Father Richard describes how it’s possible to experience resurrection before we die: 

We don’t need to wait for death to experience resurrection. We can begin resurrection today by living connected to God. Resurrection happens every time we love someone even though they were not very loving to us. At that moment we have been brought to new life. Every time we decide to trust and begin again, even after repeated failures, at that moment we’ve been resurrected. Every time we refuse to become negative, cynical, hopeless, we have experienced the Risen Christ. We don’t have to wait for it later. Resurrection is always possible now.  

The resurrection is not Jesus’ private miracle; it’s the new shape of reality. It’s the new shape of the world. It’s filled with grace. It’s filled with possibility. It’s filled with newness.  

The resurrection is not a miracle story to prove the divinity of Christ, something that makes him the winner. It’s a storyline that allows us all to be winners. ALL! No exceptions! There’s no eternal death for anybody: ALL are invited to draw upon this infinite Source, this infinite Mystery, this infinite Love, this infinite Possibility. Spiritually speaking, we live in a world of abundance, of infinity. But most of us walk around as if it were not true, operating in a world of scarcity where there’s never enough. There’s not enough for me, there’s not enough for you, there’s not enough for everybody.  

And so we hoard it—Spirit, Love, Life—to ourselves. We hoard grace, we hoard mercy. We don’t allow ourselves to be conduits through which it pours into the world. Truly, the only way we can hold onto grace, mercy, love, joy—any spiritual gift—is to give them away consciously and intentionally. Once we stop acting as a conduit, we lose them ourselves. That’s why there are so many sad, bitter, and angry people. Disconnected from God, we choose death. We ourselves contribute to negativity, cynicism, anger, and even to the oppression of other races and religions. In that state, it’s always other people who are wrong.  

In a homily from the second century of the church offered on Holy Saturday, this is what we hear Jesus say: 

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell [usually a hell of our own making —RR]. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. [1] 

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: April 5th
    Let Me fill you with My Love, Joy, and Peace. There are Glory-gifts, flowing from my living Presence. Though you are an earthen vessel, I designed you to be filled with heavenly contents. Your weakness is not a deterrent to being filled with My Spirit; on the contrary, it provides an opportunity for My Power to shine forth more brightly.
    As you go through this day, trust Me to provide the strength that you need moment by moment. Don’t waste energy wondering whether you are adequate for today’s journey. My Spirit within you is more than sufficient to handle whatever this day may bring. That is the basis for your confidence! In quietness (spending time alone with Me) and confident trust (relying on My sufficiency) is your strength.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

2nd Corinthians 4:7 (NIV)
7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

Isaiah 30:15 (NIV)
15 This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation,
    in quietness and trust is your strength,
    but you would have none of it.
Additional insight regarding Isaiah 30:15: God warned Judah that turning to Egypt and other nations for military might could not save them. Only God could do that. They must wait for him “in quietness and confidence.” No amount of fast-talking or hasty activity could speed up God’s grand design. We have nothing to say to God but thank you. Salvation comes from God alone. Because he has saved us, we can trust him and be peacefully confident that he will give us the strength to face our difficulties. We should lay aside our well-laid plans and allow him to act.



Today’s Prayer:

Dear Lord, fill me with Your love, joy, and peace today and all days. Though I am but a vessel of clay, let Your glory shine through me. Strengthen me with Your Spirit moment by moment, day by day, for in my weakness, Your power is made perfect. Help me trust in Your sufficiency, finding strength in quiet communion with You. In your Son’s perfect name, Amen.

Wake up from your sleep,  
rise from the dead,  
and Christ will shine on you.  
—Ephesians 5:14, Jerusalem Bible  

Father Richard reflects on the presence of light at the resurrection: 

At the resurrection, Jesus was revealed as the eternal and deathless Christ in embodied form. Basically, one circumscribed body of Jesus morphed into ubiquitous Light. Light is perhaps the best metaphor for Christ or God.  Anything exposed by the light will be illuminated and anything illuminated turns into light (Ephesians 5:13–14). 

During the first six centuries of Christianity, the moment of Jesus’ resurrection was mostly deemed unpaintable or uncarvable. [1] The event is not even directly described in the New Testament. All we’re given are the aftermath stories—stunned guards, seated angels, visiting women, and other resurrections: “The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of those who had fallen asleep were raised up” (see Matthew 27:51–53). Note how resurrection was already corporately understood in this telling verse. 

