On Class Fairies and Resurrection

Thus says the Lord,

“I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.” Amen. (Isaiah 65:18)

This morning I want to try to explain what it means to say that Jesus died to save us, and describe the shape of the Resurrection in our lives. There will be very little that is original in what I am about to say and I hope nothing unorthodox, although the WAY in which I say it may seem unusual to some. Here, I will borrow an insight of James Alison, who argues cogently that Jesus saved us by becoming the equivalent of the “Class Fairy.”[i]

You all know what I mean by the “class fairy.” In my elementary, middle and high school years in Indiana, his name was Michael Clark. Michael (never Mike – that would have been far too butch) was a little guy with glasses. He didn’t quite lisp, but there was a certain hurried, superior, smarmy tone to his voice, as in “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Michael was smart, but he couldn’t throw a baseball to save his life. He sang well enough, but walked with a little swish. It was actually painful to watch him run. He never caused anyone any harm, yet he was the kid who got pushed around on the playground, was always picked last when choosing teams, and was forced to endure whispers of “faggot” – or worse – when he walked down the halls.

I realized early on that Michael served a very important purpose. He occupied the place of shame in our social world so that the rest of us could feel normal and acceptable. He reinforced our sense of being right and good by defining for us what it meant to be bad and terminally “uncool.” We needed Michael very badly. Our sense of identity and security depended upon him.

While I never teased Michael to his face or threatened him like some others did, I quietly mocked him and treated him with contempt to reinforce my own sense of belonging to the “in crowd.” Being class fairy was a kind of impurity, and I didn’t want to be tainted by association. I didn’t want to get anywhere near the place of shame that he occupied.

“Now, nobody goes voluntarily into that space of being cursed,” observes Alison. “The person who is put there feels all the pain and shame of ostracism, of being cast out, of loss, of different forms of death. It feels like being destroyed, and that’s exactly what it is. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about such suffering, pain and loss: the identity which the group is giving that person is one of nothingness and death. Any of us would do anything we could to avoid such a fate, including making . . . sure that it’s someone else who occupies that space in our group, and if that fails, then we are pushed kicking and screaming into that place and are destroyed by it.”[ii]

I was certain that if I were to be under the same curse, occupying the space of shame in which Michael lived, I would die. As far as I was concerned, Michael was dead. He was socially dead and on his way to literal death. After all, who could survive under such conditions?

So things were left there when we graduated from high school. I was sure I’d never see Michael Clark again. Fast forward eight years. I’m finally making my first tentative forays into accepting myself as a gay man, albeit a very closeted one. I’m in a gay bar in Chicago and who do I run into but Michael Clark. I’m nearly speechless with surprise (and shame at being discovered); oddly enough, he doesn’t act the least surprised to see me.

But what really astonished me is that, while I’m all tied up in knots with fear and shame, he is completely relaxed and welcoming. Not only does he not throw my hypocrisy in my face, or hold the past against me in any way, he doesn’t even seem aware that I’ve done anything wrong: all that is forgotten. Instead, he is excited to invite me into becoming someone entirely new, free to occupy the place of shame in which he has been living with a complete sense of peace, freedom, and even joy.

I thought the place of shame was a tomb and that I would find Michael Clark’s dead body there. But the tomb was empty. Here he was, standing in front of me, happily employed raising money for a nonprofit and happily married to his hunky blond husband! More than that, while I had fled from the place of shame to Chicago, Michael was just visiting. He and his husband had bought a house on the same block where he had grown up in our hometown. He was no longer defined by the place of shame; in fact, he was redefining it in light of the new creation that he was becoming, someone loved and loveable with a tremendous capacity for compassion and forgiveness.

Thus says the Lord,

“I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.”

Now, what I want to suggest to you is that God comes to us in Jesus to willingly occupy the place of shame. Rather than being the one who justifies our normal way of creating human identity and morality with good and evil being defined over against each other so as to set up insiders vs. outsiders, pure vs. impure; rather than offering blessing and curse; rather than being a god who requires sacrificial victims; God comes to us in Jesus in solidarity with outsiders, the impure, society’s victims, as one who protests the usual way of constructing human identity and security at the expense of others.

In his life and death, Jesus reveals to us that with God there is no curse, only blessing; no condemnation of sinners, only forgiveness and the opportunity for new life; no sacrifice, only mercy. By occupying the space of shame freely, without fear or resentment, but peacefully, gracefully, and openly, Jesus demonstrates the vulnerability of God. Through his death on the cross, Jesus saves us by making it possible for us to see that our vulnerability can give rise to compassion and therefore healing; our vulnerability doesn’t have to be the source of fear and shame giving rise to rivalry, violence, and death.

God comes to us in Jesus to transform the space of shame, so that it no longer need define us as insiders and outsiders, which is a nice way of saying oppressors and victims. In his Resurrection, Jesus takes the form of the forgiving victim, allowing us to acknowledge the mendacity of our dependence upon class fairies to give us meaning by showing us our complicity in the mechanism of curse, yet without condemning us. The Resurrection takes shape in our lives as we come to accept this forgiveness and no longer seek to define ourselves over against anyone or anything; accepting instead the identity that God is giving us as a people loved just as we are, just because we are and not in terms of anything else.

