MY beloved mom, Rose Aleta ( Irvine ) Schwanke died peacefully in her sleep on Easter morning, 20 APR 25 at the Hillside Nursing Home in Gatesville, TX, she was 90 years old. I will post an obituary as soon as it is available.
BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label Easter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Easter. Show all posts
29 April 2025
23 April 2025
VERSE AND VOICE FROM SOJOURNERS 23APR25
THIS post reminds me of the promise of our faith, that there is eternal life after death, especially poignant with the passing of my mom on Easter morning this year.....
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18 April 2025
How Antisemitic Myths Twisted the Crucifixion of Jesus 14APR25
This is an interesting look at the crucifixion of Christ and the origin of anti-semitism. The Politics of Jesus by Jim Wallis is a good read for anyone who wants to go deeper into this. From Sojourners...
How Antisemitic Myths Twisted the Crucifixion of Jesus
It’s a straightforward part of the Easter story: The Roman governor Pontius Pilate had Jesus of Nazareth killed by his soldiers. He imposed a sentence that Roman judges often inflicted on social subversives — crucifixion.
The New Testament gospels say so. The Nicene Creed, one of Christianity’s key statements of faith, says Jesus “was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” The testimony of Paul, the first person whose preaching in the name of Jesus Christ is preserved in the New Testament, refers to the crucifixion.
But over the past 2,000 years, it was common for some Christians to deem Pilate almost blameless for Jesus’ death and treat Jews as responsible — a belief that has shaped the global history of antisemitism.
Throughout medieval times, Easter was often a dangerous time for Jewish communities, whom Christians targeted as “Christ-killers.” This perception was integral to the hate that motivated mass violence in Europe as late as the 19th and 20th centuries, including pogroms in Russia and even Nazi genocide.
Why did Christian teachings practically let Pilate off the hook? Why did many Christians allege Jews were to blame?
The gospels’ story
In the gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, Pilate believes Jesus innocent of any crime. In some of them, he even proclaims so in public.
But the chief priests of the ancient Jewish temple at Jerusalem see Jesus as a charismatic and popular Jewish preacher who challenges their authority. They have Jesus arrested and tried before Pilate during the week of Passover.
Pilate schemes for Jesus’ release, but a riotous crowd clamors for his death. Pilate caves and decides to crucify Jesus, whom Christians believe rose from the dead three days later.
Any reader of the gospels knows the sequence, though it varies somewhat in each of them. The earliest gospels, composed at least a generation after Jesus’ death, blamed the chief priests and attending crowd for persuading Pilate to have Jesus crucified. The gospel of John, written some decades after the other three, portrayed Jews in general as responsible, and so did much of early Christian literature.
One account, written in the mid-second century or later, and not included in the New Testament, even claimed that Jesus’ crucifixion was not ordered by Pilate. Instead, it blamed Herod Antipas, the Jewish ruler of Galilee — the region where Jesus grew up. Other texts from after the first few centuries A.D. said that Pilate became a Christian.
Roman history
Scholars have long debated the historical facts of Jesus’ trial. In my 2025 book, Killing the Messiah, I do too.
The gospel testimonies capture the basics of criminal trials before Roman judges, which were held in public. Judges posed questions to prosecutors and defendants, and had ample power to decide whether a person was innocent or guilty and impose a punishment.
Writers who lived in the Roman Empire portrayed judges as capricious, unaccountable or swayed by menacing crowds. The gospels reflect this attitude by making Pilate appear bullied into condemning an innocent man (Mark 15).
But from a historian’s viewpoint, there is a crucial problem with the gospels’ description. Roman judges could and sometimes did face removal from office, property confiscation, exile or even death for executing clearly innocent people. In other words, it seems unlikely that Pilate would have proclaimed Jesus guiltless, but then conceded to pressure and condemned him anyway.
Other ancient writers describe Pilate as someone who was not above offending the Jews of Judaea. According to the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo and the historian Josephus, Pilate had his soldiers carry objects that honored Roman emperors into Jerusalem, which Jewish residents saw as sacrilegious. When crowds protested, he sometimes backed down. But his soldiers attacked an agitated crowd that opposed Pilate’s use of Temple money to build an aqueduct. They also massacred an insurrection of Samaritans — people who also claimed descent from Israelites.
Pilate did not cave to hostile crowds indiscriminately, or do whatever the chief priests wanted. Since Roman prefects like him had to coordinate with Jewish priests to govern Jerusalem, he likely viewed people who incited social disturbance against them as subversive. Jesus would have fit in that category, but neither Philo nor Josephus provides examples of Pilate killing people after acquitting them.
