Scourged by his foes, a boy who sought solace in Jesus has his own agony of doubt in the playground.
By David Bradley
It was Easter Sunday, 1959, and I was losing Jesus. This would have been a trying moment for anyone raised in the Christian tradition. It was especially so for me. Christianity was more than the way in which I had been trained up to go; Christianity was my business.
More precisely, it was the family business. My great-grandfather had become a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in about 1830, while he was still a slave. Both his sons, born free, also were ministers in that denomination; eventually the son who was my grandfather became a “presiding elder,” overseer of a number of churches. Before that he had pastored at Mt. Pisgah Church, located in a rural western Pennsylvania hamlet called Bedford. That was circa 1915; forty years later his son, my father, became Mt. Pisgah’s pastor, confirming a cherished clan myth, that for at least one male in each of our generations the ministry was destiny.
Actually, my father’s career had similarities to the story of Jonah. His youthful ambition was to be a history professor; he’d earned his B.A. and M.A. and studied for his Ph.D., and tried to compromise with the Call by teaching at a church-related college. But God had him swallowed up by cetaceous circumstances and transported from the Tarshish of Academia to the Nineveh of a Pennsylvania parish — or so clan lore had it. Where it had me was unquestionably lent unto the Lord; I was the only male in my generation.
Accordingly, my clan elders — grandmother, senior uncle, father — made sure I saw my personal identity reflected in the Scriptures. One of my first memories is of my grandmother showing me my name written in the first Book of Kings. (I was obnoxiously proud of this until I realized that almost everyone I knew had a ‘Bible name.’) I loved to hear about my namesake — how he was a direct ancestor of Jesus, or how, when David was just a boy like me, he knocked Goliath out cold, sang Psalms to soothe the king, and befriended the king’s son. (I forgave his marrying the king’s daughter, though I was entirely uninterested in girls.)
Bible stories were my bedtime stories, sometimes told but frequently read from a large, richly illustrated Bible story book; my first reading lessons were based on David, Daniel in the lions’ den, Samson and the Philistines (Delilah’s role was kept vague), and Moses in the ark of bulrushes. My first school was Sunday School; my second, summer Bible School. Before I learned the Pledge of Allegiance, I had by heart the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes. And before I heard of truthful little Georgie Washington I knew about Jesus.
I knew about Jesus in the Manger, Jesus questioning in the Synagogue, Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount, calming the Sea of Galilee, riding a donkey into Jerusalem. I knew about Jesus dying on the cross. But most important to me, I knew about the Jesus who loved children, in whose sight all the children of the world (red and yellow, black and white) were precious. The Jesus who raised a girl from the dead, borrowed loaves and fishes from a boy, who told his disciples to “suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” This Jesus was my friend. Not an imaginary playmate — those, I knew, were chimerical. Jesus was real: an understanding, forgiving, silent — I was religious, not schizophrenic — presence. Jesus loved me, this I knew. Though I prayed to God my soul to keep, it was Jesus I trusted to protect me from the alligator underneath my bed, and I didn’t need to tell Him about the alligator because He knew; He had been a child.
This Sunday School image of Jesus did me no harm, but I also attended adult services, and sometimes was troubled by mature mysteries. Though I misperceived much (the Trinity seemed to me like bad arithmetic), in my own way I grasped the gist, often from spirituals and hymns. When Moses told Pharaoh to let God’s people go, the music’s minor key told me the Exodus was a solemn, dangerous business. When Ezekiel saw the wheel in a wheel I imagined a truck tire in a car tire, but understood that the Grace of God was a massive and inexorable thing. Though I thought “‘Tis midnight and on Olive’s brow” referred to the forehead of somebody named Olive, I realized my friend Jesus was suffering in the Garden, and that while Christmas brought joy to the world, Easter was what mattered.
Easter Sunday, 1959, was only six months past my eighth birthday. I was still a child, thought as a child, had a child’s uncomplicated faith. I was not losing that faith. I believed Jesus was the only Son of God, that though crucified, dead, and buried, He had risen and ascended. But I was wondering if He understood as much as I’d thought, if He was really friends with me, if maybe I didn’t want to be friends with Him any more.