Most of us, if we are paying attention, also have such resurrection moments in the middle of our lives, when “the veil parts” now and then. Jesus says, “Believe in the light so that you also may become children of the light” (John 12:36), letting us know that we participate in the same mystery, and he is here to aid the process. [2] 

Episcopal priest Becca Stevens writes of the hopeful message of the dawn’s light: 

The orange globe peeks above the horizon in bursts of resurrection each morning…. We can walk with the sunrise preaching, “Walk with hope in faith because love lives.” It’s not that we are more faithful than we are in the dark of night; it’s just that our pace is lighter. This translucent moment of clarity and hope is possible each day we do our work under that rising yellow force, or walk down a path at dawn humming a love song whose words are rising from our hearts…. When we walk with this pace, we have the shadow of the sun before us like a benediction with an aftertaste of joy that is true gratitude for every day we have been given….   

Sunrise calls women with grieving hearts to sing; it enables priests to be present for decades at the same altar, and paints each morning in colors so tender they turn stone hearts to flesh. Light means that we can live in hope, dedicated to justice and truth, knowing the light will never leave us. The light is ours for the beholding and allows us to make our song even at our own Easter morning, “Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.”…   Sunrise in the story of Easter is not just a time of day; it is a state of the heart. Sunrise is the space where nighttime fears move aside for hope, where we feel peace about our mortality in the scope of the universal truth that love abides and where we feel light crest the dark horizons of hearts we have kept barricaded. [3]  

________________________________________________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Calling

I meet you in the stillness of your soul. It is there that I seek to commune with you. A person who is open to My Presence is exceedingly precious to Me. My eyes search to and fro throughout the earth, looking for one whose heart is seeking Me. I see you trying to find Me; our mutual search results in joyful fulfillment.
    Stillness of soul is increasingly rare in this world addicted to speed and noise. I am pleased with your desire to create space where you and I can meet. Don’t be discouraged by the difficulty of achieving this goal. I monitor all your efforts and am blessed by each of your attempts to seek My Face.

RELATED SCRIPTURE: 
Zechariah 2:13 (NIV)
13 Be still before the Lord, all mankind, because he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.”

2nd Chronicles 16:9 (NIV)
9 For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. You have done a foolish thing, and from now on you will be at war.”
Psalm 23:2-3 (NIV)
2     He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3     he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake.

Today’s Prayer:

Lord Jesus, in the quiet depths of my soul, I seek Your presence. Amidst life’s noise and haste, help me carve out moments of stillness to commune with You and You alone. Strengthen my heart as I strive to seek Your face. Guide me to green pastures and quiet waters, refreshing my soul and leading me in Your ways. Amen.

Father Richard writes of resurrection as an inherent aspect of incarnation:  

We all want resurrection in some form. Jesus’ resurrection is a potent, focused, and compelling statement about what God is still and forever doing with the universe and with humanity. Science strongly confirms this statement using its own terms: metamorphosis, condensation, evaporation, seasonal changes, and the life cycles of everything from butterflies to stars. The natural world is constantly dying and being reborn in different forms. God appears to be resurrecting everything all the time and everywhere. It is not something to “believe in” as much as it is something to observe and be taught by.  

I choose to believe in Jesus’ bodily resurrection because it localizes the whole Mystery in this material and earthly world and in our own bodies too—the only world we know and the world that God created and loves and in which God chose to incarnate. (Read all of 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul keeps saying this in many ways.) [1] 

Theologian Elizabeth Johnson considers the embodied nature of Jesus’ resurrection:  

Given the dualism [regarding body and spirit] that remains in Christian thinking, it is important to emphasize that [the resurrection] is not simply a case of the immortality of the soul. Jesus does not shuck off his bodiliness like a suit of clothes and rise heavenward, so to speak, as a purely spiritual being. Resurrection affirms new life of the whole enfleshed person Jesus, transfigured beyond death. In a deeply material way, the Easter appearances disclose the divine depth-dimension undergirding all flesh, which opens novel possibilities for the body itself….  

The resurrection starts on earth with Jesus dead and buried, and ends up in God with Jesus the Living One transformed by the power of the Spirit. Alive in God, his presence is no longer bound by earth’s limits but partakes of the omnipresence of God’s own love. Christ is now present in word and sacrament and wherever two or three gather in his name. True to the pattern of his ministry, he also approaches, mysteriously revealed and concealed, in the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the homeless, those in prison, the very least of those in need. Ultimately, through the power of the Spirit, Jesus is with the whole community of disciples, indeed with the whole community of creation, through every hour, until the end of time. Is this true? All explanations aside, it has to be a lived truth, seen in the lives of those who are participants in Christ’s ongoing work in the world. [2] 

Richard concludes: 

If the original divine incarnation was and is true, then resurrection is both inevitable and irreversible. If the Big Bang was the external starting point of the eternal Christ Mystery, then we know this eternal logos is leading creation somewhere good, and the universe is not chaotic or meaningless. Alpha and Omega are in fact one and the same. [3] ====================