Growing divide
Why, then, did Pilate have Jesus crucified? As many scholars have argued, the simple answer would be that he believed Jesus committed some sort of sedition — not that the crowd simply pressured Pilate into doing so.
Yet, when the gospels were composed a generation after the crucifixion, they portrayed Pilate as convinced of Jesus’ innocence. As more time passed, other works of ancient Christian literature shifted accountability from Pilate to Jews.
The experiences of Jesus’ early followers help explain this shift. They, like Jesus himself, were Jewish, and they considered him a heaven-sent Messiah. But over the course of the first and second centuries, they increasingly separated themselves from other Jews, until they began to see themselves as members of a non-Jewish movement: Christianity.
In Roman authorities’ eyes, the Christians were troublesome, and they sometimes faced prosecution and capital punishment. In addition, Rome had inflicted atrocities and punitive measures upon Jews after insurgencies — further motivating Jesus’ followers to distance themselves. Their literature became increasingly hostile toward Jews.
Historians and biblical scholars continue to debate why Pilate condemned Jesus. Was it for suggesting that he was the Messiah, or, in Pilate’s wording, “King of the Jews”? Did Jesus incite a crowd disturbance at the Temple during Passover — or were officials worried he could, even inadvertently? Were Jesus and his followers engaged in armed insurrection?
But regardless of the answer, as I argue in Killing the Messiah, responsibility for the crucifixion lies with Pilate — not the chief priests and the Jewish crowd at Jerusalem.
Editor's note: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Nathanael Andrade is professor of history at Bringhamton University, State University of New York. He is the author of numerous books, including Killing the Messia
03 May 2012
A Sermon on Snacking and the Stupid Things People Say 2MAI12
AMEN Rev Bolz-Webber, and thank you....
sermon on Snacking <——-Click here to listen along. Sermons are a spoken art form!
And you’ll notice that for a holiday that is supposed to be about new life and resurrection and the Glory of God and for some reason bunnies, we really get very little of that in the resurrection accounts. But what we do get in the stories of Jesus appearing to his disciples after the resurrection is a great deal of fear and doubt and wounds and bread. There aren’t a whole lot of answers in these texts, but for some reason there is a lot of broiled fish.
Our reading for today finds the disciples gathered together 3 days after Jesus died. All they knew was that their friend and teacher and Lord was dead and in the face of loss and everything they knew changing they were scared and they were doubting. And this is understandable. And it was here that Jesus suddenly stood among them. And in their fear and disbelief he doesn’t judge them, he doesn’t rebuke them, he doesn’t try and convince them of the truth…he just offers himself. See my hands…touch my feet. I am here. Don’t be afraid. Let’s eat some broiled fish.
The truth is that Jesus is scary, because, as he makes clear to the disciples, you can’t know him at a distance, on your own private terms. You cannot think your way to knowing Jesus through the answers you find in your own private Bible study, or through spiritualizing him as an otherworldly symbol.
You can’t know Jesus by spiritualizing him. Not the guy we read about today who turns to his completely freaked out friends who have no idea what this all can mean and asks them the really crucial and deeply spiritual question of; “so do you have any snacks?” I wonder if what this text is saying to us is that if you get all transcendent and spiritual floating above the disappointingly broken physical world, you may just miss Jesus all together because that’s him over there at the snack table. Which is an embarrassing place to have the Lord hanging out. But despite all our attempts to spiritualize, cleanse and middle-class up Jesus he just stands there eating broiled fish with his bare hands, holes and all.
Reading this story this week and about how the disciples were scared and doubting and really wanting some answers and getting nothing but broiled fish I was taken back to when I was a student chaplain at a hospital.
And how terrifying it was to think that I would be the person people expected to come up with a satisfying answer to why their husband is in a coma.
I’ll never forget my first experience in the trauma room.
A motionless man in his 50s was on a table and they started doing things to him not meant for my eyes and sorely misrepresented on TV shows.
One nurse was cutting his clothes off, and another was hooking up things while a Doctor was putting on gloves and I lean over to the nurse closest to me and was like, – everyone seems to know what their job is but what am I doing here? She looks at my badge and says You’re job is to be aware of God’s presence in the room while we do our jobs.
It just didn’t seem like enough.
