Shortcut to Easter

 

People want to move directly from Palm Sunday to Easter. Even before the pandemic, Maundy Thursday services were poorly attended in most churches; and Good Friday services are virtually unheard of, except, maybe, in the Roman Catholic and some Episcopal Churches.

            The music of Good Friday is dark; heavy with minor harmonies. It's not happy praise music. It's not Easter music; it's about the crucifixion of our Lord; so, people want to take a shortcut from Palm Sunday to Easter—stay in the sunlight and avoid the shadows of Holy Week: the confrontation with the merchants who had commercialized the Temple, the controversies with the religious leaders of the city, the open criticism and plotting against Jesus, the betrayal of Judas...

            The loud "Hosannas" of the Triumphal Entry and the excited "He is risen!" of Easter are separated by the cries of the rabble in the streets: "Crucify him!" Between the Palm Branches and the lilies are the thorns. The praises and cheers of the crowd give way to the mockery of concocted charges, and the cloaks thrown in his pathway are replaced by the sting of the whip, the burden of the cross, nails and a spear.

            We'd rather avoid the darkness. In fact, North American culture in general has become, not so much an Ayn Rand seeking of pleasure as a Pollyanna avoidance of unpleasantness—not so much moving toward Easter as going around Good Friday—looking for a shortcut.

            Through Christ God offers "LIFE"—abundant and abiding. Humans respond, "Bless the life I've already chosen, and make my chosen path easy and fruitful and full of lasting happiness and pleasure."

            God says, "I give you life." Humans say, "God, here's what I want from you."

            God says, "I give you my Son." Humans say, "God, give me financial security and lots of time for recreation and travel and kids who are good athletes and good students and popular in school."

            God says, "What I offer is infinitely better." Humans respond, "Yeah, but I don't have time; I've got to go here and do that and take the kids there and just look at my calendar, God.  I’m stressed out and I just don't have time."

            Today’s culture wants Easter—oh, and Christmas—but fears the cost. But without Good Friday, Easter is just a "fairy tale"—a shallow celebration of bunnies and fuzzy chicks and colored eggs.

Resurrection means nothing unless someone dies.

And therein lies the "Good News". Someone already has died. But you know that. And I keep coming back to a verse I remember from Paul: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (I Corinthians 15:19 NRSV)

I don’t think that’s our problem. One of the contradictions in Christianity today is the avoidance of “this life.” I have a good friend who’s a pastor in another denomination who won’t have anything to do with the democratic process in our nation. “I won’t vote,” he says. “There’s no point. None of the social problems we have are going to be worked out until Christ returns.”

Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “But Jesus wasn’t crucified because he preached about going to heaven when we die. He was crucified because he called upon the wealthy to feed the hungry. He was crucified by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God’s will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff’s office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar.”[1]

Will Willimon wrote in his blogsite, “Peculiar Prophet,” “I remember being at a retreat once where the leader asked us to think of someone who represented Christ in our lives. As we shared, one woman stood up and said, “I had to think hard about that one. I kept thinking, ‘Who is it that told me the truth about myself so clearly that I wanted to kill him for it?’”

According to John’s gospel, Jesus died because he told the truth to everyone he met. He was the truth, a perfect mirror in which people saw themselves through God’s own eyes. And we humans don’t want to see ourselves as we are. We want to see ourselves as we fantasize: superhero/super model/super mom, and “right” about everything. We don’t want truth; we want confirmation.

What happened then is happening now. In the presence of Christ’s integrity, human pretense is exposed. In the presence of his faithfulness, human self-deceit is brought to light.

And so, he must die. The world wants him dead: Caesar wants him dead, and Caiaphas wants him dead, because he refuses to confirm the way of life they have chosen, and they refuse to look into the mirror of truth with which he confronts them.

Resurrection means nothing unless someone dies. New life is costly. Its price is the rejection of all that contradicts the abundant life Jesus preached, lived to the fullest, and offers to all humanity. But we are limited by the clay of which we are made, and so Paul writes, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” (I Corinthians 13:12 NRSV) In view of these limitations, the poet writes, “The world is too much with us.”[2]

Resurrection means nothing unless someone dies. But Sunday’s coming!

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Truth to Tell,” from “The Perfect Mirror,” copyright 1998 Christian Century Foundation., 89-92.

[2] William Wordsworth, a sonnet.

Can Love Rise Again?

