Piss Christ (1987) by Andres Serrano. A photo of a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s alleged urine.
I
I’m not the sort of person who uses the words miracle and piss in the same post. I’m not the sort of person who uses the word miracle, but that’s what you’re getting today.
A few Sundays ago I took the train down from St. Andrews to Edinburgh with friends to visit a church as part of a class assignment, to consider architecture and a liturgical community’s interaction with space. We got into the city around 9 that morning and broke off to our respective churches. I misread the church I was supposed to go to and walked fourteen blocks down to the arts district holding a cold cortado and my iPhone listlessly, and between the galleries and the paint supply store I realised I had gone the wrong way. Or, really, I had no idea where I was supposed to be going.
Defeated, I searched Google Maps with the vague descriptor Episcopal, because it was last August I had felt at home in a church and had yet to do so in Scotland and this day was, irrationally, the day that I most needed it to work, for church to happen, be felt, be known.
Well, for Him to be. He was silent those days. (Is still, though that’s another story.) I read my Bible. I prayed. I wound the clock. Nothing. I thought I had dealt with this, had reached the place of accepting His silence with some sense of sophistication, but I hadn’t, I was pissed and tired and over it and I needed Him to show up. I told Him as much, there between the gallery and the paint supply store.
I chose St. John’s because Joan Didion’s church in New York was St. John the Divine. It was twenty minutes away on foot and I hastily began the walk back out of the arts district toward the other side of downtown.
I don’t know why you need to know this: Didion, New York, twenty minutes, but there is something that feels necessary about the remnant details, that in a post where I shall speak of miracle I’d better be sure I also speak of ordinary.
II
It turns out that St. John’s was the church I was supposed to go to all along and, as is the way with Providence, I arrived four minutes before the service was to begin.
I sat in the back, making the old, familiar genuflect toward the altar, sliding quietly into my pew and stilling, willing to hear the icons whisper to one another, to remind me of that old Story I forgot so often.
Two women behind me chattered away. Without charity I wished them to be quiet. I wished for a moment of true stillness, true reverence.
Why do we think reverence is a state of silence? Awe a moment of quiet? Again, stray thoughts concerning the ordinary.
Just as it is ordinary to say that in this downtown church, a homeless man nearing seventy lumbered in, reeking of piss, and sat down in the pew behind me, beside those chattering women.
The stench was so strong I nearly gagged. I nearly moved away. But something held me. Something, perhaps a capital S Something fixed me.
The two women beside him excused themselves. I heard a deaconess take their place. “Hello,” she whispered to him kindly, “May I sit with you?”
And I felt church again. Not God, but church. For the first time in months. I felt church in the space of that question, in the stench of that piss.
III
In 1987, the American photographer and controversial artist Andres Serrano unveiled a photograph called Piss Christ.
The image depicted a small plastic crucifix submerged in what was alleged to be the artist’s own urine.
Backlash. Uproar. People called it offensive. And it was.
But shouldn’t it be?
When we put crosses around our necks, when we glibly hang a cross, do we remember that it’s similar to if we were now hanging electric chair talismans about our throats?
We have scrubbed the cross of its horror. We have scrubbed the cross of its pain.
Perhaps we have scrubbed our Gospel, too.
Maybe submerging the crucifix in piss shocks us back to seeing, shocks us back to the pain of the reality that He died.
Artist intent or not, maybe it’s bringing us back to that painful mount, that crooked tree where Word made flesh died, where the Gospel is not free of the stench of death, the stench of piss.
IV
I had to make a decision, early on in the service, that I would pass the peace to the homeless man.
When it came time to reach over my hand, to say The peace of Christ! I would do so, I would not cringe.
The homily was about justice and, as an aside—again, the concern with the ordinary—it was the first homily I have ever heard systemic misogyny used correctly and applied rightly. The creed that followed was not Nicea, not the Apostle’s, but Philippians 2. As a congregation, we professed our faith in the One Lord, Jesus Christ, by reciting
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men …
When I shook the man’s hand, I met his eyes. They were grey and blue, touched with a few speckles of brown. I blessed him with the peace of Jesus and he blessed me with the same. I could smell piss like a cloud around me when I took my hand away. I could taste it in my mouth, feel it burn my lungs. I felt nauseous for a moment but stole myself, settling back into the pew as the offering began.
The woman sitting beside me had taken the man’s hand as well. She leaned over to me, smiling like she knew that old Story too, “There is nothing more true than freely given Love.”
And I nod, because this is the thing you do when someone hands you truth and you presume they capitalise that L in Love and your hands smells of piss and the room smells of incense and the choir is singing again and again, Glory. Glory. Glory.