Then later in the little white room with just enough space for four love seats and as many boxes of tissue I’d sit with people in their loss. I would stand by and witness the disfiguring emotional process we politely call grief and I had no answers. I’d bring them water, make some calls for them, keep bugging the doctors to give us more information, but words of wisdom I had none.
People wanted answers, or maybe it was just me who wanted answers, but I soon learned that and all I had to offer was my presence, a glass of water and cliff bar. Only later did I realize: that’s just what Christianity is.
As many of you know, Travis, a young man in this congregation was baptized at the Easter Vigil and then the very next day he ended up on a plane home to see his father who had mysteriously ended up in the ICU. Many of us have been praying for Travis and his family for 2 weeks and were saddened to find out that his father died on Thursday. His father’s death was sudden, and unexpected. Travis and his family have simply been robbed.
While talking to Travis on the phone Thursday I found I just didn’t have much to say. And honestly I had to fight the urge to say something even if it was stupid just so I could feel like I had said something at all. But that never helps. You hear a lot of nonsense in hospitals and funeral homes. God had a plan, we just don’t know what it is. Maybe God took your daughter because he needs another angel in heaven. But when I’ve experienced loss and am feeling so much pain that it’s like nothing else ever existed the last thing I need is a well-meaning but vapid person to say when God closes a door he opens a window because that then makes me want to ask where exactly that window is so I can push them the Hell out of it.
This is the nonsense spawned from bad religion. And usually when you are grieving and someone says something so vapidly optimistic to you, it’s about them. It’s about the fact that they simply cannot allow themselves to entertain the finality and pain of death so instead they turn it into a Precious Moments greeting card.
This isn’t exactly uncommon. In moments of grief and loss we are afraid and doubting and we want answers just like the disciples did 3 days after Jesus died. But all anyone can really do is be with us and make some casseroles. And when that’s all we have to offer it can feel like not enough but the truth is that is Christianity. Presence and stories and meals and defiantly believing that death is simply not the last word. An episcopal priest once said that Christianity isn’t spiritual, is material. You can’t even get started without a loaf of bread some wine and a river.
Jesus comes to his followers, then and now, in our grief and loss and doesn’t give answers. In our fear and disbelief he doesn’t judge, he doesn’t rebuke, he doesn’t try and convince us of the truth…he just offers himself. See my hands…touch my feet. I am here. Don’t be afraid. Let’s eat. And as the Body of Christ this is what you do for each other as well and for the world God loves so madly. Your tweets and Facebook messages and texts and emails to Travis while he is grieving in Iowa are a witness. It is a witness to a God who promises to be with us and in those prayers for our grieving brother we don’t offer any answers, we just claim the promise as our own. What’s been so hard is not being able to also bring him food. But we can get to that when he gets back here.
We might think that knowing Jesus means not being fearful and not having doubt but you can’t know Jesus by spiritualizing him. He is made known when we gather and tell the story and share food at his table. It’s common. It’s simple. and it really, really is enough.http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/05/a-sermon-on-snacking-and-the-stupid-things-people-say/
sermon on Snacking <——-Click here to listen along. Sermons are a spoken art form!
36b“Peace be with you.” 37They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.41While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43and he took it and ate in their presence.Easter lasts for 50 days for Christians. Most of the culture thinks it’s over when we’ve managed the vacuum up the last of the long thin ribbons of green plastic Easter grass off the carpets and the children have come down from their sugar highs. But long after the White Sales at Macy’s have ended, the church is still celebrating Easter.
-Luke 24
And you’ll notice that for a holiday that is supposed to be about new life and resurrection and the Glory of God and for some reason bunnies, we really get very little of that in the resurrection accounts. But what we do get in the stories of Jesus appearing to his disciples after the resurrection is a great deal of fear and doubt and wounds and bread. There aren’t a whole lot of answers in these texts, but for some reason there is a lot of broiled fish.
Our reading for today finds the disciples gathered together 3 days after Jesus died. All they knew was that their friend and teacher and Lord was dead and in the face of loss and everything they knew changing they were scared and they were doubting. And this is understandable. And it was here that Jesus suddenly stood among them. And in their fear and disbelief he doesn’t judge them, he doesn’t rebuke them, he doesn’t try and convince them of the truth…he just offers himself. See my hands…touch my feet. I am here. Don’t be afraid. Let’s eat some broiled fish.
The truth is that Jesus is scary, because, as he makes clear to the disciples, you can’t know him at a distance, on your own private terms. You cannot think your way to knowing Jesus through the answers you find in your own private Bible study, or through spiritualizing him as an otherworldly symbol.