Prime mover of this alteration was the African part of African Methodist Episcopal Zion — not that any member of Mt. Pisgah, called him- or herself African. Certainly no one in my clan did; we preferred the term Negro, which was then politically correct. However, most Bedford blacks — who would have been insulted by the word black — were comfortable with colored. Most Bedford whites used that term when blacks were present. Some, though, used other terms when the colored gentlemen had left the room, and taught those terms to their children.
I first heard nigger on the playground, on my first day of school. I did not know what it meant, much less how to react. This frustrated the little boy who used it, who defined it by bloodying my nose. I did not get hit every day, but insults were common, and epithets were often accompanied by threats, which were sometimes carried out. In keeping with the Universal Children’s Code of Silence, I told no man. But one day a pair of chunky Philistines called me nigger, stripped off my pants, and whipped me with briars, and that night my mother saw the still-bloody scratches and forced me to tell all.
To my surprise, my elders seemed powerless, almost indifferent. My mother telephoned the mother of my flagellators, and they were told to leave me in peace. But her plan to secure general immunity by calling other mothers ended when one of them called her a nigger. My grandmother called her foolish; sooner or later, she said, I had to learn to deal with this, and she taught me how to control my facial muscles, to keep my face impassive, so as to deny “white trash” the satisfaction of knowing I was insulted. My father told me I should “walk away with dignity,” as if I hadn’t even heard. I tried to do as I was told; I learned to retaliate with language. My grandmother, unknowingly, had taught me my first racial epithet; by eavesdropping on other black adults I collected a lexicon of insults which I hurled like David’s five smooth stones. Though none of my foes fell unconscious, many were deterred.
But in September 1958, when I started third grade, I found invective had
become ineffective; now it enraged my enemies, possibly because they’d
found out what the words meant. They’d also grown in size and
aggressiveness, and were now more likely to move from assault to battery
— even to use weapons, like rocks and baseball bats. All autumn I
begged to stay in during recess, sometimes feigned illness to stay home.
My joy at Christmas had nothing to do with Jesus, or with Santa Claus.
The New Year brought not hope, but fear.
However,
winter worked for me. Through January and February the cold often kept
us indoors, and accumulated snow made unpaved portions of the playground
unusable; I was able to stay in the teachers’ view. But when the
weather warmed, we boys were fitted out with balls and bats and sent to
the baseball diamonds at the far end of the schoolyard. Here hostilities
resumed. By Ash Wednesday, the playing fields of North Elementary had
become as the battlefield at Waterloo.
As Lent progressed I searched for strategies. The Commandment said not to take the name of the Lord in vain; but really I wanted Him to get involved, so I started prefacing my counter-invective
with “God damn.” But the little Philistines were unaffected by
obscenity enriched with blasphemy, and my only profit on it was, I
learned to curse. Then I tried prayer. I knew the Children of Israel had
pled to be delivered from their enemies, and though my image of
deliverance had Jehovah riding to the rescue in a truck like the milkman
drove, one Psalm of David seemed so perfect that Bethlehem, I divined,
must have had its share of bullies. But though I prayed with plagiarized
perfection, God failed to “Rid me, and deliver me from the hand of
strange children.” Reluctantly, I attempted resistance. But I had no
training, much less combat experience, and succeeded only in getting
myself minorly lacerated, contused, and abraded; majorly humiliated: and
totally confused.
For
I was, I thought, a good boy; I did no damage unto others, and couldn’t
see why God allowed others to do damage unto me. I knew the Children of
Israel did not always get delivered, but that was because they broke
Commandments, which I never — well almost never — did. I didn’t know
what a graven image was, but I didn’t think I’d worshipped any; surely I
had no gods before God. Nor had I taken His name in vain; it wasn’t my
fault He hadn’t damned anybody. I kept the Sabbath, and had the gold
stars to prove it. I knew better than to get smart with my father or
mother, or even grandmother. I hadn’t killed anybody. Adultery sounded
like something I couldn’t do — whatever adultery was. I hadn’t
stolen anything, except freshly-baked cookies. I hadn’t borne false
witness; I’d just watched Perry Mason. I had coveted a
playmate’s red English racer bicycle … but where was my warning? The
Children of Israel always got a growling from some prophet before God
punished them. But no hairy old man had said so much as “Woe unto thee”
to me.