Naaman asked to carry dirt from Israel back to his home in Syria because, like most ancient people, he believed that gods could only be properly worshipped in their own land. Therefore, to fulfill his vow to only worship the God of Israel, Naaman assumed he needed to take a small bit of Israel with him.In his book about pagan beliefs, Strange Religion, New Testament scholar Nijay Gupta elaborated on this territorial assumption. “Sure, you could pray anywhere and everywhere, but you couldn’t really be sure that your message was going to get through. It was best to find a spiritual hot spot, as it were.” These “hot spots” included temples, altars, and other sacred sites. In Naaman’s case, he thought having dirt from Israel would increase the likelihood that Israel’s God would accept his worship.This emphasis on sacred “hot spots” remained a common belief in the ancient world through the time of the Roman Empire and until the emergence of Christianity. The followers of Jesus were odd for many reasons, but chief among them was the mobility of their worship. Unlike every other religious sect, the Christians had no temples, no altars, no monuments, or idols. Instead, they worshiped and prayed in homes, along rivers, or anyplace where two or three could gather. As Gupta says: “The Christians had this crazy idea: you could connect [with God] anywhere at any time. No one place was geographically required or inherently better. It was as if they had moved from a landline to a mobile phone.”Gupta’s metaphor is helpful. Some of us are old enough to remember phone booths and wired telephones. In college, for example, I would pull the phone cord from my dorm room into the hallway and shut the door so I could talk to my girlfriend without my roommate listening. In a sense, that’s what Naaman was doing by taking soil from Israel to Syria. The dirt was his landline to communicate to Israel’s God—literally. Most religious traditions—both ancient and modern—still employ this approach to spirituality by insisting certain places and times are more sacred. And it is the duty of the devout to rearrange their circumstances in order to connect with God in one of these locations.New Testament spirituality is different. The presence of the Holy Spirit within each person redeemed by Jesus essentially “cuts the cord.” Instead, Christian spirituality functions more like a mobile phone rather than a landline because communion with God may occur anytime, anywhere. This unlimited, unmediated, and unstationary form of religion was seen as dangerous to the established norms of ancient Roman society, and it remains threatening to religious leaders today. After all, a faith that does not need pagan temples, priests, or offerings does not require Christian temples, priests, or offerings either. DAILY SCRIPTURE JOHN 4:19-24  2 KINGS 5:1-27 WEEKLY PRAYERHippolytus of Rome (190 – 236)Christ is risen: The world below lies desolate. Christ is risen: The spirits of evil are fallen. Christ is risen: The angels of God are rejoicing. Christ is risen: The tombs of the dead are empty. Christ is risen indeed from the dead, the first of the sleepers. Glory and power are his forever and ever. Amen.

Author Debie Thomas describes why our belief in Jesus’ resurrection matters:   

I believe that the historic creed I profess with countless other Christians on Sunday mornings tells me something essential and true: we believe in “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” If we abandon this belief, we’ll do so to our impoverishment and our peril.  

Why do I feel this way?… We live in a world marred by too many mass shootings to count, daily headlines of war, a rapidly worsening climate, increasing economic inequality, ongoing racist violence, and a second global pandemic of mental illness and anguish.  

In the face of all this, I need to know that a better world is not just possible but assured. I need to trust that God’s salvation encompasses not only those of us who enjoy fairly comfortable lives here on earth but also those who will not experience the salvific love, vindication, healing, and justice of God in this life.  

In other words, I believe in heaven because I believe in God’s salvation for the children who have died and will die in elementary school classrooms because the United States worships guns. For the millions around the world who died of the coronavirus before vaccines were developed. For Black, brown, Indigenous, gay, and transgender Americans who live in perpetual fear of violence and recrimination on our streets. For the young people who live under the shadow of mental illnesses that modern medicine can’t yet alleviate. For casualties of war around the world. For people in chronic pain….  

For all these people … I need to know that, while we have every obligation to alleviate suffering in this world, the salvation of God’s precious children does not, finally, depend upon our clumsy efforts.…  

I worry [that] … if Christians lose our belief in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, we will also lose the ferocity of our hope, the holy restlessness that leads us to action, the commitment to justice that fuels our prophetic lament, solidarity, resilience, and courage. After all, how will we pray for God’s kingdom to come, and how will we credibly usher in that kingdom in whatever small ways we can here and now, if we don’t believe in its ultimate fulfillment? [1]  

Thomas names the paradox of Jesus’ resurrection and continued woundedness:  

If the resurrection really is the best good news that has ever hit the planet, then its goodness doesn’t depend on us.… The tomb is empty. Death is vanquished. Jesus lives. Period. We are not in charge of Easter; God is.  

