September 8th

     Although not a doctor, Grandmother had very definite medical ideas.  She knew “regularity” was the best indicator of good health.  When she saw her grandson fall out of a tree, she ran to him and, noticing his arm bent at an odd angle, immediately asked, “When was your last bowel movement?”
 
        I suspect assumptions often color how we humans process events; our frames of reference guide us especially when we try to understand experiences that are out of the ordinary or upsetting.  This tendency is evident in the way the earliest Christians came to see Jesus’ death in terms of their Jewish upbringing.  His death was likened to a scapegoat carrying their sins away into the desert — and to the Pascal lamb whose blood marked their lintels on the first Passover, saving them from death.  Medieval Christians interpreted the crucifixion out of their lived experience of feudalism, out of the relationship of a serf to a lord.  Jesus’ death paid back a debt owed to the Lord Almighty, thereby reconciling God and humanity.
 
        I wonder what assumptions color my understanding of Jesus’ crucifixion.  When I look at that life-size cross above the altar in Christ the King, do I see an image of pain and suffering and know that I am not alone in such periods in my own life?  Does this image of human cruelty and injustice remind me of my own perniciousness?  What frames of reference influence my understanding as I gaze at that broken body hanging on the cross?