Soul Silence and Pounding Nails: A Good Friday Meditation

Silence, especially in life’s busyness, leads us through the whitewater of life to gentle pools of stillness and calm. 400 years of Quaker silence have pointed us back to the center within. Silence moves us from difficult self-examination to healing to relaxing in God’s presence. Interior silence takes us to a place where we are living St. Paul’s injunction to pray without ceasing, even when we are not consciously aware that we are doing so.

That happened to me on a recent Good Friday. I spent the day hammering the nails out of pieces of wood that made up the pallets that the outside walls of our new house had come on. Our home is made of timbers recycled from old factories and exterior walls constructed on jigs on the factory floor. These were then put on pallets and shipped on semis from New Hampshire to our Indiana home site. “The wood we use in the pallets is better than most builders use in their homes,” said one of the people building our house. “You’ll want to salvage as much of it as you can. Don’t let the framers burn it up.”

Quakers are strong on grace and redemption. If something can be saved and used again, it is. I hoped to see these used 2x4’s born-again as a woodshed or workshop. So, the sun blazed and I pounded nails out instead of in. A few yards away, four framers worked at pounding nails in, hanging the walls and roof panels. While I drove 16 commons out of 2x4s, they drove 10 and 12-inch spikes through 2x6 walls into 6” posts and beams with 3 pound sledges. The sound of hammers on nails rang through the Good Friday afternoon. That ringing was accompanied by the church bells from St. Thomas More Catholic Church just a couple of miles away, drifting on the spring breeze.

This symmetry with the holy day was not lost on me, even though Friends, being non-liturgical, don’t celebrate holy days or seasons. Still it was easy to recall other nails driven long ago – not through walls into posts, but through outstretched hands into rough wood. Even while carpenters yelled to each other, rough voices calling out measurements and grunting and cursing to set panels in place, I found silence in my soul. I was not sitting in a congregation listening to the last words of Jesus. Nor was I following the Stations of the Cross. But I was, in my soul, remembering, alongside those congregants. My arms grew weary of pounding and pulling nails. In, but at the same time apart from, the noise I pondered Jesus’ tiring journey that day. In spite of the noise, silence swathed my soul. Here I am, I thought, spending Good Friday in the company of carpenters. How fitting. I prayed for them. I prayed for me. I prayed for the world.

I heard a car pull up our long lane. It was my friend Aaron. A rabbi. My soul laughed – how right, how good. Carpenters and a rabbi on Good Friday. I thanked God for the silence of my soul that helped me see that day that was holy because God breathed life into it.

I was led into the holy that day, while hammering out nails and visiting with rabbis and framers. Arms weary, back bent from stacking reclaimed wood, it was a Good Friday.

adapted from Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality

The Time Is Fulfilled: A Lenten Meditation

Joseph wondered where Jesus had gone. One day he was working in Joseph’s carpenter’s shop and the next he was gone. The boy Joseph had raised had become a man, almost 30 years old. No longer a child, Joseph thought about making him a full partner in the family firm, eventually turning it over to him. He did good work. His body was rugged and strong; hands steady. He was quiet and caring, good with the customers. He was the most peaceful man Joseph had ever known. Never rushing, deliberate, sure.

But there always seemed to be an undercurrent of impatience to him as well, Joseph thought. While Jesus’ eyes were outwardly fixed on the task of planing rough wood, his inner gaze seemed to be looking out over some unseen vista, his ears straining for some sound beyond that of hammer and saw.

He must have finally heard it, whatever it was he was listening for, for one day when he left home, instead of walking with Joseph into the shop he continued on, not saying a word.

Curious, Joseph followed. One block. Two blocks. Then past the outskirts of Nazareth. Joseph struggled to keep up, the younger man’s stride becoming stronger and more purposeful. Townspeople looked up from their morning chores and watched the odd, two man parade. Then, because they had better things to do than watch an old man and his son hiking out of town, they returned to their work. One mile turned to two, two to three, three to four.

Finally Joseph stopped. I’m fit for my age, he thought, but I’m no youngster. I can’t keep up. The younger man kept walking, even picking up his pace.

Walking beside Jesus, Joseph had thought Jesus’ body seemed to tingle with energy, an energy he’d never seen in the shop before. Or had he? There was always something special about that boy. Something deep within him that set him apart from others his age. Or any age, for that matter. For one he had an affinity with the wood that even Joseph never seemed to possess. He seemed tuned into to the world about him in ways Joseph had never observed in any other person. The dust of the earth swirled about his feet and Joseph strained his ears. He heard a faint music in the air.