Then it occurred that it might not be
me; I could be one of that third or fourth generation upon whom the
iniquity of the fathers was to be visited. Though I couldn’t imagine
anybody in my patriarchal line hating God, this idea encouraged me to
lay the entire matter before my father.
I
did this not because my father was my father, but because he was my
minister. I had heard him deliver hundreds of what he called meditations
(he said sermon was pretentious), not only at tiny Mt. Pisgah
but at big churches in major cities — Pittsburgh, New York, Washington,
D.C. I saw him as a modern-day St. Paul. Still, he was my father, and
I, like most boys, expected my father to understand rough-and-tumble
realities. So, while I phrased the matter theologically, I asked him to
please teach me to fight.
This
was a request which my father had anticipated, and for which he had
prepared what sounded suspiciously like a sermon. First he warned that a
reputation for fighting would make me persona non grata — which
was Greek, not Latin, to me. Then he quoted Jesus saying, “all they
that take up the sword shall perish with the sword.” Then he told me I
should
read my Bible, specifically, Matthew,
Chapter 5. He closed with the familiar homily about sticks and stones.
Though it seemed my father missed the fact that the little Philistines were using sticks and stones, some of his words struck me. For, though I had from a child known the Holy Scriptures, I had learned them piecemeal and by rote, and though I read voraciously, I did not read the Bible. I knew I should; it was a Christian duty, especially for a Methodist. Nor did youth excuse me; if Jesus, at twelve, was amazing rabbis, at my age he must have been reading scrolls forwards.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried to read the Bible. On my eighth birthday
I’d thought to celebrate by reading about David. But the writing in the
Books of Samuel was neither as dramatic nor as well-paced as my
grandmother’s story-telling. Also, as my clan disapproved of vernacular
translation, my personal Bible was King James’ version. Though I’d
happily waded through the adverbial verbosity of Victor
Appleton, the Elizabethan English bogged me down. Then the gazetteer
finally defeated me; I foundered in Ephraim and Ramathaim-zophim, never
got to Gilgal, much less Bethlehem; I was lucky to get out of Zuph.
Still, at Advent I’d resolved to read the Christmas story, thinking it might go easier since I already knew the plot. As the text took up
but four chapters of two Gospels, I’d breezed through, and, encouraged,
had hunted up the prophecy of the Messiah. But Isaiah’s images —
wounds, bruises, putrefying sores — recalled the playground; I put the
Bible down. Now I wondered if that could be the transgression that
caused my trials and tribulations. Perhaps preferring Tom Swift to the
Pentateuch was like having gods before God. So I took the Bible up
again.
I
found the fifth chapter of Matthew easy going, for it too was partly a
familiar story, the Sermon on the Mount, and was mostly the Beatitudes,
which I’d memorized before I could read, and recited a hundred times
since. At first the reading merely reminded me of the general theme:
peace was the path to blessedness; the peacemakers would be called the
children of God; the meek would inherit the earth; and those that
hungered for righteousness would be filled. But then it began to seem
that Jesus’ words, inscribed in red, were meant particularly for me:
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
Rejoice and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
There
was my answer: I was not being punished by God, merely persecuted by
Man, which persecution was consistent with my religious destiny. It
could be the playground was some testing ground, on which I could prove
myself worthy of a Call to the ministry. But then Jesus said:
Ye
have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall
smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
and:
Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
and:
Ye
have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and
hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, pray for them
that curse you, do good unto them that hate you, and pray for them that
despitefully use you, and persecute you.
No
question; reading scripture did help me see my situation clearly. If I
wanted to be a Christian I must abandon all thoughts of fighting, of
counter-cursing, too. I had to reach the higher standard, go the second
mile. Such were the teachings, not of God, but of my friend Jesus; it
was He who seemed to be telling me to rejoice and be exceeding glad when
I got beaten to a pulp. And if I didn’t — if I couldn’t — I
would be disappointing not only God the Father and my own father, but
Jesus my friend. Though He would forgive me if I failed, failure it
would be — failure so fundamental I could not imagine how I could ever
after be Called to the ministry. I was pondering this painful
possibility at the beginning of Holy Week.