In fact, Jesus’s own resurrected body speaks to the importance of lament in the midst of joy. Even in the most triumphant story ever told in Scripture or history, scars remain (John 20:27)…. Resurrection is a way forward from the grave that honors the scars we carry, helping us to bear them with resilience and hope. [2]  ===================

The Bible contains many unexpected conversion stories. There’s Saul’s famous encounter with the risen Jesus while on the road to Damascus to persecute Christians. The first pagan convert was an unlikely Roman soldier named Cornelius who received the Holy Spirit along with his entire household. And many find hope in the story about the thief crucified next to Jesus who was welcomed into paradise. These stories, and many more, all have one thing in common. They are all found in the New Testament. Conversion stories are exceptionally rare in the Old Testament, although there are a few examples of outsiders committing themselves to Israel’s God—Rahab, Ruth, and Naaman are the most cited stories. But even in this very small group, Naaman’s conversion is especially odd.Like Naaman, Rahab and Ruth were non-Israelites who gave their allegiance to YHWH. But unlike Naaman, these two women lived within Israel and among God’s people. In a way, their religious conversions were a byproduct of their cultural assimilation. Rahab and Ruth were absorbed into Israel’s covenant community, so it made sense for them to worship Israel’s God. But that was not true for Naaman. He was not incorporated into God’s covenant community, and he would not live among God’s people. He had to return to Syria where no one worshipped Israel’s God and no one obeyed the commands of Israel’s law. Despite all of this, Naaman still gave his allegiance to YHWH and vowed to never worship any other deity. For this reason, Naaman’s conversion may be the most remarkable in the entire Bible. Unlike any other Old Testament character, Naaman was willing to defy the norms of his homeland and the values of his community by giving his complete allegiance to a foreign God. This was, quite simply, unheard of.The sincerity of Naaman’s commitment is revealed by his request for dirt in verse 17. It was commonly believed in the ancient Near East that gods were territorial. Deities were linked to specific lands, and they were served by the people in those lands. Therefore, to properly worship a god required offering sacrifices on the land belonging to that god. Because Naaman could not remain in the land to worship Israel’s God, he asked to take a bit of the land with him presumably to build an altar upon it. In an unholy land devoted to false gods, Naaman would establish a tiny oasis of holy ground for the true God. DAILY SCRIPTURE RUTH 1:16-18  2 KINGS 5:1-27 WEEKLY PRAYER. Hippolytus of Rome (190 – 236)Christ is risen: The world below lies desolate. Christ is risen: The spirits of evil are fallen. Christ is risen: The angels of God are rejoicing. Christ is risen: The tombs of the dead are empty. Christ is risen indeed from the dead, the first of the sleepers. Glory and power are his forever and ever. Amen.

Richard Rohr identifies death and resurrection as the universal pattern of Reality: 

Christianity—as well as Buddhism, other religions, and nature-based systems—suggests that the pattern of transformation, the pattern that connects, the life that Reality offers us is not death avoided, but always death transformed. In other words, the only trustworthy pattern of spiritual transformation is death and resurrection. Christians learn to submit to trials because Jesus told us that we must “carry the cross” with him (Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 14:27). Buddhists do it because the Buddha very directly said that “life is suffering.” Buddhism teaches us how to skillfully discern the source of suffering, detach from our expectations and resentments, and let go of illusion. 

Death and life are two sides of the same coin; we cannot have one without the other. Each time we choose to surrender, each time we trust the dying, our faith is led to a deeper level, and we discover a Larger Self underneath. We decide not to push to the front of the line, and something much better happens in the back of the line. We let go of narcissistic anger, and we find that we start feeling much happier. We surrender our need to control our partner, and finally the relationship blossoms. Yet each time it is a choice—and each time it is a kind of dying. It seems we only know what life is when we know what death is. 

The mystics and great saints were those who had learned to trust and allow this pattern, and often said in effect, “What did I ever lose by dying?” Or try Paul’s famous one-liner: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Now even scientific studies reveal the same universal pattern. Things change and grow by dying to their present state, but each time it is a risk. We always wonder, “Will it work this time?” So many academic disciplines are coming together, each in its own way, to say there’s a constant movement of loss and renewal at work in this world at every level. It seems to be the pattern of all growth and evolution. To be alive means to surrender to this inevitable flow. It’s the same pattern in every atom, every human relationship, and in every galaxy. Indigenous peoples, Hindu gurus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus all saw it clearly in human history and named it as a kind of “necessary dying.” 

