I watched the documentary Jesus Camp the other night. The part of my brain that makes me say words like "obfuscate" and "esoteric" when I really mean "hide" and "weird" is suggesting that I construct some sort of justification wrapped around the unassailable notion of encountering Evangelical Christianity on its own terms. Yeah, I'd watch it primarily for that saintly and academic motivation…if throbbing outrage wasn't such a sweet, sweet high. The aspect of my soul that's become bitter and angry, the…um… part I don't like all that much, wanted to watch in order to see rubes. You know, avid Fox news fans shuffling around with NASCAR hats on, muttering half coherently about "dem HoMoSEXuals" and the dark, desperate underground war on Christmas (Other Side: liberal lizard aliens).
As I watched the final credits ooze to the top of my screen, I was hoping to feel that wonderful combination of outrage and superiority that has fueled oh so many letters to the editor and *heh* blog entries. After all, I put good money into this DVD and the least the filmmakers could do is make me want to throw a chair through the window.

In reality, I felt sad.
You see, I attended bible camps when I was young. The sanctuary reclined warm and accessible, somehow smaller, by its' weekday nap. Smiling bearded patriarchs wearing my mother's bathrobe walked around rocky landscapes in small textbooks with paper covers. Of course, what bout of summer religious education would be complete without a young boy's first tender and hesitant experience of glitter glue based vandalism (I firmly believe that experimental arson should happen only in the confines of the senior high mission trip.)
Mostly, though, I remember the adults. The vast majority were volunteers who had little qualification for the job they were being asked to do beyond a willingness to follow a curriculum decked out in primary colors and a desire to nurture children…a desire to suggest something of the tangible reality of God's love through smiling faces, attentive ears and presence.
Though my young mind would never construct words for it, I left with a sense of hesed (Hebrew, loving kindness, loyalty, devotion. This term describes God's nature, the people's obligation towards God, and, in the Book of Ruth, the very stuff of cohesion in a godly community). I left with a feeling of holiness defined by that loving kindness, that willingness by imperfect people in a regrettably imperfect world to spend time with a handful of young children, most of whom likely refrained from causing too much damage to church property.
I'm sad because the several bright, talented and thoughtful young people I saw in Jesus Camp seemed to have none of the wealth inherent in my childhood experience of Christianity. An hour and a half of film and no youth pastor, no youth worker, and no community adult of any stripe whatsoever expressed the merest hint or whisper of a desire to nurture the children God trusted them with! These delightful kids were a commodity, a means to an end, raw materials to be refined into a disturbing form of weponized Christian! All of them were ready to spend a lifetime attempting to revivify a fictional and naïve American theocracy.
At the end of the film, the head youth pastor speculates smugly how terrified people like me will be when we see a movie like this. I guess I'm supposed to have the same sensation one might experiance standing on a beach while a tsunami rolls into shore. Someday, these kids will have to leave their contrived, objectifying soap bubble world. At least some of them will realize they were lied too their entire childhoods about American, about Christ and about the rest of us. God help the adults of their community then, and God help us all in the meantime

In the Shadow of the Cross, a Holy Saturday meditation

It was hard to be poor in my middle school. I know, it's almost tautological. It's hard to be poor anywhere to the extent that poor is essentially synonymous with hard. My middle school wasn't wealthy in its demographics. Many of the kids I knew ate last night's sparse leftovers for breakfast, or came to school lucky to have simply eaten last night at all. Many saw their parents only in transit from one job to another. Many bore the brunt of their parent's frustrations and sense of powerlessness. Many watched TVs or read magazines that extolled a philosophy of human worth built on wealth, a media machine whispering sour nothings in their ears, bitter tastes of shame, of lacking personhood.
Yes, it was hard to be poor in my middle school. But it was even harder to be the poorest. This burden was carried by Sarah (not her real name). Her outfits were from small time charity organizations, their style and often smell indicated decades of use. She was skinny, far too skinny. Her skin had the color of pale ash and heavy cloud. Sarah was a symbol of sorts. In a community of the poor she embodied poverty with bony arms and torn shirts. In a fellowship of shame her shy eyes and mumbled voice wore it like a mask. Sarah was the shadow, the echo, the sacrificial lamb of her classmates' self loathing.
There were these big rectangular drainage basins outside the school on either side of the gym. Think of them as concrete bathtubs. Three sides were built into the walls of the school, one faced outward with a metal rail surrounding it. The average twelve year old could stand up in it with the top of the concrete wall at about eye level. The first rung of the rail was a few inches above that.
I'm not sure how he got Sarah down into the basin. Maybe Jeremy (not his real name) asked her to jump down and get something he had accidentally dropped. She would be eager to please with the sad hope of the outcast. Sarah would have grinned as she hopped in. Then again, he might have just pushed her. I pray to God that she was spared the cruelty of illusory happiness.
Jeremy must have given a signal. This was planned; this was looked forward to. Within seconds, fifteen, maybe twenty kids latched on to the railing. There wasn't any room for Sarah to get back up and they kicked at her arms when she tried. They yelled and laughed. Nobody was insulting her, they were screaming from the sheer joy of what they were doing. No, they didn't call her names, they spat on her. She was huddled in a corner of the basin, being covered by spit, by phlegm. It was at least a few minutes before the teachers discovered what was happening.
To this day, I remember her eyes when she was hauled up. It wasn't a look. Looks reached outward. Her eyes seemed to cave into infinity, sucked at by an unseen singularity.
On this holy Saturday, we shiver in the shadow of the cross. We dwell consciously in the liminal time, the great cosmic uncertainty. Could hate, oppression and de-humanization eclipse God? Is the cross not only the final logical conclusion of sin, but also the sum total of our identity? Could we hurt more than God can love? Am I what the crucifiers tell me I am, or am I the beloved child of God?

I shivered in the shadow of the cross on that day, more than today or last night at the Good Friday service.

I don't always get atonement. It's ironic that I used to live in a town named after St. Anselm. Substitution creeps me out and ransom gives me the willies. Something inside of me breaks down at the foot of the cross, turning my big words to blather and slobber. I know something holy is happening between God and humanity, but I can't talk about it directly anymore than I can look directly at the sun. But, this isn't a time of explanation; it's a time of telling-reliving the story of God being nailed to the cross of a Palestinian peasant.
The God of the Universe
The God of Creation
The God of the spat upon
The God of the rejected
The God of the poor
The God of the oppressed
The God of the mourners
The God of all who cry in the dead of night
The God of the concrete basin
THE GOD WHO IS LOVE

…..the God who is being….who stands-loves-suffers-with…………. the crucified

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