Monday: Yes We (Peli)Can!

"To his good friends thus wide I’ll ope my arms,
And like the kind life-rend’ring pelican,
Repast them with my blood."

That's Laertes in Act IV/Scene 5 of "Hamlet" explaining how he'll go about avenging his father's murder. The image has always struck me.

Natural philosophy in the Middle Ages held that when food grew scarce the mother pelican allowed her brood to peck open her breast and feast on the very flesh and blood of her heart. There's not much scientific evidence for this; the medievals had different ideas than we do about what constitutes sound ornithology. Due to this belief, the pelican became a Christ-symbol: Jesus, arms flung wide on the cross, inviting us to eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood and thus find life in the desert of our sin. Some medieval churches mount stained-glass windows that feature the pelican in this role.

I knew the image went back as far as "Hamlet." I did not know it went as far back as my faith.

Yesterday we visited the traditional sight of the Upper Room, the sight of the Last Supper. When you mount the stairs and enter the vaulted arches of the designated building you are not in the same physical space where Jesus and the apostles dined the night before the crucifixion. It is a crusader construction that dates to about the first millennium AD. But in explaining to us the provenance for this place, our guide Dr. Jim Denison pointed to the capital on a pillar to one side of the room. It depicts a pelican: A deep wound punctures her breast and two fledglings, one on either side, stab their bills into the gap. That stone, Dr. Denison explained, dates to the first century. As was the practice of the day, later builders, finding it amidst the rubble of the area, re-purposed it for their own project. The idea is that this spot must have had great significance for the early church in some capacity related to the symbolism of the Lord's Supper.

I am less interested in whether that is a good argument that this was The Real Place and more moved by the antiquity and power of the image itself. And for a couple of reasons: First, Laertes plans to kill anyone he finds culpable in his dad's death. It is only to Polonius' "good friends" that he offers himself in sacrifice. But Jesus flung back his wings to the very race who murdered him and thus showed our true intent toward his Father. Second, the image is feminine. The early church evidently felt the freedom to comprehend the actions of Our Lord in ways that a woman's love best reveals. Oh, and possibly another thing: The Upper Room was also the sight of the Spirit's first falling on the Church at Pentecost. Perhaps the pelican offers us the reminder that great outpourings of God's presence to us come linked with great outpourings of ourselves to others.

So today, as I prepare to leave the Holy Land, I would carve that image into the capital that tops the supporting post of my life, and offer my desire in the following prayer:

Today I bind unto myself the power of the Pelican Christ.
From his five wounds on Calvary's tree I draw the holy meat and drink
that save my starving soul.
I, at one moment deicide and fratricide and fledgling child,
ensconce myself in the saving embrace of a mother's welcoming wings
Who gladly gives her very life to save a wretch like me.

Today I bind unto myself the call of the Pelican Christ.
I claim the gift of the indwelling Spirit to fling apart every protection.
If by Christ I here give all, no one can take my goods.
If by Christ I eat and drink, no one can leave me poor.
If by Christ I die to self no one can take my life.

This I pray in the Upper Room of my heart,
By the power of the Pelican,
In the name of Jesus Christ my Lord,
Amen.