that he was crucified for cultivating a way of life and creating a community based on alternative values that directly challenged the values (and laws!) of the ruling powers, which, for that very reason, had him put to death. It means facing the painful story of his execution at the hands of a murderous system that included official representatives, religious collaborators, a public that could be manipulated, and friends who betrayed, denied, or abandoned him. It also brings to life the countless others who have been subjected to persecution and death over the years by similar systems of worldly power.

Reflecting on the death of Jesus and all the other unjust deaths throughout history, including today, brings us face-to-face with our complicity and our rock-bottom poverty of spirit. We may even experience what seems to be the absence of God, as Jesus did as he hung on the cross, crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).

As we reflect on our own personal failings and our complicity in unjust systems, we discover our moral bankruptcy, emptiness, and powerlessness to control the outcome of events. We recognize that our wisdom and strength are inadequate to the task of personal and social transformation, so we surrender ourselves to God, whose wisdom and power are shrouded in mystery. Our ego stops trying to justify and defend itself. We die to ourselves. We enter the darkness, the depths, the journey of emptiness and loss and letting go, the dark night of the soul. Deeper, into the depths of spirit and matter, into the silence and music of the spheres, into the dark. Surrender of self, but not submission, led by the Holy Spirit, trusting the unknown, abandoning ourselves to love. Paradoxically, it is by entering this very darkness that light dawns and hope is reborn: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:3). This is an example of the via negativa, the way of nothingness. It is the Way of the Cross, which has both an inward and an outward dimension.

By prayerfully entering into communion with Jesus in his life and in his death, I indicate my desire and willingness to follow him, to live according to his values, and to risk sharing his fate. These practices enable me to accept and, through prayer, to practice my own death and release the claims of the self that keep me conformed to contemporary culture. At the same time, the biblical witness and ongoing tangible presence of the Holy Spirit assure me that death is not the end of the journey. Holding space for this story and the ongoing story of the world’s suffering brings home the painful reality of Jesus’s time and of ours. It enables us to glimpse the extent of the world’s pain and see it in the context of the compassion of God. In words from “Kindness,” a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye,

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.

Reflecting on the cross draws us into the sorrow and kindness of God. We are saved for kindness— the only thing that makes sense anymore.

Facing death is part of what it means to be human and aware of our mortality. The ongoing cycle of life and death is integral to life as we know it here on planet earth. The resurrection of Jesus is a foretaste and a sign that death is not the end, that in some mysterious way, life goes on beyond the grave. Still, the primary focus of Christian faith is not life after death, but eternal life here and now. Life in Christ enables us to live in defiance of death, which appears not only at the end of life but also in our everyday lives: in the loss of loved ones, in communal tragedies, in injustices that diminish us, in depression, in human bondage to sin, in the death of nature. Death comes in many guises, and the powers have myriad ways to magnify and inflict death.

Those of us who have heard the gospel know that the death of Jesus is not the end of the story. Through regular reflection and prayer, we gradually adjust to the silence and spaciousness, the emptiness and fullness of God. We come to realize that even when reflecting on the crucifixion, we do so in the presence of the risen Christ, who is always with us, even when God seems absent or when we question our capacity to endure. When I enter into communion with the crucified Jesus, I also commune with the risen Christ. For, as Jesus said, “He is God not of the dead, but of the living” (Mark 12:27).

Living in Christ enables us to resist and offer life-giving alternatives to the death-dealing stratagems of the powers, as Jesus did. This is the good news of the gospel: that even when facing death, despite death, in defiance of death, God comes to us in Jesus, raising us to new life and enabling us to participate in the life of God. Such experience itself is resurrection.

Climate Action: From Local to Global

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Note: This post is addressed to my neighbors who live here in Western Nevada County, California, but it’s relevant to all of you, dear friends, wherever you are.  On Sunday, September 17, people concerned about climate change are invited to join a demonstration calling for climate action on the Broad Street Bridge in Nevada City following the Constitution Day Parade, which begins at 2. Everyone is invited to join. Some of us marching in the parade’s Minewatch contingent will be there with our NO MINE signs. This article describes why these two issues go together. 

