What We Do With Jesus #5
This is the fifth and final story in a series based on the history of Tucson’s Garden of Gethsemane that is meant to help us examine what we do with Jesus today.
We Can’t Live Without Him
Why is it that our culture, as much as it’s claimed to move on from Jesus, continues to return to him in spaces like the Garden of Gethsemane? Our church always hosts an exploratory and creative Good Friday service and we like to find unique spaces to host it in our city, especially Christ-haunted places. To my continual surprise, they aren’t hard to find. Felix Lucero’s garden is one of many.
Last year we met at Ted DeGrazia’s beautiful handmade gallery. It was hosting a display of images of Christ on his way to the cross. And DeGrazia, our most famous artist, even built a charming little open-roofed chapel on the grounds. Our university gallery’s permanent collection includes an impressive array of 14th to 19th century Christian art, mostly biblical narratives and images of Christ. We will try to have a service there in the future. An old quarry near downtown is home to several shrines and a convincing replica of the empty tomb, used for years as part of a local Easter procession. Statisticians recently ranked Tucson as one of the most post-Christian cities in America, yet we aren’t anywhere near exhausting our list of potential meeting spaces filled with images that point to Jesus.
We have saved Felix Lucero’s sculptures from the vandals and the slow and grinding wheels of modernity many times already, and plans are in the works to do it again. For some reason, we fight to keep these depictions of Jesus saving the world in our lives. Despite steady criticism since the days that Jesus walked the earth, the kingdom that he inaugurated and secured by sacrificial death has never been overthrown either. The great Romans that were in power when Jesus was among us are long gone. The world leaders at war when Felix Lucero was wounded have died, and their governments no longer bow to them or to their principles.
Most of us can think of the great world leaders of our childhood, the revolutionaries and dictators. Few of them are still standing, and those left won’t stand for long. But there are no signs that Jesus is going anywhere. Christians hold to the persistent hope that he’s coming back. The Garden of Gethsemane seems to come back to life over and over again. Even when the next wave of “progress,” a great flood, a more devastating vandal, or the sheer impact of a changing climate wipe it out someday…all signs point to the one on the cross remaining right where he is, at the center of countless hearts and lives and therefore, in view of the rest of humanity.
As we gathered with friends from our church community in front of Lucero’s garden on Good Friday, we had to make space for other visitors to pass through quietly to take in the scenes and pray. Our church is a lively little group of mostly 20–30 somethings filled with doubts, fears and questions, but also…faith. They listened attentively to stories about Felix Lucero and his sculptures. Many of them expressed a sense of connection to the man who died decades before they were born. They stood next to the life-sized statues of the disciples and one woman shared a sense of feeling more connected to the biblical scene than ever, by being there.
The roar of traffic on Interstate 10 and a helicopter passing overhead impressed upon us our location in the midst of the busy modern world. We were still though, connected to something more transcendent. The man the disciples gathered to, around that table in ancient Israel, was the same man Felix Lucero offered his battlefield prayer to, and whose imagined image he sculpted and contemplated over and over. We gathered in Lucero’s garden and around the base of an old rugged cross made of refuse from the Santa Cruz River (Santa Cruz meaning Holy Cross), and turned our spiritual eyes toward that very same man who we gather to worship every Sunday, Jesus Christ.
Why can we not live without him? You, reader, may say, “I do live without him.” You very well may at this moment, but masses of humanity have ascribed to his teachings, worshipped in his Church, and most importantly, have been transformed by his grace for now, well over, two thousand years. Honestly, Jesus impact on history may have been more of a positive influence on your life than you are able identify. While the kingdoms, the philosophies, the viewpoints, the authors, the rock stars, and even the social media influencers of this world come and go and we forget them, Jesus and his cross have continued to stand over history. His pattern of sacrificial love has critiqued and inspired those who have gathered to him for centuries. He has transformed his own vandals, by dying in their place. Even his critics can’t stop talking about him. Why is this so? Maybe it’s worth considering. Perhaps you will one day say, as a Roman soldier who crucified him once discovered, “Surely this man was the Son of God.”