In
Bedford, Holy Week was laudably ecumenical. On Palm Sunday there was a
concert, featuring some oratorio sung by a community chorus. On Tuesday,
on which day Jesus said the poor were always with us, “gleaners” —
slotted cards, distributed on Ash Wednesday and filled during Lent with
dimes — were combined in a massive offering for the needy. On Maundy
Thursday, at midnight, bells of all churches pealed as one to signify
the start of the watch on the Mount of Olives. On Good Friday, at a
service held during the hours when Jesus was crucified, His legendary
Seven Last Words became texts for sermons by Bedford’s ministers. One of
the most respected ministers preached at an even more symbolic service,
at dawn on Easter Sunday on the shore of a nearby lake.
To
me, these public rites were usually less important than the private
rituals of Mt. Pisgah and my clan: our Maundy Thursday communion
service, mysterious because it took place at night; our Holy Saturday
preparations — baking of hams, roasting of ducklings, stuffing of shad,
the baking of pies and cakes, the coloring of eggs; our Easter Sunday
services — morning worship at which the tiny congregation was swelled
by emigrants returned; the evening Easter Program, at which I and my
fellow Sunday-Schoolers recited dogma in doggerel and received the gruff
praise and gentle criticism that told us that we were much loved and
that much was expected of us. But in 1959 the public rites had special
meaning. My mother was a soloist in the Palm Sunday Concert. My father
was to preach at the Sunrise Service. My family’s prominence made me
exceedingly proud. Though I was too young to see it as a change in local
race relations, others did, and their hope was infectious. By Good
Friday I was fairly fevered.
That morning, at school, all the children were excited. We would be dismissed before noon and until then there was little work; just parties and candy, and, after a recess, an Easter pageant, complete with cross and Centurions. Perhaps it was just the excitement, or the sugar in the chocolate bunnies. Perhaps my family’s prominence aroused resentment in other children. Or perhaps rehearsing the Passion play made the plot seem a game. In any case, at recess, a minyan of white trash assaulted me with the foulest genealogical and racial epithets I had ever heard. Confounded by their number and this sudden and incongruous ugliness, I ran from them with no attempt at dignity. The mob indeed seemed satisfied, but one boy — a Goliath-like hulk, in his third year in third grade — hounded me even unto the farthest reaches of the playground, where a chain-link fence forced me to turn to bay, and a copse concealed us from the sight of all but God.
I cowered there, against cold steel, while he reviled me, said all manner of evil against me, vowed to do great damage unto me. I prayed for deliverance, but it seemed God had forsaken me, and Jesus was out to lunch. Then, through a fog of fear, I saw that, despite his threats, this boy was doing nothing; rather, he was demanding that I “put ’em up.” It came to me: he would not actually attack unless I conspired to violence. Christ was at work; just as He had said, salvation lay in not resisting evil.
I
stopped cowering. I faced him, told him I would not fight. He cursed me
for a coward; I said “God bless you,” as if he’d sneezed. He promised
he’d kick my nigger butt back to Africa; I said I forgave him. That
rendered him speechless, so he punched me in the belly. Faith could have
been knocked out of me, along with wind, but as I sucked in air, I felt
myself filled with the Holy Spirit, and as soon as I could talk, I went
that second mile: I told that boy I loved him.
Afterwards,
I could not remember if he first smote my right cheek or my left cheek;
I could only remember being beaten, and thinking I was going to die,
like the prophets persecuted before me. I could not remember falling; I
could only remember being on my back, not with my arms and legs
outstretched, like Jesus on the cross, but drawn in, like a submissive
dog. I could remember crying out, not a prayer, not words of forgiveness
but a fervent plea — but to my attacker, not to God. Afterwards,
though I tried, I could never forget I begged that bastard for mercy, or
that he laughed, and kicked me in the side.
