I did not expect to be transformed when I narrated “Celebrate Life,” a cantata by Regan Courtney and Buryl Red. Sitting with the choir, listening to majestic voices singing powerful words, I was moved. More than moved when the alto voice of the Suffering Woman sang, “There was nowhere else to turn, and nowhere else to go; My body knew all the pain a body can know…” I observed the interpretive dancer as she followed the actor/Jesus across the stage. Suddenly as the dancer touches Jesus’ robe, the alto sings, “As I quietly turned to you, friend of the friendless/I quietly turned to you and you turned to me.”
Jesus twisted around to her: an outcast, a bleeding dirty woman. He was on his way to Jarius’ home, a rich guy and he still stopped! (Mark 5:25 or Matthew 9:20) He paused. Halted. Healed. Then he went on to touch Jarius’ daughter and bring her back from death of another kind. Two women at opposite ends of the social spectrum, didn’t matter to Jesus.
As Megan McKenna said in On Your Mark: “They know that fear is useless, only faith is sound. While their own lives were unraveling, Jesus made a new cloth of them, tying the fringes and tassels together in prayer. Now they wear a seamless garment of life that is a cloak of justice and healing that goes out from its edges to those in need.” (p. 81)
Jesus hands me that cloak daily through music, scripture, literature, and life; nudges to serve and invitations to love. Often I ignore or stomp on the cloak, or as the soldiers did at his crucifixion, “divide his clothes and cast lots” (Luke 23:34) but Jesus is lovingly patient. He turns to me. Picks up that cloak and hands it to me again and again.
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