It is past time to have another big climate demonstration here in Nevada County, as we face the shared reality that the ravages of climate change that scientists warned us about decades ago are upon us. This summer’s record-breaking heat waves and other extreme disasters (including on Maui and now in Florida) bring home to us the extent of damage caused by a 1.2 ͦ C (2 ͦ F) rise in average global temperatures.  (See Global Citizens’ “Shocking Photos of Extreme Weather Around the World in 2023 So Far.”) The terms unprecedented, the new normal, and apocalyptic have become common but do not adequately express the climate emergency that has come upon us. Today’s disasters provide a preview of what’s coming if we don’t turn around and change our ways, a “new abnormal” of escalating dangers. At the current rate, greenhouse gas emissions will raise global temperatures by 3 or 4 ͦ C by the end of this century, and our beloved Earth will become progressively inhospitable to life.

Many of us respond as individuals or groups to these weather-related disasters through relief efforts, by donating money or with hands-on help. Some individuals, faith communities, and other organizations are adapting to climate change by “greening” their lifestyles and facilities. Some communities are working to become resilient and to be prepared for disasters. Nevada County has detailed plans and initiatives to address both Climate resilience and Emergency Preparedness. A primary focus is on being prepared for the danger of wildfires made worse by climate change. These actions provide relief, demonstrate renewable alternatives, reduce our carbon footprints, and offer a witness to our concern and care for our community, our global neighbors, and future generations.

Here in Nevada County, we have taken our collective response to climate change even further. We have expanded our work of relief, adaptation, and resilience to also take on the work of mitigation. In 2019, our Board of Supervisors adopted a Nevada County Energy Action Plan. Its goal is to “reduce the projected annual grid supplied electricity use in 2035 by 51% and annual natural gas use by 30%” through “energy efficiency, renewable energy, and water efficiency.” Following through with this plan allies us with others here in California and around the world who are taking coordinated actions to mitigate climate change, that is, to halt and reverse the upward trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions.

We should all be grateful for the work that has brought us to this point and support other such forward-looking policies in the future. This requires vigilance, which means paying attention to local development decisions, and it means adding our voices and our bodies to the struggle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change and to protect the rural quality of life here in Nevada County.

A most pressing local development challenge continues to be the actions of Rise Gold, which, according to Market Screener, is “a Canada-based exploration-stage mining company” whose “principal asset is the past-producing Idaho-Maryland Gold Mine…” Now that the Planning Commission has gone on record opposing the mine, this foreign corporation is now threatening to force our County to accept the reopening of the old Idaho-Maryland Mine by filing a petition granting them the “vested right to mine.” This would mean proving that the Idaho-Maryland Mine is not a “past-producing mine” but has been a working mine all along.

As mentioned above, Nevada County’s Energy Action Plan calls for gradually reducing both electricity and natural gas use, but Rise Gold’s projected electrical and natural gas use would cancel out this plan. There would be massive carbon emissions caused by diesel-powered heavy equipment used for constant construction during the first year and half; ongoing continuous excavating, underground blasting, drilling, rock crushing, loading, hauling, unloading, spreading, and compacting to create engineered fill up to seven stories tall; continuous mine dewatering by pumping, treating and sending millions of gallons of wastewater down Wolf Creek; increased new diesel truck traffic (up to 100 round trips a day, seven days a week, 16 hours a day). This would result in significant increases in greenhouse emissions rather than decreases as outlined in the county’s Energy Action Plan.

There are plenty of other reasons to oppose reopening the mine, including the harmful impacts this working gold mine in the City of Grass Valley would have on our land, air, water, endangered species, and quality of life. Furthermore, Rise Gold has a terrible track record. CEO Ben Mossman is waiting to be sentenced after being convicted of fourteen counts in Canada for the environmental harm a previous mine of his caused there. Locally, this foreign corporation has misrepresented facts and has falsely claimed that our community is in favor of reopening the mine, despite broad, sustained, and reasoned opposition. Find details at the Minewatch website.

