July 1965 was an adventurous month for me. It was the month that the Love family moved from the Midwest to the East as the U. S. Steel Corporation consolidated all of their engineers from across the nation into a single locale, Pittsburgh. For a thirteen-year-old the move held the adventure of traversing from the flatlands along the shore of Lake Erie to navigating the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains. Current events extended no further for me than the next sandlot baseball game.
On the opposite side of the globe there was a country named Vietnam, and July was not an ordinary month. Though the Asian country was engulfed in war, the name Vietnam was a meaningless name to a naïve ninth-grade adolescent, as my life revolved around choosing which television programs to watch in the evening; unbeknownst to me, on the18th day of that month, a jet plane piloted by Jeremiah Denton came crashing to the ground in a ball of flames, setting the stage for seven and a half years of captivity in Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi, better known as the Hanoi Hilton.
In that treacherous prison, along with seven hundred other Navy and Air Force airmen, he suffered isolation, malnutrition, disease, and torture. He, like the others, was sustained through the trauma of imprisonment embracing the fellowship of fellow POWs. They endured by encouraging one another. They were uplifted by sharing coded messages taped through the walls of solitary confinement. Messages of patriotism, memories of family, and a faith in God. It would be hard to say which was most important, for each reassured a man of his dignity and self-worth.
Denton recounted his ordeal in a book he wrote titled When Hell Was in Session. Of the many stories he recounted, one remains with me as none other: On his way to the latrine, Ed Davis passed word to Denton that he had left a gift. There, at the latrine, he found a cross woven from strips of straw taken from a broom. Denton wrote, “I was deeply touched by the cross; it was my only really personal possession…” The officer kept it hidden in the pages of his propaganda pamphlet, thinking that would be the most unlikely place suspected or inspected. An unfortunate assumption as one day the guards inspected his cell, discovering and confiscating the forbidden cross. The guard threw the cross upon the filthy cement, stomped it with his boot, and then threw it into the open sewer.
A Vietnamese lady was ordered in to repair the tousled cell, as the culprit stood outside, bayonet pricking his neck. The victim, returning to his cell, outraged, began to rip apart the pamphlet only to feel a lump among the pages. There was a beautiful woven cross. The woman, at great personal risk, recreated Denton’s symbol of faith and hope. The cross was a reminder of his personal relationship with God, and as the worker knew, a universal expression of hope. The airmen of the camp came to call the cross and accompanying story “Denton’s Cross.”
There is a special need for us to feel especially close to God. A relationship transcending friendship for we are kindred – truly a child of the Beloved. In our private apartments that are our personal Hanoi Hilton, we are able to grasp the cross and utter the words “Daddy.” Childish? Then Jesus is the most boorish babe of us all.
Nailed to the cross, Jesus spoke the word Abba, which in the Aramaic means “Daddy.” It was the desperate plea of a child to a parent. It was a cry for solace and comfort. It came from excruciating agony, tears mingled with blood. It was the final act of a child’s plea. It was the ultimate expression that Jesus understood himself to be, like none other on earth, a son – not the Son, but a son.
The Christological title Son of God reveals the intimate relationship that Jesus had with the Creator, so inborn that the son was the self-revelation of the parent. As Jesus taught and walked, God stood in the shadows of the stage. As Jesus performed acts of mercy and healing, God directed from the settee.
Realizing that God was his father was discovered long before the agony of death, where most seem to find religion, but it was the sustaining attitude throughout his life. As a lad of twelve did he not tell Mary and Joseph that the lost child was not astray, but in “my Father’s house.” (Lk 2:49) In the years that followed Jesus continually spoke on behalf of God. “You must not turn my Father’s house into a market.” (Jn 2:16) “If I am not acting as my father would, do not believe me.” (Jn 10:37) Anyone who loves me will heed what I say; then my Father will love him, and will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” (Jn 14:23) “I have disclosed to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” (Jn 15:15) Throughout his life, as recorded in the gospels, Jesus spoke of “my Father” in a way that connects him quite uniquely with God.
Jesus’ life was a sufficient witness for the gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, that Jesus, as the Son of God, was the perfect revelation of God. It was the testimony that to know Jesus was to know God. And perhaps, most importantly, as Jesus trusted in the one affectionately called Abba, so may we. This is why when Jesus taught us to pray, he opened to us a universal God by directing us to begin with the salutation, “Our Father, who art in heaven.”
The church fathers made Jesus’ self-understanding into a theological doctrine at the Council of Nicaea, that convened in 325 A.C.E., when the Doctrine of Consubstantial was adopted. This doctrine affirmed that Jesus was “consubstantial with the Father.” The theological term consubstantial means of “the same substance,” meaning God and Jesus were “of one substance;” that is, they are equal, they are the same. The council also established the Trinitarian formula of “God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.”
Jeremiah Denton understood the need for the comforting presence of a heavenly parent as he endured a hell administered by heartless demons. He wrote poetry, memorized it, recited it to other pilots, who in turn memorized the lines, and like a stealth bomber the words of comfort would fly about the camp, undetected by Satan’s emissaries.
For the celebration of Easter, which had a calendar date of April 6,1969, he wrote a poem titled La Pieta. Any poem or statue or similar piece of artistic expression that depicts the crucified Jesus lying on the lap of his mother, embraced in her arms, is called a La Pieta, which means “the compassion,” and it can only be used in reference to Jesus and Mary. Once the poem became a part of the camp’s vernacular, Denton was designated as the president of the Optimist Club. The poem reads:
The soldiers stare, then drift away,
Young John finds nothing to say,
The veil is rent; the deed is done;
And Mary holds her only son.
His limbs grow stiff, the night grows cold,
But naught can lose that mother’s hold,
Her gentle, anguished eyes seem blind,
Who knows what thoughts run through her mind?
Perhaps she thinks of last week’s palms,
With cheering thousands off’ring alms
Or dreams of Cana on the day
She nagged him till she got her way.
Her face shows grief but not despair,
Her head though bowed has faith to spare,
For even now she could suppose
His thorns might somehow yield a rose.
Her life with Him was full of signs
That God writes straight with crooked lines.
Dark clouds can bide the rising sun,
And all seem lost, when all be won!