As we come to participate in this new identity that God is creating, our former way of life, formed by the space of shame, is forgotten. It doesn’t hold any power over our imagination. We are too busy delighting in what we are becoming, too preoccupied with the joy of sharing in God’s great project of healing the world, to be defined as, or over against, the class fairy.

This was the great gift that Michael Clark gave to me, good Catholic boy as well as class fairy that he is: the sense that just maybe I could occupy the space of shame with Jesus, and transform it from the inside out into a place of creative and compassionate potential for becoming human, becoming vulnerable as God is vulnerable. Maybe the place of shame, of crucifixion, could actually lead to Resurrection.

Thus says the Lord,

“I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.” Amen. (Isaiah 65:18)

[i] See, for example, James Alison, “the place of shame and the giving of the Spirit” in Undergoing God: dispatches from the scene of a break-in (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2006), pp. 204-209.
[ii] Ibid, p. 204-205.

Today you will be with me in Paradise

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." He replied, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." Amen. (Luke 23:39-43)

On Palm Sunday we are given a preview of the Passion narrative, the story of Jesus’ death, which we will explore more deeply and with growing dramatic intensity as we journey the way of the Cross in the coming days leading to Easter. The Church, in its wisdom, has given us the Passion narrative in full today, so that we might make it the source of our meditation throughout Holy Week. As we prepare to do so, I invite you to begin with the story of the two criminals executed along with Jesus.

While the two criminals appear in each of the four canonical Gospels, Luke’s version is unique. In Mark and Matthew, both of the criminals taunt and reject Jesus. In John, the criminals do not interact with Jesus at all. Only in Luke do we have this contrast between the criminal who taunts Jesus along with the rulers and soldiers, and the criminal who recognizes Jesus as the Christ. It is a remarkable story. Why does Luke tell it in this way?

I think that Luke wishes to demonstrate the continuity between Jesus’ ministry and his dying. Even on the cross, Jesus reaches out to embrace the socially marginalized. Who is more socially marginal, more excluded, than a criminal being executed? Jesus, who stood in solidarity with outcasts and sinners, feeding them, healing them, welcoming them as children of God throughout his life, continues to do so until his last breath.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus already reveals himself to be the Christ here, on the cross, in his complete identification with the lost, the last, and the least. In so doing, he bodies forth the very love of God that embraces saint and sinner alike. In receiving this love, one criminal is moved to cry out, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” For those who accept this love, Paradise can be found today, as Jesus tells the repentant criminal; no need to wait three days, or a lifetime, or for the end of time to experience the Resurrection. The kingdom of God is here and now, even in the midst of suffering.

Jesus, hanging on the cross, is already the Savior, the one who brings healing. Or, more properly, he continues to be the Savior, he demonstrates the truth of his identity consistently and to the end – and beyond. This is astonishing, but what is even more remarkable to me is that it is this criminal, despised and rejected like Jesus, who has the eyes to see this truth. Not the religious leaders; not the rulers of the world; not even Jesus’ disciples, his closest friends and followers; no, they remain blind. Some of them will come to see the truth in the light of the Resurrection, but it is only this guilty sinner receiving his just reward, who sees Jesus clearly even in his darkest moment.

But what is that he sees in Jesus? Here, I can only speculate, but I do so based on what we know of Jesus’ presence and similar responses it often evokes in others. I believe that this repentant criminal sees God in the face of Jesus, sees himself reflected in that face as the object of God’s love.

Archbishop Rowan Williams has written that “Grace, for the Christian believer, is a transformation that depends in large part on knowing yourself to be seen in a certain way: as significant, as wanted.” (The Body's Grace) The repentant criminal hanging next to Jesus comes to perceive himself as one who is desired and loved by God. He begins to see himself as God sees him. He stands at the entrance to Paradise.

Repentance, then, begins by seeing ourselves as God sees us. When we do so, we find the courage to acknowledge the reality of guilt and suffering and loss in our lives, without allowing these to define us; even in the middle of life’s crucifixions we remain held in the gaze of our divine lover and know that we are so much more than what meets the eye.

One of the criminals finds the courage to see himself whole, both good and bad, and receive the love that is offered. The other criminal refuses to repent, remaining locked in an identity that is determined by judgment and curse, unwilling to reciprocate God’s loving glances. This unrepentant criminal looks in the face of Jesus and can see only the projection of his self-hatred. He has not yet allowed God’s perception of him to penetrate his defenses.

We are, all of us, hanging on the cross next to Jesus as we enter Holy Week. That cross takes different form at different times in our life. Perhaps for you, the cross is a life-threatening struggle with addiction that spirals down again just when you think you’ve hit bottom. Perhaps it is a painful divorce that turns everything you thought you knew about yourself and your beloved upside down. Perhaps is it an unrelenting chronic illness, or simply the uncertainties and gradual losses that come with age; the fear that comes with losing control of our body and of our life.

We all have our crosses, our dire moments, when we despair of love and of life. But no matter how low we have gone, no matter how dark our night, it is precisely here, on the cross, that the most powerful transformation can happen. God loves you, right here, right now, as one whom God enjoys, whose joy brings God joy. There is Resurrection on the other side of the Cross. If you can but find the courage to cry out, “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom!,” the response will be, will always be: “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.” Amen.