Easter:

·         Resurrection

·         New Life

·         Hope

Through disputation and deliberation and discernment, the people of God laid their varied, even opposing, understandings on the table and through faithful questioning and honest collaboration successive generations moved closer to the understanding of God reflected in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus then sided with one specific side in the debate, and plotted a redemptive trajectory of healing, restoration, compassion and love based on his way of interpreting Scripture.

But, somewhere around the third and fourth centuries the rabbinic process of faithful questioning and Jesus’ redemptive trajectory were strangled by the Pharisaic practice of unquestioning obedience to their understanding of Scripture, which they saw as frozen in time, for all time. The problem is, given that humans are limited by the clay of which we are made, and given the subsequent human penchant for control and domination, what they would have everyone obey unquestioningly is not always consistent with the way Jesus read Scripture.

Subsequent generations have followed the Pharisees, replacing the Word with our doctrines, thereby splintering the Body of Christ.

All the foregoing is essentially what prompted the founders of my denomination [Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)] to break from their established churches. It was never their intention to form a separate denomination. In fact, at one point in the unfolding of our history, the founders formed “The Springfield Presbytery”, which was intended as a venue for uniting the splintered Body of Christ. When it quickly became evident that the participants were beginning to institutionalize specific doctrines and polities, the founders disbanded what they perceived to be an increasingly sectarian Presbytery and published “The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery” to clarify their non-sectarian position.

The founders would turn over in their graves today if they knew the movement they birthed has now become not a separate denomination, but three separate denominations that don’t get along with each other; indeed, some manifestations of what once was known as the Restoration Movement now demonstrate difficulty getting along with all other Christian bodies; indeed, they contribute significantly to the further splintering of the Body.

If Christians can’t interact with loving collaboration, then I fear for the future. But doctrine has trumped love as a foundation of identity for too many Christian bodies.

Still, a valid concern is how do we thrive without a body of beliefs?

According to Jesus (Matthew 22:36-40) and Paul (Romans 13:9-10), when we love we have fulfilled all the requirements of the law. Love is the face of true faith.

That understanding of faith and Scripture was put to death by an unquestioning obedience to a reading of Scripture that condones violence as a valid way of enforcing “right” doctrines and vengeance as an appropriate response to evil. It was buried by the act of freezing Scripture in time, for all time.

But Easter calls us to resurrection. Can love rise again from the grave of intolerance reinforced by an unloving reading of Scripture?

What if, for one year, a significant number of Christians from across the denominational spectrum all agreed to set aside the creeds and doctrines we have so meticulously categorized and so fervently venerated, and what if we agreed to support and encourage each other in an effort to drape our actions over the framework of love?

In 1896 Charles Sheldon published In His Steps, a novel about a minister who challenged his congregation to preface every act and every response with the question, “What would Jesus do?” As the plot develops it expresses the values and ethical mores of late 19^th century Christianity; but the point it makes is still valid. The lives of those people were changed; and through them their community was changed. Yes, it was fiction; but while it may not have been fact, it bore every characteristic of Truth.

So, what if congregations and individual Christians covenanted together to support and encourage each other to preface every act and every response with the question, “What would Love do?” Instead of obsessing over what some people are “getting away with,” what if we simply took responsibility—and held each other accountable—for our own actions and responses?

What if we take as our only doctrine the way of Christ and his redemptive trajectory of compassion, grace and love of the enemy? Might we discover better Jesus-shaped alternatives to the way we have been pursuing?[1] (And, by the way, how have those alternatives we’ve been pursuing been working out for you?)

It may be easy, and even tempting, to divert attention away from the difficulty implied by this direction. It would be easy to return to those passages in the Bible that justify and even celebrate retaliation and violence—the very passages Jesus rejected. Love is difficult. Love is risky. Love makes us vulnerable, just as it made Jesus vulnerable.

The Pharisees and other religious leaders had adopted those vengeance-oriented texts from the Hebrew Scriptures and had venerated them as the way of liberation from their oppressors (or more likely as the way of wreaking bloody vengeance upon them!) And when Jesus rejected those passages and chose instead the way of Love, his vulnerability was multiplied all the way to the cross.

But the call is to approach the Bible not as passive readers, but as morally engaged and thinking readers. It involves faithfully questioning the Bible, but it equally involves allowing ourselves to be challenged and stretched by it as well. It demonstrates that truth is found in the struggle—that questioning is the mark of a healthy faith, and the reflection of a robust character.[2]

Christ Is Risen! Can his love live again?

That’s how I see it through the flawed glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did (San Francisco: Metanoia Press, 2014) Kindle edition, Location 1502.

[2] Ibid., Location 1590.