You can’t know Jesus by spiritualizing him. Not the guy we read about today who turns to his completely freaked out friends who have no idea what this all can mean and asks them the really crucial and deeply spiritual question of; “so do you have any snacks?” I wonder if what this text is saying to us is that if you get all transcendent and spiritual floating above the disappointingly broken physical world, you may just miss Jesus all together because that’s him over there at the snack table. Which is an embarrassing place to have the Lord hanging out. But despite all our attempts to spiritualize, cleanse and middle-class up Jesus he just stands there eating broiled fish with his bare hands, holes and all.
Reading this story this week and about how the disciples were scared and doubting and really wanting some answers and getting nothing but broiled fish I was taken back to when I was a student chaplain at a hospital.
And how terrifying it was to think that I would be the person people expected to come up with a satisfying answer to why their husband is in a coma.
I’ll never forget my first experience in the trauma room.
A motionless man in his 50s was on a table and they started doing things to him not meant for my eyes and sorely misrepresented on TV shows.
One nurse was cutting his clothes off, and another was hooking up things while a Doctor was putting on gloves and I lean over to the nurse closest to me and was like, – everyone seems to know what their job is but what am I doing here? She looks at my badge and says You’re job is to be aware of God’s presence in the room while we do our jobs.
It just didn’t seem like enough.
Then later in the little white room with just enough space for four love seats and as many boxes of tissue I’d sit with people in their loss. I would stand by and witness the disfiguring emotional process we politely call grief and I had no answers. I’d bring them water, make some calls for them, keep bugging the doctors to give us more information, but words of wisdom I had none.
People wanted answers, or maybe it was just me who wanted answers, but I soon learned that and all I had to offer was my presence, a glass of water and cliff bar. Only later did I realize: that’s just what Christianity is.
As many of you know, Travis, a young man in this congregation was baptized at the Easter Vigil and then the very next day he ended up on a plane home to see his father who had mysteriously ended up in the ICU. Many of us have been praying for Travis and his family for 2 weeks and were saddened to find out that his father died on Thursday. His father’s death was sudden, and unexpected. Travis and his family have simply been robbed.
While talking to Travis on the phone Thursday I found I just didn’t have much to say. And honestly I had to fight the urge to say something even if it was stupid just so I could feel like I had said something at all. But that never helps. You hear a lot of nonsense in hospitals and funeral homes. God had a plan, we just don’t know what it is. Maybe God took your daughter because he needs another angel in heaven. But when I’ve experienced loss and am feeling so much pain that it’s like nothing else ever existed the last thing I need is a well-meaning but vapid person to say when God closes a door he opens a window because that then makes me want to ask where exactly that window is so I can push them the Hell out of it.
This is the nonsense spawned from bad religion. And usually when you are grieving and someone says something so vapidly optimistic to you, it’s about them. It’s about the fact that they simply cannot allow themselves to entertain the finality and pain of death so instead they turn it into a Precious Moments greeting card.
This isn’t exactly uncommon. In moments of grief and loss we are afraid and doubting and we want answers just like the disciples did 3 days after Jesus died. But all anyone can really do is be with us and make some casseroles. And when that’s all we have to offer it can feel like not enough but the truth is that is Christianity. Presence and stories and meals and defiantly believing that death is simply not the last word. An episcopal priest once said that Christianity isn’t spiritual, is material. You can’t even get started without a loaf of bread some wine and a river.
Jesus comes to his followers, then and now, in our grief and loss and doesn’t give answers. In our fear and disbelief he doesn’t judge, he doesn’t rebuke, he doesn’t try and convince us of the truth…he just offers himself. See my hands…touch my feet. I am here. Don’t be afraid. Let’s eat. And as the Body of Christ this is what you do for each other as well and for the world God loves so madly. Your tweets and Facebook messages and texts and emails to Travis while he is grieving in Iowa are a witness. It is a witness to a God who promises to be with us and in those prayers for our grieving brother we don’t offer any answers, we just claim the promise as our own. What’s been so hard is not being able to also bring him food. But we can get to that when he gets back here.