I will be part of the Minewatch contingent in the Constitution Day Parade at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 17. This happens to also be the Global Day of Action to End Fossil Fuels, the day on which public demonstrations will take place around the world, including in New York, San Francisco, Sacramento, and here in our community. That’s why after the parade you will find me standing on the Broad Street Bridge with others who are concerned about climate change and the mine’s potential impacts on climate. I know from experience that it will be fun and energizing. I would love to see you there.

Resurrection and New Creation

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“The new creation is not a different creation. It is the new creation of this deranged world. Eternal life is not a different life. It is the resurrection of this life into the life of God. . . . So the kingdom of God means that this world will be different and will be born anew out of violence and injustice to justice, righteousness and peace.”[i]                                                                                Jürgen Moltmann

After months of wind, rain, and snow, Easter Sunday was a glorious spring day, with greenery and flowers springing up all around. This Lenten blog series “Creation, Cross, and the Powers,” culminates today with me addressing the challenging question: How is the resurrection of Jesus relevant today, as we witness the deadly impacts of the domination system on our human family and the community of life? To answer this, I point to the following passage:

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:17–18). The passage makes clear that the scope of reconciliation in “[the risen] Christ” extends beyond God and the individual to all creation.

The concept of new creation has been used to illustrate a hopeful vision of renewal that may motivate people to take seriously our call to care for the earth. One way that Christians have interpreted this concept is to relate it to the afterlife, as an assurance that no matter how bad things get here on earth, no matter how many ecosystems are destroyed or how many species go extinct, God will ultimately reconstitute creation in a renewed and even better way. But such ideas bring little comfort to those of us who love life here on earth as we witness the escalating speed and efficiency of the institutional engines of death that are destroying it.

Of course, the promise of resurrection and creation’s renewal at the end of time offers us freedom from the fear of death and fosters courage to face life’s challenges. But the biblical concept of new creation does not just symbolize hope that at the end of the world, God will reconstitute it in a new form. As Moltmann said, it symbolizes hope “that this world will be different.”

It is also an invitation to live in light of the resurrection now. Living in the Spirit of the risen Christ enables us to recognize the glory of God in creation, to live in reconciled relationships, to comfort those who suffer, to stand in solidarity against oppressive powers, to allow the love that we have received to flow through us, to acknowledge that all creation exists within the circle of God’s care, and to take actions that embody hope for the future and are proportional to the challenges we face—in short: to live into the reality of the new creation.

As extinctions become more numerous, climate change accelerates, and the powers assert themselves in ever more ecologically destructive ways, the biblical concept of new creation illustrates a spiritual reality that can be experienced and lived into. As followers of Jesus, we are already part of the new creation here and now, as is made clear in the text above. We are already part of a new creation because we are in Christ.

As reconciled people who are empowered as participants in God’s saving work in our time, we are called to reach out with the message of reconciliation not only for individuals but for creation as well. This path is costly. Carrying the message of reconciliation must include challenging dehumanizing institutional idols that are undoing creation, and working for systemic change in ways that enable people to flourish. In this process, we are given a new orientation toward life and courage to rise even when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds.

God rejoices with us when we rejoice, weeps with us when we weep, showers both the just and unjust with all the blessings of creation and calls us to embody love in this world. Jesus did just that. Those of us who follow him are called to do so fully and completely, renouncing fear and paralysis, living in the power of the Spirit of the risen Christ, rising in courage, and heading straight into the heart of the struggle for a transformed world.

 

Parts of this post were excepted from “Creation Crucified: The Passion of the Earth,” the fourth chapter of The Cross in the Midst of Creation, Sharon Delgado (Fortress Press, 2022).

This is the tenth post in a Lenten Series, “Creation, Cross, and The Powers.” 

