Lunch with Herm and Eutychus
“Who ya
gonna crucify?”
The bell above the door of the Elbib diner jangled and slammed. Eutychus looked back over his should to see Herm walking towards him as he pulled his Isotoner gloved deliberately from his hands. Herm smiled as their eyes met. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, “New client who wanted to know everything about everything.”
Eutychus smiled as his friend neatly folded his gray woolen trench coat and set it on the red vinyl bench seat before sliding gracefully to its center where he always sat. Herm Foley was in his mid forties. He was an investment banker by trade and a wise and savvy man by avocation. Graying temples that barely showed against his sandy hair accentuated his gray eyes that were set deep on either side of his slightly hooked nose. Eutychus liked to imagine him playing Sherlock Holmes in a movie some day.
“I was just thinking about your name, Herm.”
“Really? Which one?”
They were interrupted by the inimitable Gracie Dale as she glided up to the table, pen in one hand and bill pad in the other.
“Why do you always have that pad, Gracie,” Herm asked with a twinkle in his eye. “You never have to write anything down.”
The gum snapped in her mouth before she answered. “It makes me look official,” she quipped, “and I get better tips.”
“Ooooo,” said Eutychus with a smile.
“The usual?” asked the girl.
Herm nodded.
“I’ll take the Cobb today,” said Eutychus, “no dressing, a couple of slices of lemon.”
“Tea?”
“Hot tea, no sugar—and another slice of lemon,” Eutychus said.
Gracie scribbled on her pad and with a snap of her gum, headed off to the counter.
“My mother was a child of the sixties before there was a sixties,” said Herm as he spread his napkin in his lap. “She was really into anything that wasn’t Christianity in some desperate attempt to be different. At the time I was born, the Greek pantheon was her thing and she decided she was going to make me a messenger of the Gods.”
“Must have been a surprise when you decided to become a Disciple of Jesus.”
“Well, she wasn’t real happy about it, but she always insisted that I could do whatever I wanted. In her mind that did not include being a Christian, but she kinda got caught in her own trap. I remember the argument. It was very short.” Herm smiled.
“You looked tense when you came in here today,” Eutychus observed. It was an abrupt change of course, but they only had forty-five minutes and together they had cultivated the habit of getting some depth quickly or lunch became a waste of time.
“Yes,” Herm breathed deeply before he started. “It just seems like there is a lot of infighting in the congregation lately. Trying to figure out who should be leading and all the budget problems and everyone blaming all the problems on everyone else.”
Eutychus nodded. “It’s almost like a witch hunt, sometimes.”
The bell behind the counter rang. Herm looked up. “Lunch: incoming.” Within seconds, Gracie had slid the meal into place before them and with a deliberate flourish, produced a new bottle of ketchup for Herm, plunking it onto the table right beside his plate. “Anything else?”
“The tea?” Eutychus asked.
“Right, Hot tea, lemon, no sugar.” Gracie was off on her quest.
“Someday she will remember,” Herm chuckled.
“We’ll tip her double when she does,” Eutychus added.
“I heard that,” Gracie said as she brought the tea to the table. “Double you say?”
“He’s a man of his word, Gracie,” Herm observed as he nodded to Eutychus, “and he can afford it too. I’ll make sure it happens.”
“That would be nice.” Gracie flicked back the strand of hair that fell across her face and straighten her apron before she left.
“It’s almost like everyone just wants to find someone else to crucify,” Eutychus noted as he spread margarine on his bread. “But somehow, I don’t think that Jesus wanted that in his church.”
Herm was cutting his meatloaf. “Crucifixion is an interesting thing,” he observed, “No on survives it you know.”
“Yeah,” Eutychus said, “I don’t think the Romans invented it just to punish people. It was meant to kill them.”
“I was talking with
K.P. the other day. Interestingly, he said that crucifixion was actually
invented by the Syrians. When the Romans conquered
Eutychus smiled. “It ought to be against the law for Christians to crucify other Christians.” He dug into his salad but the silence from the other side of the table made him look up. Herm, his fork in one hand and his knife in the other, sat still as a statue, staring back at Eutychus. “What?” Eutychus asked.
“That’s really profound,” Herm said as he shook his head.
“What?”
“What you just said: ‘It ought to be against the law for Christians to crucify other Christians’. Think about it. It is certainly against the law of Christ. In fact, I don’t think Jesus taught that Christians ought to crucify anyone.”
“Except maybe themselves,” Eutychus observed as he pushed a slice of tomato into his mouth.
Herm dropped his fork and knife on his plate and his hand went to the vest pocket of his suit. Out came the slim, single column NIV that Herm carried with him everywhere he went. “This is amazing,” he said as he started riffling through the pages. “I’ve never thought about this before, but it is simply profound!”