We might think that knowing Jesus means not being fearful and not having doubt but you can’t know Jesus by spiritualizing him. He is made known when we gather and tell the story and share food at his table. It’s common. It’s simple. and it really, really is enough.http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/05/a-sermon-on-snacking-and-the-stupid-things-people-say/
05 April 2012
28 April 2011
Easter Sunrise Sermon for Red Rocks by SARCASTIC LUTHERAN 24APR11
PROBABLY the best Easter sermon I have ever heard!
http://72.35.76.65:3737/ccceaster
Sermon starts at about 53 minutes in. If you have a Mac you'll need this to view the video http://8help.osu.edu/784.html
I’ve often wondered what people in America think when they actually read the story of Jesus rising from the dead for the first time. There’s simply no way the story could adhere to their expectations. I imagine them reading and re-reading it, shocked that they can’t find a single mention of bunnies or rabbits or painted eggs or white sales at Macy’s. Because let’s be honest, that is what our culture thinks Easter is about. Easter in America is really just an excuse to eat chocolate and buy new bedding, and each year we pretend that we can’t really just eat chocolate and buy new bedding whenever we want, which I think is so adorable of us. But honestly the church’s presentation of Easter isn’t less odd. For many churches Easter is another word for “church show off day”…when we spiffy up the building and pull out the lilies and hire a brass quintet and put on fabulous hats and do whatever we have do to impress visitors. It’s kinda like the church’s version of putting out the guest towels.
And don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate and I love fancy music I mean...if I could possibly listen to the Alleluia Chorus while eating a Cadbury Egg I’d be in heaven.
But this all has very little to do with the actual Gospel story because the gospel story is not fancy, its, downright messy. See, Easter in the Bible may be the greatest story ever told. It’s just not the story we usually choose to tell, because its not a story about new dresses and baskets and flowers and candy and spiffyness. Really, it’s a story about flesh and dirt and bodies and confusion and its about the way God never seems to adhere to our expectations.
Because think about it, Mary Magdalen stood there at the empty tomb that morning while her expectations of what was possible collided full force with the God of Abraham and Sara. Her certainty that she knew how this whole Jesus thing was ending slammed right up against the full force of God’s suffering and redemptive love and though it was nothing short of divine revelation in the flesh Jesus still didn’t look very impressive, not in the churchy Easter sense.
See, when Mary Magdalene stood at the tomb she didn’t encounter some perfected radiant glowing spiritual Jesus that first Easter morning. Seriously, no offense to gardeners but Jesus couldn’t have been looking all that spiffy and impressive if she mistook him for a gardener: And I like to think that Mary Magdalene mistook the resurrected Christ for a gardener because Jesus still had the dirt from his own tomb under his nails.
Now, I’ve been in a whole lot of churches and I gotta say, In most of them there is no dirt under the nails of the resurrected Christ. Because we’ve had to clean him up to look more impressive at Easter. And my theory is this: I think it’s because we go straight from Christmas to Easter, we go from the sentimentality of the Baby Jesus to the glory of the resurrected Christ, Santa Claus to Peter Cotton Tail, so quickly that we don’t bother with the messy important parts in-between: namely, what Jesus taught, how Jesus lived and how Jesus died. So, since there’s basically 10,000 of you guys just sitting here this morning, I thought I’d fill you in on the messy parts real quick…
See it starts here: Once upon a time, the God of the Universe was basically fed up with being on the receiving end of all our human projections, tired of being nothing more to us than what we thought God should be: angry, show-offy, defensive, insecure, in short, the vengeance-seeking tyrant we would be if we were God. So, at that time, over 2,000 years ago, God’s Loving Desire to really be Known overflowed the heavens and was made manifest in the rapidly dividing cells within the womb of an insignificant peasant girl named Mary. And when the time came for her to give birth to God, there was no room in our expectations – no room in any impressive or spiffy or safe place. So this God was born in straw and dirt. He grew up, this Jesus of Nazareth, left his home, and found some, let’s be honest, rather unimpressive characters to follow him. Fishermen, Tax collectors, prostitutes, homeless women with no teeth, people from Commerce City, Ann Coulter and Charlie Sheen. If you think I’m kidding…read it for yourselves. These people were questionable. So, with his little band of misfits Jesus went about the countryside turning water to wine, eating with all the wrong people, angering the religious establishment and insisting that in him the kingdom of God had come near, that through him the world according to God was coming right to us. He touched the unclean and used spit and dirt to heal the blind and said crazy destabilizing things like the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and sell all you have and give it to the poor.
And the thing that really cooked people’s noodles wasn’t the question “is Jesus like God” it was “what if God is like Jesus”. What if God is not who we thought? What if the most reliable way to know God is not through religion, not through a sin and punishment program, but through a person. What if the most reliable way to know God is to look at how God chose to reveal God’s self in Jesus?