  1. Creation, Cross, and The Powers. 
  2. Extraordinary Temptations
  3. The Spirituality of an Epoch
  4. Creation: Moving from Awe to Lament to Resistance
  5. Banking on Our Future as Demythologized Exorcism
  6. Don’t Look Up
  7. Care Enough to Weep
  8. The Death of Jesus in Context
  9. Resurrection and New Creation

Follow Sharon’s blog post by signing up at the “Follow” link to the right. Share with the Social Media buttons below. See also a previous Lenten series: A Lenten Call to Resist. Check out Sharon’s books.  Contact Sharon to request a complimentary digital chapter of one of her books, to request a presentation, or to order discounted bulk copies of her books. 

 

[i] Jürgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today’s World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 22–23

 

 

The Death of Jesus in Context

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As we move through the story of Jesus’s death and on to resurrection, we return to the primary themes of this Lenten blog series on “Creation, Cross, and the Powers.”

This story is often told as if it all took place removed from the context of both creation and the powers. It is treated not as a story that we can relate to in terms of what is going on in the world today, but as a required dogma to keep us from being consigned to hell.  Jesus’s suffering and death is portrayed as if it was simply a transaction between God and humanity, a payment that God made to save sinners from eternal damnation. These transactional views turn Jesus into a passive and compliant victim and ignore his human agency and choice. His teachings and actions don’t enter this equation because what counts is his death.  They focus on death, not resurrection—not on his vindication by God despite the powers, or on his risen and ongoing presence among us.

But in the Gospels, this story is not told in the abstract, but in the context of both creation and the powers. Notice that creation is the context of both Jesus’s prayer and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane and of his resurrection encounter with Mary in the garden on Easter morning.  And the story of his final confrontation with the authorities leading up to his arrest, trial, and crucifixion is one of the most political stories in the Bible (along with the Exodus story).

In these last days of Holy Week, we are invited to immerse ourselves in this story and to recognize with mind and heart what Jesus and his followers experienced during this final confrontation with the governing authorities of occupied Jerusalem. After his “triumphal entry into Jerusalem,” they went directly to the Temple. Jesus’s action of overturning the tables of the moneychangers there directly threatened the economic status quo (tribute and taxes to Rome/temple taxes to keep the system going). According to the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), that was the last straw.

When Jesus and his followers “occupied” the Temple, the elite religious leaders couldn’t arrest him because “they feared the people” (Luke 20:19, 22:2). They couldn’t disperse the people who had gathered to hear Jesus because “the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching” (Mark 11:18). “People power” at work.

For this reason, the religious authorities had to arrest Jesus by stealth in the Garden of Gethsemane. Their problem was that the Jewish nation was under the jurisdiction of Rome—including the religious leaders, Jesus, and his followers. Only a representative of Rome could sentence Jesus to death.  That’s where Pilate came in.  Things moved on from there.

If this story is told out of context, it doesn’t make sense unless you consent to a particular dogma. But if you read it with an open mind, you can see that the words of Paul are true: “None of the rulers of this age understood [the wisdom that comes from God]. If they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” (1 Corinthians 2:6-8). God triumphs through Jesus despite the powers, bringing light out of darkness and light out of death.

(For a fuller portrayal of the story of the events that led to Jesus’s death, see this excerpt from Chapter 5, “Jesus and the Powers,” from The Cross in the Midst of Creation.

This is the eighth post in a Lenten Series, “Creation, Cross, and The Powers.” The other posts are as folows: 

  1. Creation, Cross, and The Powers. 
  2. Extraordinary Temptations
  3. The Spirituality of an Epoch
  4. Creation: Moving from Awe to Lament to Resistance
  5. Banking on Our Future as Demythologized Exorcism
  6. Don’t Look Up
  7. Care Enough to Weep
  8. The Death of Jesus in Context
  9. Resurrection and New Creation

 

Follow Sharon’s blog post by signing up at the “Follow” link to the right. Share with the Social Media buttons below. See also a previous Lenten series: A Lenten Call to Resist. Check out Sharon’s books.  Contact Sharon to request a complimentary digital chapter of one of her books, to request a presentation, or to order discounted bulk copies of her books. 