Ah, it’s probably just the wind playing tricks on an old man’s ears, he thought. Yet Jesus seemed to be walking in time to it.

Joseph stood in the morning sun, the sky blue above him, a few clouds sailing silently by, and watched him.

Where was he going? he wondered. He had taken no pack, no lunch, no clothing, no walking stick. He had said nothing at breakfast that morning. The day was just a day. Work had to be done. And yet he just walked off – unprepared for a trip, yet obviously leaving on one.

Joseph watched until he was a just a shimmering speck on the horizon. Still the young man's pace never slowed, even as he approached the foot hills. Mount Tabor loomed against the edge of the world. Joseph shrugged and turned toward his shop. Someone had to finish Levi ben Jacob’s table.

About a week later, the merchant Mordecai stopped by Joseph’s shop with an order for a cedar wood chest. Mordecai told Joseph that on his business travels to Caperneum, Magdala, and Tiberius he stopped by the Jordan to watch this fellow John who baptizing men in the river.

“I’m always up for a little entertainment,” he chuckled, “especially by those river preachers. They are something to watch – all that shouting and holy fervor.” Then he spied a man walking out of the Galilean hills. This man came to where John was baptizing in the Jordan. Mordecai asked who it was, covered with dust yet eyes brightly shining. Jesus of Nazareth, some one told him.

“That’s your boy, isn’t it?” he asked Joseph. Joseph nodded yes, while thinking that the closest point on the Jordan River was thirty miles from where he lived. That’s if Jesus had traveled in a straight line, which Joseph’s carpenter’s eye said he had been doing. There were no roads that led directly to from the Jordan to Nazareth. Not that the young man seemed to need any. It appeared that he was comfortable with the dirt, rocks, trees and mountains and they with him.

Perhaps it was singing I heard, thought Joseph, while Mordecai rambled on. Even though I am just a simple carpenter, I know there is more to this life than what most people see. I witness it every time I take a piece of wood and try to shape it. If I work with it, and let it become what it wants to be the results are beautiful. If I force it to become the way I think it should be, it looks that way. Perhaps the boy, I mean the man, had a similar connection with rocks, dirt, mountains, and grass that I had with trees.

Joseph was brought back to the conversation when Mordecai startled him with the announcement that Jesus had John baptize him. And that a dove descended from heaven and a voice was heard proclaiming “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

“It wasn’t your voice I heard,” said Mordecai.

“No,” Joseph replied, “I’m sure it wasn’t.” And he remembered other times when the boy had done remarkable things and other voices had come from heaven. Times of him teaching in the Temple in Jerusalem while a boy of 12 or so. Of angel visitors telling of miraculous births and evil kings. Life had certainly been far from the dull, but satisfying life he though he’d have when he first had apprenticed to be a carpenter.

“Then,” continued Mordecai, “after the voice from the sky, he came up out of the water and started walking into the wilderness on the other side of the Jordan. He just kept on walking. Clothes dripping wet. Not a sack of food or a sleeping bag. I’ll tell you, Joseph, I am worried about that young man.”

“I am, too,” said Joseph, though he wasn’t for the same reason Mordecai was. Jesus wasn’t possessed by demons, like Mordecai thought. Something more powerful had possessed him. God.

Another week passed. Then a month. Then two. Joseph went about his work. His wife, Mary, did, too. She never mentioned the fact that Jesus had just disappeared one day without a word, heading out over the Galilean countryside without so much as a goodbye. She was surprisingly peaceful, though traces of worry etched her brow. Joseph wondered at that, too. How could she not be wondering where her first born had gotten himself off to?

As the second month since Jesus walked out of Nazareth ended, he walked back in, coming back over the same route he traversed when he left. Joseph was hard at work on Mordecai’s chest when a shadow filled the doorway. He looked up, eyes straining through the shops sawdust laden air to see who stood silhouetted against the sunlight.

“Hello, Joseph,” Jesus said. Not “Hello, Father.” Joseph knew something had changed.

“Come in, son, come in,” Joseph called to him, and hugged him to him. “I’ve missed you. Where have you been?”

“I have been to the mountain,” Jesus said, “and the riverside and the wilderness.” And Jesus went on to tell Joseph about his baptism, the dove and voice, and spending forty days being tempted by Satan in the desert.

“My only attendants were wild animals and angels,” Jesus chuckled. “I’m not sure which I was more afraid of.”