Because that changes everything. If what we see in Jesus is God’s own self, revealed, then what we are dealing with here is a God who is ridiculously indiscriminate about choosing friends. A God who would rather die than be in the sin accounting business anymore. A God who would not lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him, but went to the depths of Hell rather than be apart even from his betrayers. A God unafraid to get his hands dirty for the ones he loves. This, this is the God who rises to new life with dirt still under his nails.
So while the churches may try and clean up Jesus so the visitors will be impressed today, The God of Easter, the God who brings life out of death doesn’t want to make you impressive, this God isn’t satisfied with making you good or nice. IF you think that’s what resurrection looks like, if you think it looks like perfection and piety and therefore you haven’t experienced it, you might be wrong. Because God isn’t about making you spiffy. God isn’t about making you nicer. God is about making you new. And new doesn’t always look perfect, with a fabulous new dress because like the Easter story itself, new can be messy.
New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don’t actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I’m right. New looks like the lumpy awkward forgiveness we manage to scrounge up despite ourselves. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn’t live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing you never saw coming …never even hoped for, but ends up being what you needed all along and it happens to all of us. Because as Jesus said…the world according to God is near to us. And God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and pulling us out of the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over.
So by all means enjoy the lilies and chocolate and fancy music. But know that if there is anything impressive about following Jesus it’s that you are loved so powerfully by God that God has swept you up into God’s own story of death and life and life after death. And if there’s anything impressive about Christians, it’s that we are a people who still have the dirt from our graves under our nails, while we stand here shouting Alleluia! Christ is risen.
Easter Sunrise Sermon for Red Rocks
I had the freezing-cold honor of preaching to 10,000 people last Sunday at the 64th Annual Red Rocks Sunrise Easter service. If you'd like to watch the video of it you can do so herehttp://72.35.76.65:3737/ccceaster
Sermon starts at about 53 minutes in. If you have a Mac you'll need this to view the video http://8help.osu.edu/784.html
I’ve often wondered what people in America think when they actually read the story of Jesus rising from the dead for the first time. There’s simply no way the story could adhere to their expectations. I imagine them reading and re-reading it, shocked that they can’t find a single mention of bunnies or rabbits or painted eggs or white sales at Macy’s. Because let’s be honest, that is what our culture thinks Easter is about. Easter in America is really just an excuse to eat chocolate and buy new bedding, and each year we pretend that we can’t really just eat chocolate and buy new bedding whenever we want, which I think is so adorable of us. But honestly the church’s presentation of Easter isn’t less odd. For many churches Easter is another word for “church show off day”…when we spiffy up the building and pull out the lilies and hire a brass quintet and put on fabulous hats and do whatever we have do to impress visitors. It’s kinda like the church’s version of putting out the guest towels.
And don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate and I love fancy music I mean...if I could possibly listen to the Alleluia Chorus while eating a Cadbury Egg I’d be in heaven.
But this all has very little to do with the actual Gospel story because the gospel story is not fancy, its, downright messy. See, Easter in the Bible may be the greatest story ever told. It’s just not the story we usually choose to tell, because its not a story about new dresses and baskets and flowers and candy and spiffyness. Really, it’s a story about flesh and dirt and bodies and confusion and its about the way God never seems to adhere to our expectations.
Because think about it, Mary Magdalen stood there at the empty tomb that morning while her expectations of what was possible collided full force with the God of Abraham and Sara. Her certainty that she knew how this whole Jesus thing was ending slammed right up against the full force of God’s suffering and redemptive love and though it was nothing short of divine revelation in the flesh Jesus still didn’t look very impressive, not in the churchy Easter sense.
See, when Mary Magdalene stood at the tomb she didn’t encounter some perfected radiant glowing spiritual Jesus that first Easter morning. Seriously, no offense to gardeners but Jesus couldn’t have been looking all that spiffy and impressive if she mistook him for a gardener: And I like to think that Mary Magdalene mistook the resurrected Christ for a gardener because Jesus still had the dirt from his own tomb under his nails.