V
I’m sure I could have written this entire post with the word urine, but I didn’t.
Piss gets at the baseness of this whole thing, at the baseness of us. We are creatures who piss and s— and f— and I am using all of those words for a reason, because they are powerful and harsh and to be honest they better get at what sin is than the cute little euphemisms that spray a cheap air freshener on our tangled messes and false hope for the best.
This is a post in which the most honest word to use is piss. So I used it. Irrationally, I hope you understand that perhaps most of all.
VI
When I went forward to receive the Eucharist, I could still smell the piss on my hand.
It followed me, a cloud of witness, lingering in my lungs and prophesying to my dry bones.
(This is where things change. This is the part where I tell you that the choir sung something particularly well or that the atmosphere was so charged. Or perhaps I say how ordinary it was, I write about the sound of the wooden floor and the tentative movement of my steps, because if I write of loud then miraculous makes sense or if I write of ordinary than miraculous, again, makes a kind of sense.)
I don’t know what to tell you other than things as they so happened.
I so happened to kneel at the altar rail. I so happened to have Body placed into my hand. I so happened to smell that piss linger still. I so happened to dip that Body into the Blood and so happened to respond to The Blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation with a determined, Amen only to have it resounded back to me with a jubilant thunder, Amen! And I so happened to consume the Blood drenched Body as my hand lingered in front of my face.
My hand that no longer smelled of piss.
I blinked a few times. I crossed myself. I went back to my pew. What else was I supposed to do?
I sniffed my hand every few second on my way back to my pew. My hand didn’t smell of flowers. It didn’t smell of anything, really. It simply no longer smelled of piss.
And then the epiphany, quick and hasty, from Him or within me through Him: this is what the Eucharist is about. This is what all of this is about. That cross is death. That cross is death and disgusting and dripping shame. My sin, my ache, my tangled heart is like a piss-drenched vagabond stumbling into the backs of churches wondering if anyone will offer me peace. And then the Eucharist, Christ our Lord, making all things new, making all things beautiful in their time.
So I call this miracle.
Writing it out, it does not seem so fantastic, that a hand should no longer smell of piss.
But I suppose that’s the way of these things.
VII
In my commitment to the ordinary details, I need to add this—
Over cookies and tea after the service, I chatted with the man for a time and learned that the church had been keeping watch over him, had made it possible for him to work. When it came time for me to leave, I realised that our conversation had taken up so quickly, so naturally, I hadn’t asked his name.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your name.”
“Gabriel.”
“Gabriel?”
“Yep!”
I shook my head softly. “Thank you, Gabriel.”
When I passed the icon of the Trinity on my way out, I lingered for a moment, made a gesture as if to say, Of course You’d do it this way, before heading back out into the midday sun, into His silence, or whatever this is, washed clean of that stench of piss, washed into whatever is this now.
Thank you for this down to earth post. Jesus death was horrible, His resurrection awesome. He transforms us all daily if we only let Him. I am thankful to Him for His many blessings and the many ways He works in my life. We don’t always realize what He is doing, but we can ‘know’ that He is ‘always with us working all things out for good’.
FlowerLady
Silence in the face of that story may be more reverential, but I think that a writer should know when they have touched a heart.
Thank you.
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you, and Gabriel, and us all, evermore.
Love this.
Preston this was so beautifully written and the moment captured so wonderfully I had tears in my eyes as I read your words. Thank you for sharing the gift of this moment with us. Your words were extremely powerful and they will resonate in my heart today.
Beautiful.
Well done.
WOW! I am sitting at my desk in tears with a sense of having shared in one of those sacred moments in which God has truly broken through mundane and acceptable religion and shone a true glimpse of God’s light and hope. Thank you for reminding me what the upcoming Holy Week really should look like.
Thank you for honesty and bringing light. Thank you because Christianity is so often clean and preserved, but in reality it is in the mud next to someone that God is truely seen. Thank you
this washes my eyes to see the beauty in the urine i swim in every day. i need to be brutally reminded often – the baseness, all the ordinary details – in this i can find Christ, too. i can feel church again. wow, that part spoke to me.
thank you, Preston.
I could see, smell, hear and taste this post. Thank you. And thank you for choosing to use the word “piss.” Sometimes we do need to be shocked back into reality. I was reading today about the “fierce anger of the Lord” in Jeremiah and how little we talk about the fierceness of God or Jesus. We sanitize them to make them “nice guys” or “tame lions.” You have hit on a point that I won’t soon forget: “We have scrubbed the cross of its horror. We have scrubbed the cross of its pain.