It had obviously been a harrowing, life and soul changing time, Joseph thought. The caring, sensitive lad he had known was still there in the man standing before him, but there was steel and fire to him now that had not been present before. Jesus told him what had happened during those forty days and nights and while it sounded incredulous, like the ravings of the demoniac Legion who lived in the tombs overlooking the Sea of Galilee, they were clearly not the tales of a madman. They had the ring of truth. A life changing truth. For both he who spoke the words and those who heard them.

“What now, son?” Joseph asked, as Jesus ended his story.

“I have new work to do,” replied Jesus, softly, but firmly. “The kingdom of God is at hand. It is time sound repentance and good news throughout the land. The time is fulfilled.”

“Yes, I supposed it is,” though Joseph. And what a time it will be, he thought. I hope I am ready for it. I hope you are ready for it. I hope the world is ready for it.

The time is fulfilled.

-- by Brent

Zeal for Your House: A Lenten Meditation

“There’s going to be trouble,” Benjamin yelled over to Jonas whose booth sat next to his in the Temple courtyard. That was his first thought when he saw the itinerant rabbi from Nazareth lead his disciples in through the Temple gates. The courtyard was full to overflowing, yet here came the back country preacher, the crowd parting before him like the Red Sea before Moses. He could tell from the look in his eyes that he was upset.

“It certainly looks like it,” Jonas called back to his friend and fellow merchant. “I’ve heard that if he gets upset, then heaven help the man who faces his wrathful tongue.”

Benjamin and Jonas had been busy setting up their tables and cleaning their booths. The sun would be at its zenith soon and they wanted to get the awnings over their changing tables just right so they could sit in shady comfort. Soon it would be so hot from all the people crowded there that no breeze would be found. If there was, it would more likely blow with the scent of overripe bodies than that of freshening coolness.

It was Passover time – a good time of year for them. Moneychangers like them always had business, of course. So long as Jews came from around the world to worship at the Temple, they’d make a good living. Drachmas, assarions, leptons and staters from Greece, danarius from Rome, Persian daracs, silver and gold coins from Egypt, Sardis, Tire, Sidon and even Palestine itself were valid currency for commerce, but not for the Temple tax. And every Jewish man over nineteen who came to the Temple had to pay that half-shekel tax, the levy that kept the Temple rituals and sacrifices going daily. Two days wages for the good of the faith. Not too bad, but not payable in foreign coinage. It was unclean. They could be used to pay any of one’s debts except the debt to God. For that they had to be changed to shekels.

Shekels – the money of God. Or at least his Temple administrators and priests.

That was the needed service Benjamin, Jonas and their fellow moneychangers provided. They took dirty money and cleaned it – denarii for shekels, the good for the bad. Of course, even though it was a service, it was how they made their living, too. The moneychangers set up a pricing schedule that they thought was fair, something they could all live with. That way no one would undercut the others. There were plenty of pilgrims and so no one had to get too greedy. The exchange rate they came up with was sort of a two for one deal – a tax payer could exchange his money into shekels for a fee that roughly amounted to one day’s wages. They didn’t think that was too bad. Two days for God, one for me. And God got His in good shekels while they got theirs in various foreign currencies, all of which went up and down with the markets and depending on how foreign wars were going. The moneychangers had to do something to cover their risks. Besides, the Talmud allowed moneychanger to make a profit. As it said, “he is obliged to allow the moneychanger some gain.” So making a profit on this service wasn’t so bad. Besides, it was not a mere service they were providing, but an opportunity to worship with a clean heart and clean coins.

And now it was Passover time. All the Temple merchants were in a good mood. This was their big season. While business had been steady throughout the year, now it would get downright brisk. Over two and a quarter million of their fellow Jews would be gathering in Jerusalem for Passover. They’d be coming to the Temple. Most would need to change their money from secular to sacred. These would be both High Holy and high profit days for Benjamin, Jonas, and their fellow tradesmen.

“He’s getting closer,” Benjamin hollered to his friend, nodding toward Jesus.

“Yes, and he looks furious,” answered Jonas.

Jesus’ robes swirled about him, his sandals kicked up both dust and the stench of hot bodies and animal waste all crowded into an area barely big enough to get up a good game of soccer. Jesus bent low to the ground, picked up some loose rope. The crowd closed around him.

“What’s he doing now,” asked Jonas, unable to see.

“It looks like he’s picked up some rope or something and is braiding it together,” said Benjamin, stretching on his tip toes, trying to make out what the rabble rouser was doing in the middle of the crowd. “It looks like he’s making a whip of some sort.”

“That’s trouble, trouble indeed,” called Jonas. “I hope the Temple guards keep a close eye on him. What’s got him so upset.”