Now, I’ve been in a whole lot of churches and I gotta say, In most of them there is no dirt under the nails of the resurrected Christ. Because we’ve had to clean him up to look more impressive at Easter. And my theory is this: I think it’s because we go straight from Christmas to Easter, we go from the sentimentality of the Baby Jesus to the glory of the resurrected Christ, Santa Claus to Peter Cotton Tail, so quickly that we don’t bother with the messy important parts in-between: namely, what Jesus taught, how Jesus lived and how Jesus died. So, since there’s basically 10,000 of you guys just sitting here this morning, I thought I’d fill you in on the messy parts real quick…
See it starts here: Once upon a time, the God of the Universe was basically fed up with being on the receiving end of all our human projections, tired of being nothing more to us than what we thought God should be: angry, show-offy, defensive, insecure, in short, the vengeance-seeking tyrant we would be if we were God. So, at that time, over 2,000 years ago, God’s Loving Desire to really be Known overflowed the heavens and was made manifest in the rapidly dividing cells within the womb of an insignificant peasant girl named Mary. And when the time came for her to give birth to God, there was no room in our expectations – no room in any impressive or spiffy or safe place. So this God was born in straw and dirt. He grew up, this Jesus of Nazareth, left his home, and found some, let’s be honest, rather unimpressive characters to follow him. Fishermen, Tax collectors, prostitutes, homeless women with no teeth, people from Commerce City, Ann Coulter and Charlie Sheen. If you think I’m kidding…read it for yourselves. These people were questionable. So, with his little band of misfits Jesus went about the countryside turning water to wine, eating with all the wrong people, angering the religious establishment and insisting that in him the kingdom of God had come near, that through him the world according to God was coming right to us. He touched the unclean and used spit and dirt to heal the blind and said crazy destabilizing things like the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and sell all you have and give it to the poor.
And the thing that really cooked people’s noodles wasn’t the question “is Jesus like God” it was “what if God is like Jesus”. What if God is not who we thought? What if the most reliable way to know God is not through religion, not through a sin and punishment program, but through a person. What if the most reliable way to know God is to look at how God chose to reveal God’s self in Jesus?
Because that changes everything. If what we see in Jesus is God’s own self, revealed, then what we are dealing with here is a God who is ridiculously indiscriminate about choosing friends. A God who would rather die than be in the sin accounting business anymore. A God who would not lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him, but went to the depths of Hell rather than be apart even from his betrayers. A God unafraid to get his hands dirty for the ones he loves. This, this is the God who rises to new life with dirt still under his nails.
So while the churches may try and clean up Jesus so the visitors will be impressed today, The God of Easter, the God who brings life out of death doesn’t want to make you impressive, this God isn’t satisfied with making you good or nice. IF you think that’s what resurrection looks like, if you think it looks like perfection and piety and therefore you haven’t experienced it, you might be wrong. Because God isn’t about making you spiffy. God isn’t about making you nicer. God is about making you new. And new doesn’t always look perfect, with a fabulous new dress because like the Easter story itself, new can be messy.
New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don’t actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I’m right. New looks like the lumpy awkward forgiveness we manage to scrounge up despite ourselves. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn’t live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing you never saw coming …never even hoped for, but ends up being what you needed all along and it happens to all of us. Because as Jesus said…the world according to God is near to us. And God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and pulling us out of the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over.
So by all means enjoy the lilies and chocolate and fancy music. But know that if there is anything impressive about following Jesus it’s that you are loved so powerfully by God that God has swept you up into God’s own story of death and life and life after death. And if there’s anything impressive about Christians, it’s that we are a people who still have the dirt from our graves under our nails, while we stand here shouting Alleluia! Christ is risen.
23 April 2011
Some Other Resurrections 23APR11
FOR Easter, and the celebration of the resurrection of Christ....
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, mostly due to life difficulties and a sense that Tikkun was not really the venue for the things I felt called to write. I’m sorry about that. I’ve missed all of you.
In any case, I certainly can’t let Easter go by without posting something. So here is a liturgical reading for the day that I just wrote; think of it as a responsive reading:
Some Other Resurrections
Despair is sapping our spirits, damaging our souls, hurting our hearts.
We need to be resurrected into hope, faith, and trust.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Violence is shortening our lives and robbing us of our joy.
We need to be resurrected into peace and its many blessings.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Selfishness is tearing our social fabric, hiding us from one another, turning us inward.
We need to be resurrected into generosity, compassion, and open-heartedness.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Fear is pitting us against each other, stripping our delight, poisoning our relationships.
We need to be resurrected into courage and connection.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Injustice is devaluing and dehumanizing us all, punishing some terribly, frightening others deeply.
We need to be resurrected into justice and healing.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Hatred is breeding despair, violence, selfishness, fear, and injustice among us and among our children.
We need to be resurrected into love.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Amen.
Peace, grace, shalom, tikkun olam, Amanda
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, mostly due to life difficulties and a sense that Tikkun was not really the venue for the things I felt called to write. I’m sorry about that. I’ve missed all of you.