That
somehow disarranged my senses: suddenly the sky above me smelled clear
and blue, the dirt beneath me tasted damp, the blood in my mouth felt
coppery, the pain was a stentorian scream, and the words he screamed
seemed written in the air: STINKING CHICKENSHIT MONKEY-FACED NIGGER. That was when I went mad.
My senses clarified. My emotions — fear, anger, doubt — precipitated into pure crystalline fury. I did not get up, I rose
up, as if with wings of eagles, filled with the strength of ten
thousand. Realizing there had been a dangerous transfiguration, he
sprang back and turned, but before he could run, I was on him like black
on night.
I
hammered at the base of his skull, shoved him to the ground, kicked him
over, leaped astride, pinned his arms with my knees, and pummeled him
without restraint. Blood, still dripping from my nose and lips, ran down
and mingled with his. I spat mucus and teeth into his face, and every
foul name I knew. For a while he tried to free his arms, to turn his
face aside, but finally he gave up struggling for anything but air. But
with every gasp he said the word. And when he grew so winded and hurt he
could not make the sound, I saw his lips shaping the word; half-dead,
he still called me nigger. Then I stopped punching at him,
grasped him by his ears, and began pounding his head against the ground,
deliberately, methodically.
I
do not know how long I pounded his head; I had no sense of time. I know
I never thought of stopping until the school bell signaled the end of
recess. Then I rose and trotted back to school as casually as if I were
abandoning a game of baseball. I did not look back to see if he was
coming, or even still alive. But I knew I was still alive; I felt
more alive than ever I could remember. I felt … blessed. Filled, and
perfectly; as if the final pang of hunger had been by satisfied by the
last crumb of food. I felt the keenest, sweetest, profoundest ecstasy
that I had ever known.
Fortunately,
he was still alive. Fortunately, he kept the Code of Silence.
Fortunately, my teacher asked no questions; she only told me to get the
bleeding stopped, which I did, in time to catch the school bus home. I
sneaked in, washed, and changed, concealing my rent and bloody garments
beyond all discovery. My mother, alerted by my teacher, discovered them
before the day was out. But acting with the wisdom of Solomon, she did
not confront me, nor did she tell my father, who spanked first and asked
questions later. She waited until my Uncle John arrived.
Uncle
John was not a minister. He was, however, my clan’s eldest male, a
position of great, albeit secular, authority, like a chief. He alone
among my clan elders seemed to realize that, whatever my destiny, I was
still a child. My grandmother had little patience with my playing; she
thought I should hurry to put aside childish things. Uncle John taught
me to catch fireflies, to blow bubbles with bubble gum, to make a Willie
Mays-style basket catch. My father gave orders in terms that oftentimes
were over my head. Uncle John dispensed his wisdom in earthy similes
and jocular tones; about name-calling he had said, “Don’t worry what
they call you, Sonny, so long as it ain’t late to dinner” — which would
have been exactly right had epithets been the only issue.
Holy Saturday afternoon, while we cracked the coconuts, my uncle and I reasoned together. By then there was no need to tell me my sins were as scarlet; during the Good Friday service, ecstasy had been replaced by macabre visions and guilt. As one minister described the Roman soldiers torturing Jesus in the Praetorium, I had seen myself, spitting and cursing and smiting that boy’s profane head. As another described Pontius Pilate washing his hands, I had seen myself, in the school washroom, washing away the blood. When the final minister intoned “It is finished,” I had felt my soul rending as if it were the Temple’s veil. Full, now, with shame at having eaten the bread of wickedness and drunk the wine of violence, I hungered for absolution; I told my uncle … everything.
He heard my confession without interruption. When I was finished he told me nothing, but rather questioned with me about what led to my anger and ecstasy. Answering lightened my heart a bit, for I had been so guilty about the denouement I had forgotten that, in the prolegomena, I had been innocent. Still, innocence was no excuse; I cited the Gospel of Matthew. My uncle agreed one should turn the other cheek. But he pointed out that Jesus did not say what you should do should you be smitten there. As for Bible reading, he assigned some chapters in the Old Testament.