“Maybe them,” said Benjamin, pointing to the sellers of sacrificial animals.

Jonas turned to look, calling, “With radicals like him, you can never tell.” They looked beyond the stalls of their fellow moneychangers. Their gazes came to rest on the stalls full of oxen and sheep, cages with their doves.

“Maybe that’s it,” Benjamin nodded, his head pointing toward the animals. “All these animals have turned the place into a sort of zoo.”

“Yes, it’s despicable,” agreed Jonas. “Especially at this holiest time of the year. Besides, those men are extortionists.”

“I agree,” said Benjamin. “Many of these good people who are coming want to have a thankoffering sacrifice besides merely paying their Temple tax. Or they have some sins to atone for. Either requires as suitable offering. Those fellows have quite a racket in sacrificial lambs.”

“Well, the worshippers could buy their sacrifices outside or bring them with them. That’d save some money,” Jonas said.

“Sure, sure,” laughed Benjamin. “They could buy one outside the Temple walls and bring it in. But to be certified acceptable – pure and without blemish – they’d have to get it past the mumcheh.”

“Yes,” Jonas shook his head sadly, “and those Temple appointed inspectors charged a fee as well, almost a half day’s wages.”

“That’s just for the service,” Benjamin clucked. “Then the inspector often finds the animal impure or imperfect. Then the pilgrim had to find another animal.”

“It is practically blackmail,” added Jonas, “the way these poor pilgrims are victimized into buying their sacrifices from the Temple booths if they want to sacrifice at all. Maybe that’s what has Jesus so upset.”

The crowd parted again and Jesus was heading toward them. His stride became ever more purposeful. He had surged to the front of the crowd like a breaking wave. The crowd fanned out in his wake, watching in wonder. They’d seen him assault people verbally before, but this time he looked like he might actually do some physical violence. Gentle Jesus wasn’t so meek and mild all of a sudden. He began swinging the homemade whip over his head and stormed toward the animal sellers. Benjamin and Jonas breathed a sigh of relief as he went by them and headed for the stalls, waving the whip with one hand and turning over tables with the other.

“Get these out of here,” he shouted, opening the dove’s cages and shooing the birds away. “How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!”

“His father’s house?” laughed Benjamin, enjoying the site of those animals sellers scurrying around, alternately trying to round up their merchandise and avoid Jesus’ whip. “His father was a carpenter from that hick town Nazareth.”

“It is written,” Jesus was yelling, “’My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a ‘den of robbers.’”

“Now he thinks it’s his house,” chuckled Jonas, his laughter dying in his throat as Jesus turned toward him and the other moneychangers and started tearing up their booths, throwing the tables over and scattering coins about the courtyard. The crowd followed him, mingling money with manure as they ground both underfoot.

“Quick,” called Benjamin, “grab what you can and let’s get out of here.” The two money merchants snatched all the sacks of coins they could as Jesus’ and the mob approached. Then they scooted toward the Temple gates, hoping for safety. Benjamin glanced back over his shoulder and saw his booth torn apart by the indigent itinerant. The Temple guards pushed their way through the crowd at the gate, making their purposeful way to put down the unruly crowd. Benjamin hoped they’d be able to handle it. Otherwise the Roman soldiers would be called into to restore order and though Gentiles were allowed inside the Temple courtyard,

Benjamin didn’t want any pagan soldiers there.

As they made their way toward the gate, they noticed one of Jesus band was leaning against the Temple wall. “Judas, that’s what they call that one,” Benjamin said to Jonas, shrugging his shoulder to the man, his hands and arms too full of money bags to point. This Judas seemed to be talking to himself. As they drew neared to him, pulled by the current of the crowd flowing out through the gate, they heard what he was saying.

“Zeal for your house consumes me,” Judas was saying, “and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.” He repeated this over and over.

“You there, Judas,” Benjamin called, irritated. “What nonsense are you carrying on about. You’re one of his men, aren’t you.”

“Yes, I am,” Judas answered slowly, a slight smile on his face. “Zeal for your house consumes me and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.’ That’s what I was saying. It’s from the Psalms. It’s about the Messiah.”

“The Messiah,” snuffled Jonas, “that man leading the rabble, turning over tables, destroying the Temple’s lifeblood. You think he’s the Messiah?”

Benjamin and Jonas were then swept through the gate by the crowd.

“Messiah?” called Judas to their retreating backs. “He just might be, he just might be.” He saw something shining on the ground. He stooped down to retrieve it. It was a silver coin. I wish I had about thirty more like you, he thought, then went back to repeating to the people passing by

“Zeal for your house consumes me.”