If this pattern is true, it has been true all the time and everywhere. Such seeing did not just start two thousand years ago. All of us have to learn to let go of something smaller so something bigger can happen. But that’s not a religion—it’s highly visible truth. It is the Way Reality Works. 

Resurrection Is Assured

Richard Rohr explains how the resurrection offers us hope, especially in challenging times: 

I often wonder why so much of human life seems so futile, so tragic, so short, and so sad. If Christ is risen, why do people die before they begin to truly live? Why has there been nonstop war? Why are so many people imprisoned unjustly? Why are the poor oppressed? Why do we destroy so many of our relationships? If Christ is risen, why is there so much suffering? What is God up to? It really doesn’t make any logical sense. Is the resurrection something that just happened once, in his body, but not in ours? 

I believe the resurrection of Christ is saying that the final judgment has already happened. It’s nothing we need to fear. It’s nothing we need to avoid or deny. God’s final judgment is that God will have the last word! Easter reveals that there are no dead ends; ultimately, nothing is going to end in tragedy and crucifixion. Of course we look around us, at history and at life in its daily moments and it seems, “No, no, that isn’t true.” And yet, ever and again, here and there, more than we suspect, new life breaks through for those who are willing to see and to cooperate with this universal mystery of resurrection. 

We’re so lucky in my part of the world that Easter coincides with springtime. If this applies to you, I hope you’re going out and seeing the leaves and the flowers being reborn after months of winter. I went out early this morning to see the Easter sunrise. Sure enough, the sun rose as it always does and peeked over the horizon, just between two mountains. It appeared not so much like a sunrise but as a groundswell. The light was coming from the earth. It was coming from the world we live in. It was coming not from the top, but from the bottom. It seemed to say that even all of this which looks muddy and material, even all of this which looks so ordinary and dying, will be reborn. 

Easter is the feast of hope. This is the feast that says God will have the last word and that God’s final judgment is resurrection. God will turn all that we maim and destroy and hurt and punish into life and beauty. 

What the resurrection reveals more than anything else is that love is stronger than death. Jesus walks the way of death with love, and what it becomes is not death but life. Surprise of surprises! It doesn’t fit any logical explanation. Yet this is the mystery: that nothing dies forever, and that all that has died will be reborn in love.  

So to be a Christian is to be inevitably and forever a person of hope. God in Christ is saying this is what will last: my life and my love will always and forever have the final word.

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At the beginning of the chapter, Naaman is introduced as “a great man.” He was at the pinnacle of social and political power in Syria, honored even by the king. Naaman displayed his status throughout the first half of the story. He traveled with a caravan of servants—the ancient world’s version of a celebrity entourage—and he made arrogant demands of Elisha. He behaved like a powerful, entitled, and important man.But after encountering the God of Israel everything changed. In verses 17-18, Naaman refers to himself four times as Elisha’s “servant.” The great man had been brought low. Naaman’s new, humble status is symbolized by his request to take two mules worth of dirt back to Syria. Unlike the precious gold and silver carried by Naaman’s caravan, dirt was the most ordinary and abundant commodity imaginable. Why did he need to ask Elisha’s permission to take some?Again, this detail is a dramatic reversal from what we learned about Naaman at the beginning of the story. As the leader of Syria’s army, Naaman would frequently lead raids into Israel and plunder whatever he desired, including Israel’s people. (Remember, the servant girl who told Naaman about the existence of a prophet who could heal him had been captured from Israel during one of these raids.) In the ancient Near East, the domination of Syria and the subjugation of Israel was understood to be more than a sign of military strength. It was also an indication that Syria’s gods were mightier than Israel’s. It was a kind of Darwinian spirituality where stronger deities rightfully ruled over the weaker, and therefore the nations with stronger gods had every right to plunder the nations with weaker gods. In Naaman’s mind, he and his army took from Israel whatever they wanted because it was their pagan god-given right.But then he encountered Israel’s God and all of Naaman’s assumptions were shattered. He discovered that Israel’s God was not weak. In fact, he was far more powerful, more uncontrollable, more dangerous, and yet more gracious than any god he’d ever known. In the presence of Israel’s God, the great man from Syria was brought low. So low, in fact, that he humbly asks permission to remove the mere dirt from the land that belongs to Israel’s God. At that moment, I wonder if Naaman thought about all he had carried away from Israel without asking. Did his mind begin to inventory the herds of animals, grain, pottery, and weapons? The fine garments, wares, artwork, and scrolls? The gold, silver, and the real wealth of Israel, its people—the children he had enslaved and those his armies had killed? Did Naaman, for the first time, understand the depth of his offenses against Israel’s God? And yet, Naaman must have marveled, that Israel’s God had chosen to cleanse him anyway.But it wasn’t merely Naaman’s skin that God had healed. It was his pride. The great man from Syria, arrogant and boastful, entitled and presumptuous, was now a mere servant of Israel’s God who alone is great. DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 23:2–12  2 KINGS 5:1-27 WEEKLY PRAYER. Hippolytus of Rome (190 – 236) Christ is risen: The world below lies desolate. Christ is risen: The spirits of evil are fallen. Christ is risen: The angels of God are rejoicing. Christ is risen: The tombs of the dead are empty. Christ is risen indeed from the dead, the first of the sleepers. Glory and power are his forever and ever. Amen.