That
night I huddled beneath my blankets with a flashlight and my Bible, dug
through arcane language and found the savage roots of
Judeo-Christianity. I learned that Moses’ first act of liberation was
not to tell old Pharaoh anything, but to kill an Egyptian overseer. That
Samson “smote them hip and thigh with great slaughter” because “As they
did unto me, so have I done unto them.” That Daniel did not object when
his persecutors and their wives and children were fed to the
lions. That David put down his sling, picked up a sword, and cut
Goliath’s head off; and that he did not woo his bride with a harp but
bought her with the foreskins of two hundred Philistines. Though I had
no idea what a foreskin was, clearly David mutilated those Philistines;
what I had done was nothing to that. In any case, shedding blood
obviously did not prevent you from being a man of God. God had given
them their sudden strength; he must have given mine to me. I fell asleep
with guilt relieved.
But
Easter morning, on the lake shore, waiting for sunrise, I realized I
could take no comfort in the behavior of Old Testament Jews. I wanted to
be a Christian; I had to go the second mile, had to forgive, not seven
times, but seventy times seven. For Jesus said, “Be ye therefore perfect
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
The
sun rose. My guilt returned, and doubled, as the service began with the
reading, from Luke’s Gospel, of how two men in shining garments spoke
the words that are the essence of Christian belief: “He is not here, but
is risen.” Then my father began his meditation, based on the moment in
the Garden when Simon Peter drew his sword and cut off the right ear of
Malchus, one who had come to take Jesus into custody. I knew that then,
according to Matthew, Jesus chastened Simon Peter, saying “all they that
take up the sword shall perish with the sword,” and for a horrible
moment I thought my father knew what I had done. But his text was not
Matthew; it was Luke — there Jesus touches Malchus’s ear, and heals
him. This was, my father said, the highest expression of Christianity.
And I wanted to shout out, No!
Of course, I shouted nothing, but I screamed rejection in my heart. For something atavistic told me this was wrong. Forgiving enemies was one thing, but healing
them? No; that was not a second mile, that was too far by a mile. Love
also was too far; it was enough simply not to hate those who’d hurt me.
And so what if I did hate them? I only hated them because they clearly
hated me. If they stopped, I would. Even forgiveness went too far,
considering that those who’d harmed me had not repented. But all right; I
would forgive them for what they’d done. But I would never love them. I
would not even try.
Such
was my thinking on the lake shore, in the damp and chilly dawn. But my
bravery vanished with the dew. By the time I was seated in the family
pew at Mt. Pisgah, I was appalled at my own apostasy, literally
shivering with fear, expecting at any moment to be struck down. Worse, I
felt profoundly lonely, because my Jesus — not my God, my Jesus — had
forsaken me. For it was Jesus who enjoined me to forgive, to love, to
be perfect, but Jesus didn’t understand. Maybe it wasn’t His
fault. Maybe they hadn’t had bullies in Nazareth. Maybe no child ever
made fun of His having been born in a cattle trough. Maybe the first
time anybody beat Him was in the Praetorium. Maybe when Jesus had talked
of turning the other cheek, He didn’t know they’d smite you on that
one, too. Maybe when He cried out, “Father, forgive them; for they know
not what they do,” He didn’t understand that they knew exactly what they
were doing. But when they finished doing it, Jesus was crucified, dead
and buried; surely then He understood. Yet, even after the Crucifixion
He’d told the Disciples not to take revenge on Judas…. Then I had a
horrible revelation: Jesus could not understand, for Jesus was divine.
Jesus was the Son of God — and he knew it.
When Joseph rebuked him for staying behind in the Temple, He’d said,
“wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business.” When He came
out of the river after being baptized by John “there came a voice from
heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” And
He knew that, despite the mocking, the scourging, the dying, He would
rise from the dead.
What I knew was, I was the only son of Harriette and David, Sr.; not begotten but made; worse, conceived in sin and born in iniquity — whatever that meant. I knew that if I meekly accepted crucifixion I wasn’t going to be around to inherit the earth; I was going to be six feet under it. And I knew that I’d been tricked by Jesus. Tricked into wanting to be like Him, when I was not and could not be. Tricked into trying to act like Jesus, which — face it — had gotten Him killed. Tricked into feeling guilty about failing, when all I could do was fail, die, or both. And, even now, though undeceived, I had to go on trying to be like Jesus, for He said: “no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Do it My way, kid, or go to Hell.