In any case, I certainly can’t let Easter go by without posting something. So here is a liturgical reading for the day that I just wrote; think of it as a responsive reading:
Some Other Resurrections
Despair is sapping our spirits, damaging our souls, hurting our hearts.
We need to be resurrected into hope, faith, and trust.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Violence is shortening our lives and robbing us of our joy.
We need to be resurrected into peace and its many blessings.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Selfishness is tearing our social fabric, hiding us from one another, turning us inward.
We need to be resurrected into generosity, compassion, and open-heartedness.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Fear is pitting us against each other, stripping our delight, poisoning our relationships.
We need to be resurrected into courage and connection.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Injustice is devaluing and dehumanizing us all, punishing some terribly, frightening others deeply.
We need to be resurrected into justice and healing.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Hatred is breeding despair, violence, selfishness, fear, and injustice among us and among our children.
We need to be resurrected into love.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Amen.
Peace, grace, shalom, tikkun olam, Amanda
THE VALLEY OF DEATH AND THE CROSS
"Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff -- they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long." - Psalm 23:4-6 | |
| "Why dost thou then dread to take this cross since it is the very way to the kingdom of heaven, and none but that? In the cross is health, in the cross is life, in the cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness; in the cross is the strength of mind, the joy of spirit, the highness of virtue, and the full perfection of holiness; and there is no health of soul nor hope of everlasting life but through virtue of the cross." - Thomas à Kempis, from The Imitation of Christ | |
21 April 2011
Urgent: Save Troy Davis' life 20APR11
HERE is a thought appropriate for this Easter season....God didn't take revenge on the world when Christ, His Son, was executed, he showed mercy and grace. Shouldn't we try to do the same? I am against the death penalty, and if Troy Davis is executed, in spite of all the doubt about his trial and conviction, it may turn out that Georgia will have executed an innocent man. Please sign the petition to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole to save his life.
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In 1991, Troy Davis was convicted of murdering a white police officer. Though there's major evidence that Davis didn't commit the crime, Georgia is prepared to put him to death. We have a good chance of stopping this -- but only if we speak up now.
The fact is, no physical evidence connected Davis to the murder. Seven of the original nine witnesses have recanted, with many saying their testimony was a result of law enforcement pressure. Of the remaining witnesses, one is highly suspect and the other could be the actual culprit in the officer's murder.
Now, despite these and other facts, the state of Georgia has taken the first steps toward Davis' execution -- and only the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole stands between Davis and the lethal injection chamber.
Georgia may be about to kill an innocent man. That's not justice. Please ask the Georgia Parole Board to spare Troy Davis' life, before it's too late -- and it's critical that you ask others to do the same:
Since Troy Davis' 1991 conviction, numerous facts have emerged that introduce significant doubt as to his guilt. These facts include:
- All but two of the original witnesses against Troy Davis have signed affidavits recanting their earlier testimony. Most claim that their testimony was coerced by police officers.1
- Multiple witnesses say that another man -- one of the original witnesses against Davis -- has claimed to have slain the fallen officer.2
- The weapon used in the murder was never found. The only physical evidence connecting Davis to the crime was indirect, circumstantial -- and new testimony disputes Davis's connection to that evidence.3
In light of this evidence, the Supreme Court granted Davis another chance. But instead of an actual new trial before a jury, which would mean the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is on the prosecutor, he got an evidentiary hearing before a single federal judge where Davis' lawyers had the burden to meet an impossibly high and undefined legal standard.
In light of this, it was sad -- but no surprise -- when the judge rejected the new evidence and cleared the way for Davis' execution. However, even he acknowledged lingering doubt, noting that the case against Davis was not "ironclad."
But "ironclad" is exactly what the evidence should be in order to put someone to death. If the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole doesn't act to stop Davis' execution, they'll run a serious risk of putting an innocent man to death. That is not acceptable.
Please join us, along with our partners at Amnesty International and the NAACP, in asking the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole to save Troy Davis' life by commuting his sentence to life in prison. And when you do, please ask your friends and family to do the same.
Thanks and Peace,
-- James, Gabriel, William, Dani, Matt, Natasha and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
April 20th, 2011
April 20th, 2011
References:
1. “Troy Davis – Finality over Fairness,” Amnesty International USA
http://act.colorofchange.org/
http://act.colorofchange.org/
2. See Reference 1
3. See Reference 1
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