Perhaps we have scrubbed our Gospel, too.”
A powerful encounter. The smell of urine makes me think of mass transit elevators and wayward nursing homes. It is a smell of the downcast. To wear it, that is. Christ does cover all our humanity.
Thanks for sharing this vignette of the sacred and the base being so inexplicably intertwined.
wow!my first thoughts. you got it going on with the truth, friend.
Honestly, what could I possibly say.
Dang, Preston. What a story.
achingly beautiful. i was talking with my priest last week about the Eucharist, Christ’s presence there, and the power therein. this is a poignant illustration of that truth. thank you for sharing.
Oh. My. Gosh. This is beautiful!!!!! I could smell and taste everything as I read your piece. And then I found myself anticipating your miracle, your word from Him. I was anticipating Jesus. When I read of Him in your miracle, your word from Him and I recognized Him, I was and still am overwhelmed. This is amazing!!!!! And all the ordinary details are very important!!!!! Thank you so much for sharing!!!!!
Today is special to me as I’ve gone 6 years without the numbing and escaping of alcohol. Your post is powerful. Thank you. God is indeed in the ordinary, in the miraculous. I was also a Baptist, too and He drew me back to Him at a spiritual, silent retreat in a hut on a Catholic reserve in Iowa.
It was 6 and a half years ago now. I’ve been sober for 6 today. Happy dancing that He cared enough to show me He is love.
Your post illumines His love. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Well done! Thank you and congratulations!
Beautiful. Really, really beautiful.
A poem that resonates with your story, for what it’s worth: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2000/04/piss_christ.html. (I’ve recently fallen for Hudgin’s work–he seems interested in something like what you’re describing here. Just happened upon your profound story through a fb link.)
I have a hard time retelling the miraculous things that have happened to me because it always seems like in the retelling the power goes out of the story. But, you totally nailed it here! What an amazing, miraculous way for God to meet you!
Well, this is something, and it reminded me of something that happened to me, once, involving a lack of smoke-smell when there was smoke. But my favorite part of this post is your short discussion of why you chose with intention to use the words you did.
a. mazing.
God is so very real.
How can we be less? I appreciate this.
And yes, how very like Love to reveal Himself in such a real, even vulgar way…. I seriously doubt God is surprised by His precious creation.
But I am delighted to hear how He made Himself real to you and made Truth real to you- it is very encouraging- thank you!
“And I nod, because this is the thing you do when someone hands you truth and you presume they capitalise that L in Love and your hands smells of piss and the room smells of incense and the choir is singing again and again, Glory. Glory. Glory.”
I would have quoted much more. All really so earthy and moving.
of course his name is Gabriel. wow.
A magical, fairy-tale like piece. However, I’m interested that after deciding to use the word ‘piss’ you shied away from spelling out and therefore weakening the full acerbic, diabolic power of the words ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ – as if these words can, despite the power to shock and disgust humans have attributed to them – make the slightest stain on the robes of righteousness He has draped us in.
So, was the vagabond really the angel Gabriel?
I always choose my words with care and I always spell out what only needs spelling out. Doing more than that would have been flashy, designed to shock, and I wasn’t interested in doing that, it would have missed the point.
No, he wasn’t. But we serve a God who folds time and space and meaning and us into mere fractioned moments, so if he’s named Gabriel, I still get the cosmic joke, even if he is not an angel.
Sure, I understand – I’m just fascinated by this power or taboo we give these words – mere sounds from our mouths – or symbols on a screen – which can cause offense? How did we give them such power that we can’t type them or say them ? I write fiction under a pen name to give me freedom to use whatever words I want without the fear of ‘shocking’ my more sensitive friends.
Great article, and like someone else said above, beautifully written. I once had a £17,000 tax bill wiped out by a scruffy tax man wearing second-hand clothes and dinner down his holey jumper called Mr. Nazareth.
God does have a sense of humor.
I’m glad you’ve used ‘piss’ and not ‘urine’. Delightfully tasteless word. And goes surprisingly well with ‘off’. Which you should please feel free to use if I post again.
This is my favorite of all your stories.
i don’t read much from religious blogs these days. however, tears stream as i read this story. just wanted to whisper that.
Jeez, Preston. Wow. so deep. so beautifully said. I’m so blessed by your gift from God to form these stories…with so much presenation…prolly a lot like your food. =)
It’s daily illustrations like this that make me believe in miracles. I’m less skeptical of a story such as this, opposed to, say, an apparition of Mary.
Beautiful.