Brian McLaren invites us to an imaginative experience of the painful reality of scapegoating that occurred on Good Friday: 

Let’s imagine ourselves with the disciples just before three o’clock on this Friday afternoon. A few of us have come together to talk about what has happened over the last twenty-four hours….  

Why was there no other way? Why did this good man—the best we have ever known, the best we have ever imagined—have to face torture and execution as if he were some evil monster?  

As the hours drag on from noon to nearly three o’clock, we imagine many reasons…. 

Jesus has told us again and again that God is different from our assumptions. We’ve assumed that God was righteous and pure in a way that makes God hate the unrighteous and impure. But Jesus has told us that God is pure love, so overflowing in goodness that God pours out compassion on the pure and impure alike. He not only has told us of God’s unbounded compassion—he has embodied it every day as we have walked this road with him. In the way he has sat at table with everyone, in the way he has never been afraid to be called a “friend of sinners,” in the way he has touched untouchables and refused to condemn even the most notorious of sinners, he has embodied for us a very different vision of what God is like….  

If Jesus is showing us something so radical about God, what is he telling us about ourselves—about human beings and our social and religious institutions? What does it mean when our political leaders and our religious leaders come together to mock and torture and kill God’s messenger?… Is this the only way religions and governments maintain order—by threatening us with pain, shame, and death if we don’t comply? And is this how they unify us—by turning us into a mob that comes together in its shared hatred of the latest failure, loser, rebel, criminal, outcast … or prophet?… What kind of world have we made? What kind of people have we become?… 

In the middle of the afternoon … even from this distance, we can hear Jesus, “Father, forgive them!” he shouts. “For they don’t know what they are doing.” 

Forgive them? Forgive us?   

Our thoughts bring us again to the garden last night, when Jesus asked if there could be any other way. And now it seems clear. There could be no other way to show us what God is truly like. God is not revealed in killing and conquest … in violence and hate. God is revealed in this crucified man—giving of himself to the very last breath, giving and forgiving.  

And there could be no other way to show us what we are truly like. We do not know what we are doing, indeed.  

If God is like this, and if we are like this … everything must change.  

____________________________________________________

Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Stop trying to work things out before their times have come. Accept the limitations of living one day at a time. When something comes to your attention, ask Me whether or not it is part of today’s agenda. If it isn’t, release it into My care and go on about today’s duties. When you follow this practice, there will be a beautiful simplicity about your life: a time for everything, and everything in its time.
    A life lived close to Me is not complicated or cluttered. When your focus is on My Presence, many things that once troubled you lose their power over you. Though the world around you is messy and confusing, remember that I have overcome the world and in Me you may have Peace.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NLT)
A Time for Everything
3 For everything there is a season,
    a time for every activity under heaven.

John 16:33 (NLT)
33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

Today’s Prayer:

Dear Jesus,

Help us to trust in Your timing and embrace the simplicity of living one day at a time. Grant us the wisdom to discern what truly matters today and release the rest of our worries and concerns into Your care.

As we draw near to You, may our lives find clarity and peace amidst the world’s chaos. Let us focus on Your presence, knowing that You have overcome the world and given us peace that surpasses all human understanding.

Guide us, Lord, to align our hearts with Your perfect timing and to find contentment in Your plan for each moment. Your way is better than any way we could imagine for ourselves. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Richard Rohr names how fear diminishes our ability to love and forgive:  

Jesus came to resolve the central and essential problem of hate. We’ve produced so much utopian talk about Jesus and love, we’ve forgotten Jesus had a very hard time getting to the issue of love. First, he had to expose and destroy the phenomenon of hatred. Once he exposed the lie and illusion of hate, love could show itself clearly—and it did.  

