Last fall Joni and I took one of those Fall Foliage tours of New England. Even though the turning leaves are never quite as spectacular as in the brochures, it was still a pretty impressive sequence of sunny autumnal settings. And there were side trips that were a surprise to me — since I didn’t set this trip up.
One afternoon our tour bus visited the Norman Rockwell Museum — we had the whole place to ourselves. Rockwell was a very successful commercial artist, and we saw the content of his paintings change over time — starting with the Great Depression, the Second World War and the Home Front, on into the fifties and later years. One painting really caught my eye — and Joni saw me spending a lot of time on it — she even surprising me last Christmas by giving me a reproduction of it — it’s titled “April Fools’ Day.”
It’s full of bizarre visual twists. A young girl holds a doll that looks like an old man. Dogs wear shoes, Mona Lisa has a halo, and Rockwell’s signature is backwards.
What does this have to do with the season of Lent we have just begun? Well, the culture around us has changed is some truly bizarre ways. Our pride as American citizens is tested daily — cruelty in place of justice. Less than 1% of our national budget used to go to the “soft power” of aid for counties poorer than ours. Sharing our country’s abundant harvests helped make us proud to be Americans — the rich sharing with the poor.
That’s all over now. America is miserly. Masked secret police roam our streets. We have been brought up to see the face of Christ in the poor and downtrodden. Our government sees those same poor people as enemies to be deported.
Of course, the Old and New Testaments have a lot to say about these realities. If Lent is a time for lamentation for sin, then during this particular Lenten season I invite us to move from personal lamentation to communal lamentation. Our book of Psalms provides rich material for a people driven near to despair by the oppression of the poor by the wealthy rich and their cruelty — Psalm 79.
O God, the heathen have come into your inheritance
they have profaned your holy temple
they have made Jerusalem a heap of rubble
They have given the bodies of your servants as food for the birds of the air
and the flesh of your faithful ones to the beasts of the field
They have shed their blood like water on every side of Jerusalem
and there was no one to bury them [Psalm 79]
When we turn to today’s Gospel, we can view Nicodemus in a different light. Rather than view him as a figure of the old law daring to explore a new teaching, I’m seeing him as a wise old survivor living under Roman occupation. Nicodemus and all Jews encountered soldiers on their streets every day — strong men who could enter houses at will and haul off anyone they chose.
The Jews of Jesus’ day knew all about resistance in the midst of daily oppression. They clung ever more tightly to the traditions of their ancestors in the faith. Their daily encounter with oppression gives a political context to their resistance to the radical message of Jesus. The Jews lived out their faith under repression.
Rome’s occupying army permitted the Jews to keep up daily worship in the Temple, but governors like Pontius Pilate placed Roman soldiers there on constant watch. So an uneasy truce with Rome prevailed — you can pray in your Temple, but know that we’re always on the lookout for revolutionaries.
Nicodemus appears twice more in John’s Gospel. Later, to an assembly of Pharisees, he asks: “Does our law permits us to pass judgment on a man (Jesus) unless we have given him a hearing and learned the facts?” And of course Nicodemus is there with Joseph of Arimathea taking care of the body of Jesus after he has been taken down from his cross.
I have been practicing a novel form of fasting this Lent — not one of privation, but of monitoring my thoughts. When I notice my mind doom-scrolling — which has to be the outstanding word that sums up our disjointed decade — I am intentional of naming those thoughts as literally diabolic.
I’m talking about the Greek roots of that word: bollein (to throw) and dia (apart) And I endeavor to turn to its opposite: symbollein (to throw together). Symbolic thinking leads to healing and prayers for a return to cultural sanity.
(A litany for Sound Government is found on page 821 of the Book of Common Prayer — # 22.)