Eutychus always liked it when he observed Herm discovering something new, especially when he felt like he had a part in revealing it. Herm’s intensity always rose about three notches and the likeness to Holmes heightened. His eyes sparkled and his voice changed from its soft eloquence to a wild staccato that shook the windows when he spoke.
Herm stopped riffling. “Here it is,” he said. “Luke nine, starting in verse twenty three. ‘If anyone would come after me, he must take up his cross daily and follow me’. Jesus was talking about his followers crucifying themselves daily if they wanted to follow him.”
“Isn’t there something in Luke fourteen,” Eutychus added, “like verse twenty-five.”
Herm flipped the pages again. “Here it is, let’s see, verse twenty-seven. ‘And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.’ I think the operative phrase he is ‘Cannot be my disciple’ Self crucifixion was something Jesus required of his disciples.”
“Can you think of any instance where Jesus taught that it was Okay or appropriate to crucify anyone else?”
Herm had laid down the Bible and was cutting his meatloaf with renewed vigor. “All that comes to mind,” he said, “is that passage in the Sermon on the Mount where he talked about loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you. May be somewhat of an extrapolation, but it seems hardly fitting that he would then encourage us to crucify people in the church that we disagree with.” Herm waited until he had finished speaking before he shoved a chunk of meatloaf into his mouth. “Mmmmm” he intoned as he closed his eyes with the first taste of lunch.
Eutychus had to laugh.
Herm was still chewing when he laid down his silverware again and grabbed his Bible. He swallowed as he flipped through the pages again. “And there’s more!” he said. “Even when he was being crucified, Jesus didn’t change is stance. ‘When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate, when he suffered, he made no threats, Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.’ He could have said something like, ‘You’re the ones who should be crucified!’, but he didn’t. He trusted that God would handle it in time. His job was to allow himself to be crucified.”
“Where was that passage?” Eutychus asked.
“First Peter two,
verse twenty-two.” Herm was already flipping pages again. “And it wasn’t like
he was just putting up with the cross because he had no choice. ‘Who being in the very nature of
God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made
himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. Being made in human
likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became
obedient to death, even death on a cross’, Philippians two, starting in verse
six. Jesus allowed himself to be crucified. He knew it was coming”
Eutychus had nearly finished his
salad while Herm was talking, but Herm was far from finished.
“I think the apostle Paul
understood this. Take a look at this verse in Galatians.” Herm handed his Bible
to Eutychus. “Chapter two, verse twenty. Read it out
loud.” Herm scooped a mouthful of mashed potatoes as Eutychus read.
“’I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’”
Herm Swallowed. “Paul had to live
by his faith, the same as Jesus. He considered himself crucified the same way
Jesus was. How about Philippians three, verse ten?”
Eutychus found the passage while Herm ate another spear of the now cold asparagus. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
“You see, you see,”
Herm said excitedly as he wagged his fork at Eutychus. “Paul wanted to be just
like Jesus. He wasn’t interested in crucifying anyone but himself. And there is
another passage. I forget where it is but Paul says something like. “I die every day—I mean that,
brothers—“
“First Corinthians 15, I think,”
Eutychus interjected.
“Paul had it straight.” Herm
looked at his watch. “Five minutes left,” he said as he ate another chunk of
his meatloaf. Eutychus waited for him to finish chewing; he knew there was more
coming. “Just think,” Herm continued, “If everyone in
the church spent most of their time crucifying themselves—“
His eyes sparkled. “then, from their crosses
they looked down and said things like ‘Father, forgive them, ‘cause they don’t
know what they’re doing’ or ‘Into your hands I commend my spirit’ or ‘Mother, behold your son.’ What a church that would
be, huh?”
Eutychus smiled. “I’m going to
have to think about that.”
Gracie stood at the side of the
table. She had an uncanny way of knowing when they were almost done. “Whose
turn?” she asked.
Herm opened his mouth, but
Eutychus beat him to it. “Mine,” he said. Herm closed his mouth.
“Good,” Gracie said with a smirk,
as she slapped the bill down beside Eutychus.
“Thanks for lunch, Gracie Dale,”
Herm said with a smile. “You’re a beacon of joy on a cold, wet, April day in
Gracie smiled before she lifted
the stack of detritus from the Monday meal. “I try,” she said.
“Lots to think about,” Eutychus
said as she left.
“Lots to pray about, I think,”
Herm affirmed.
Eutychus headed back to the body
shop with a new challenge. All the gossip, slander and attitudes fell in place
behind the idea of self-crucifixion. There were several people he needed to
talk to, but that would have to wait until after work.