Care Enough to Weep

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Last weekend I was on a silent retreat, sharing prayer spaces and meals with a few church friends and a larger group of Buddhists.  On Saturday I walked the Stations of the Cross at the retreat center, knowing that the next day was Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. Sometimes when I walk that path, one or another of the statues portraying the events of Jesus’s last hours overwhelms me. This time it was the first statue, the one that portrays Pilate sitting in judgement, with a child pouring water from a pitcher over Pilate’s hands as he washes them, and into the bowl beneath. It struck me that this really was the decisive moment, the official decision that set the crucifixion into motion, with all the other participants (executioner, soldiers, and the like) carrying out their assigned roles–just doing their jobs.

Grief washed over me, along with the realization that this dynamic is at the root of the harm being done to creation today, as individuals relinquish their responsibility in the face of powers that seem out of human control. Looking at that stature brought home to me how Pilate’s action of washing his hands of Jesus’s fate is exactly the cause of the extremity of the global situation we face today. I wept.

Of course, the stage for Jesus’s trial and execution had been set long before. Jesus’s passion for the reign of God and his teachings and actions to bring it about had threatened the uneasy collaboration between the Jewish religious establishment and the Roman army that occupied Jerusalem.

I will return to the story of Jesus’ trial and execution in a later post in this series. For now, let’s consider the story of Palm Sunday. Surely Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt and the people calling on him to save them and hailing him as king further antagonized the religious authorities. They saw him as a political threat to the established order of the violently enforced Pax Romana, the so-called “Roman Peace.” When the Pharisees demanded that Jesus order his followers to stop, he replied, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out” (Luke 19:40).

The way Luke tells the story, as they came near to Jerusalem and saw it, he wept over it. Jesus wept! He could see what was coming. He said, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God” (Luke 19:41-44).

Jesus weeps because he can foresee the terrible things will befall the people of Jerusalem and their descendants. This destruction is not God’s will, but is the result of people not recognizing God’s presence among them or “the things that make for peace.”

Jesus weeps. As we look at creation’s dilemma today, which is also our dilemma since we are part of creation, we also have reason to weep. According to climate scientists, (in many ways the today’s prophets), we can see that the terrifying consequences of industrialized civilization are already upon us and are coming at ever greater degrees of magnitude for future generations. Who are our “enemies”? According to Ephesians 6:12, “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”  In other words, against the powers and principalities.

Like the Pax Romana, Pax Americana will not bring us “the things that make for peace,” for it is also ultimately enforced through violence, including racial, gender, and economic violence. Today’s corporate-dominated global capitalist system is also enforced by multiple modes of violence. It is incapable of protecting us from the certain ecological consequences of our current way of life, which are essentially locked in by our interlocking network  of global institutions, unless we discern “the things that make for peace” and perceive where God is at work in our world. Only then will we be able to discern what steps we might take to avert disaster.

What can we do? When William Stringfellow was asked this question, he said, “If you want to do something, the most practical thing I can tell you is: weep.  First of all, care enough to weep.”[i]

Like Jesus, we can weep.

This is the seventh post in a Lenten Series, “Creation, Cross, and The Powers.” The other posts are as follows: 

  1. Creation, Cross, and The Powers. 
  2. Extraordinary Temptations
  3. The Spirituality of an Epoch
  4. Creation: Moving from Awe to Lament to Resistance
  5. Banking on Our Future as Demythologized Exorcism
  6. Don’t Look Up
  7. Care Enough to Weep
  8. The Death of Jesus in Context
  9. Resurrection and New Creation

Follow Sharon’s blog post by signing up at the “Follow” link to the right. Share with the Social Media buttons below. See also a previous Lenten series: A Lenten Call to Resist. Check out Sharon’s books.  Contact Sharon to request a complimentary digital chapter of one of her books, to request a presentation, or to order discounted bulk copies of her books. 

 

 

[i] William Stringfellow: Essential Writings, Bill Wylie-Kellerman, editor (Fortress Press, 2013)),  page 180.