The pattern, unfortunately, remains the same. Hate, it seems, is the ordinary, daily agenda. Love is the way out of this ordinary programming. The Gospels present the dilemma in a personal narrative that grounds the whole issue in history and in one man’s enlightened response to the human situation. Jesus accepts the religious and social judgment of hate and publicly bears the consequences, but in an utterly new and transforming way that reveals new patterns and possibilities. For two thousand years, he has remained the most striking icon of a possible new agenda. His death exposed the lie and the problem. His risen life tells people their lives could have a different story line. He didn’t just give us textbook answers from a distance; he personally walked through the process and said, “Follow me.”     

I believe fear is almost always behind hate. Sometimes it looks like control, but even then, people are usually just afraid of losing something they think they have. It is almost always unrecognized or unaddressed fear that justifies hatred. The best and most convincing disguise for fear is seeming virtue, or godliness. Then it never looks like fear. It looks like reason, prudence, common sense, intelligence, the need for social order, morality, religion, obedience, justice, or even spirituality. It always works. “Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14, NRSV). What better way to veil vengeance than to call it justice?  

Only people who have moved beyond their wounded ego and the need to control all outcomes, only those practiced at letting go, can see fear for the impostor that it is. To be trapped inside of our small ego is always to be afraid. Great religion tries its best to free individuals from the tyranny of their small and fragile selves. It always points toward a larger identity that we call the Godself, the True Self, the self “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), the trustworthy Lover. Healthy and true religion, like Jesus himself modeled, tells us there is Someone we can trust. [1] 

Jesus came to reveal and resolve the central and essential problem—humanity’s tendency toward fear and hate. Love is the totally enlightened, entirely nonsensical way out of this pattern. Love has to be worked toward, received, and enjoyed; the first move is to recognize our deep capacity for fear and hate. But remember, we gather around the negative space quickly, while we “fall into” love rather slowly, and only with lots of practice at falling. [2] 

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Sarah Young

 I AM a God who gives and gives and gives. When I died for you on the cross, I held back nothing. I poured My Life like a drink offering. Because giving is inherent in My nature, I search for people who are able to receive in full measure. To increase your intimacy with Me, the two traits you need the most are receptivity and attentiveness. Receptivity is opening up your innermost being to be filled with My abundant riches. Attentiveness is directing your gaze to Me: searching for Me in all your moments. It is possible to stay your mind on Me, as the prophet Isaiah wrote. Through such attentiveness you receive a glorious gift: My perfect Peace.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Philippians 2:17 (NLT)
17 But I will rejoice even if I lose my life, pouring it out like a liquid offering to God, just like your faithful service is an offering to God. And I want all of you to share that joy.

Mark 10:15 (NLT)
15 I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.”

Isaiah 26:3 (NLT)
3 You will keep in perfect peace
    all who trust in you,
    all whose thoughts are fixed on you!

Today’s Prayer:

Dear God,

You are the ever-giving God, pouring out Your life for us without reservation. In a world full of distractions, help us be receptive to Your abundant blessings and attentive to Your presence in every moment.

Grant us the grace to receive Your gifts with open hearts and to fix our gaze upon You, finding perfect peace in Your presence. The kind of peace that surpasses all of our understanding. 

May our lives be offerings of joy to You, given with childlike trust in Your love and care.

In Jesus’ precious name, Amen.

The Cross of Racism

Theologian James Cone (1938–2018) draws a parallel between Jesus’ crucifixion and the lynching of Black Americans:  

Theologically speaking, Jesus was the “first lynchee,” who foreshadowed all the lynched black bodies on American soil. He was crucified by the same principalities and powers that lynched black people in America. Because God was present with Jesus on the cross and thereby refused to let Satan and death have the last word about his meaning, God was also present at every lynching in the United States. God saw what whites did to innocent and helpless blacks and claimed their suffering as God’s own. God transformed lynched black bodies into the recrucified body of Christ. Every time a white mob lynched a black person, they lynched Jesus. The lynching tree is the cross in America. When American Christians realize that they can meet Jesus only in the crucified bodies in our midst, they will encounter the real scandal of the cross.  

God must therefore know in a special way what poor blacks are suffering in America because God’s son was lynched in Jerusalem.… The lynching tree is a metaphor for white America’s crucifixion of black people. It is the window that best reveals the religious meaning of the cross in our land. In this sense, black people are Christ figures, not because they wanted to suffer but because they had no choice. Just as Jesus had no choice in his journey to Calvary, so black people had no choice about being lynched. The evil forces of the Roman state and of white supremacy in America willed it. [1]  

Jennifer Garcia Bashaw charts a path forward for Christians to stop racial scapegoating: 

The final step we must take to abolish the scapegoating of Black Americans is to raise up the voices of the victims, to hear their experiences and learn from their resiliency. We need to listen to Black historians and Bible scholars, Black theologians and ethicists, Black social advocates and pastors, Black artists and poets. They will be the lights that lead the church from ignorance to understanding; they will show us how to live into the inclusive and liberating kingdom of God rather than the empire of domination and power…. We have a long way to go before our community resembles the beloved community of Christ. Those of us who have participated in, allowed, or ignored racism must walk the painful road of confession and atonement before we can mend the rift in the body of Christ that we caused….  

