On Easter Sunday I made my usual appeal for people to
volunteer to be crucifers. However, what
I said was, “please consider being a crucifier”; which might have been more
appropriate for Good Friday. There was a
lot of laughter and I immediately corrected myself. However, on reflection I wonder if there is
more to this than a slip of the tongue.
On reflection what comes to mind is the old Burt Bacharach song “What the Word Needs Now is Love Sweet Love”. Well I never thought I would be quoting a Burt
Bacharach song as he is not one of my favourite songwriters to it mildly and
that song is sentimental schmaltz. However, to paraphrase Burt, we don’t need any
more crucifiers. The world seems to have
plenty of them. The question this morning
after the Second Sunday in Easter is, when are we crucifiers and when are we
crucified. Put it another way, when do
we look for a scapegoat to take all the blame for what is going on in our lives
and when do we acknowledge that much of what we put on others is so that we don’t
have to acknowledge it in ourselves?
It is human nature to not want to “see the speck in your
neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye”? Carl Jung named this phenomenon the shadow
which can appear I our dreams often as a person of the same sex as the dreamer
who carries all the unacknowledged parts of ourselves. These are often negative qualities—or qualities
we see as negative. However, they can be
positive and be carried by what is the bright shadow. In any case as Jesus says we need to be able
to acknowledge that log in our own eye if we are not to be crucifiers of others
in this life.
Blessings
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