This did not make me love my enemies; it made me resent Jesus. For it
seemed to me He was taking and getting credit for what was for Him easy.
It’s easy to ignore insults when your mother was a virgin, easy to die
when the tomb is temporary, easy to say, “Take no thought for your life”
when you are immortal. Easy to slum as the son of a man when you’re the
Son of God.
What might have proceeded from these thoughts is hard to imagine. Even at the moment they did not make me happy; before the day was out I would no doubt have been seriously depressed. Nor would I have been able to confide in anyone; I knew, without knowing the word, that this was heresy.
Recalling
that the Gospels gave differing accounts of Christmas, I began to
wonder if Luke, who omitted Advent altogether, might not be in error.
So, during the lifting of the Offering for the Poor, I took out the pew
Bible and looked at the other Gospels. My wonder increased; this riot in
the Temple was something on which all Gospels agreed. As Matthew had
it, Jesus not only “cast out all them that sold and bought in the
temple” but “overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of
them that sold doves” — Jesus wrecked the place. According to Mark,
His fury was premeditated; He went to the Temple and “looked round about
upon all things,” thought about them overnight, and then went in the
next morning and cast out and overthrew. According to John, He did more
than think; He made “a scourge of small cords” with which He “drove them
all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the
changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold
doves, Take these things hence.”
The
offertory ended; the service went on. I made all the right responses,
bowed my head at all the proper times, but I was oblivious to ritual. My
mind was full of a vision I could barely believe: Jesus, in His flowing
robe — I thought of a blue bathrobe — chasing the high priests — the
priests! — with a whip in hand. Barely believe? I could not believe. Yet there it was, in Holy Writ, as surely as “forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
I
did not know what to make of this Jesus. He seemed inconsistent; I had
been taught to think of Jesus as constant, immutable, as a solid rock on
which to stand, while all other ground was sinking sand. And yet it
seemed that Jesus was something — no, someone — I could understand. And it came to me then that I had been unfair, thinking Jesus could not understand me, when I had not even tried to understand Him.
So
I did try. Focusing on my own meditation instead of my father’s, I
tried to think of Jesus as a man. Despite divinity, He’d felt the pain;
scourging surely had to smart. And being mocked did hurt. Then I saw
what must have really hurt: knowing. Knowing that Judas would betray,
Peter deny, and Thomas doubt. And though Jesus did not need to fear
death, He must have feared failure, because His success depended on the
likes of them — and of me. Then it hit me: perhaps what had happened,
there in the Temple, was that Jesus had failed.
For
there had been Jesus on the mountain preaching forgiveness while the
high priests schemed. There had been Jesus, leaving the idyllic
mountaintop, the calmed sea, the pure wilderness; coming into the city;
riding through Jerusalem on a donkey; knowing those shouting hosanna
would soon be screaming for His blood. There had been Jesus, in the
Temple — forced, when He knew His death was at hand, to see the worst
of those he would die to save. Maybe Jesus the man tried to be like
Jesus the god and found that He could not; that He was angry, afraid,
and unforgiving, just as I had been.
Perhaps
what worried Him in the Garden was that that big-voiced Father of His
would not be so well pleased by His behavior in the Temple. Perhaps —
and this thought struck me like a pain — maybe what Jesus had been
praying for when He asked for the cup to pass was not deliverance from
death but escape from destiny; maybe Jesus wanted to go back to Nazareth
and be a carpenter, and forget His Father’s business. I felt a strange
warmth come over me, then — not religious conversion, or any breed of
ecstasy. I just found myself feeling sorry — for Jesus.
And suddenly I had Jesus back — though a different Jesus, to be sure. A Jesus who had a temper. A Jesus who could get fed up. A Jesus who would understand if I got angry and fed up too. And when, at the end of the service, we stood to sing “He Lives!” I sang out lustily — for I believed, that I did indeed serve a risen savior who was in my world that day.
DAVID BRADLEY, C’72, is the author of The Chaneysville Incident and South Street.