God’s power does not enslave, or lynch, or choke, or disenfranchise. It preserves life, lifting up the needs and voices of the oppressed and giving them dignity. This is what Jesus did in his life and death and what God’s spirit does in the resurrection and through the message of the Gospels. We who are followers of Jesus must stop our scapegoating and the racism that powers it if we are to walk on that resurrection road behind him. [2]  

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Father Richard explains the Hebrew scapegoat ritual and how the pattern continues to play out in secular contexts today: 

In Leviticus 16 we see the brilliant ritualization of what we now call scapegoating, and we should indeed feel sorry for the demonized goat. On the Day of Atonement, a priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, placing all the sins of the Israelites from the previous year onto the animal. Then the goat was taken out into the wilderness and left there. And the people went home rejoicing, just as European Christians did after burning a supposed heretic at the stake or white Americans did after the lynching of Black men. Whenever the “sinner” is excluded, our ego is delighted and feels relieved and safe—for a while at least. Usually, the illusion only deepens and becomes catatonic, conditioned, and repetitive—because of course, scapegoating did not really work to eliminate the evil in the first place. [1]  

As a Christian, I do believe that Jesus’ death was a historical breakthrough. It is no accident that Christians date history around his life. Afterward, we could never see things in the same way. The seeds of the gospel were forever planted into human history, but some followers of other religions seem to have “watered the seeds” more than many Christians. It seems to me the Christian West was so destabilized by the gospel that it had to go into “overdrive” to hide its shadow and cover its fear and its need to hate others. All this despite the teachings of its designated God! The central message of Jesus on love of enemies, forgiveness, and care for those at the bottom was supposed to make scapegoating virtually impossible and unthinkable.  

Many Christians, with utter irony, worshipped Jesus the Scapegoat on Sundays and, on the other six days of the week, made scapegoats of Jews, Muslims, other Christian denominations, heretics, sinners, pagans, the poor, and almost anybody who was not like themselves. One would have thought that Christians who “gazed upon the one they had pierced” (John 19:37) would have gotten the message about how wrong domination, power, and hatred can be. The system has been utterly wrong about their own chosen God figure, yet they continue to trust the system.  

Scapegoating depends upon a rather sophisticated, but easily learned, ability to compartmentalize, to separate, to divide the world into the pure and the impure. Anthropologically, all religion begins with the creation of the “impure.” Very soon an entire moral system emerges, with taboos, punishments, fears, guilts, and even a priesthood to enforce it. It gives us a sense of order, control, and superiority, which is exactly what the ego wants and the small self demands.  

The religious genius of Jesus is that he utterly refuses all debt codes, purity codes, and the searching for sinners. He refuses to divide the world into the pure and the impure, much to the chagrin of almost everybody—then and now. [2] 

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When Jesus was born, angels sang his praises and kings fell on their knees with royal gifts. He was the object of sincerest worship. Near the end of his life, a similar scene unfolded. Men again fell on their knees before Jesus and gave him royal gifts. Their voices praised him and they called him “King.” This time, however, their worship was utterly insincere. The Roman soldiers who celebrated strength and power spit in Jesus’ face and ridiculed this weak, pathetic excuse for a king. He was a buffoon compared to Caesar who lived in a palace, commanded armies, conquered cities, and inspired the worship of millions. Jesus was the antithesis of all that their world valued, so they used him as an oddity for their amusement. They dressed him as a king and pretended to be his subjects, but he was merely a clown in their circus of cruelty.  Like the Roman soldiers, we are eager to worship the powerful, the beautiful, and the triumphant. That is why we prefer to imagine Jesus in the guise of earthly kings or his post-resurrection glory. Popular images of Jesus in our culture depict him as healthy and strong; an attractive man with a chiseled chin and brawny arms. Sometimes he’s even flanked by the symbols of imperial power—flags, eagles, guns, and fighter jets. This mighty American Jesus is also a clown; a mockery of the true Christ. But while the Roman soldiers who adorned him with imperial symbols intended to insult Jesus, ironically many who drape him in the flag today do not. A powerful Jesus who shares our political and cultural enemies is easy to worship, but the gospels challenge us with a different question. Are we willing to worship a weak, humiliated, and broken Jesus? Are we willing to pledge our allegiance to the Jesus covered in spit and blood, wearing a crown of thorns, robed in contempt, and despised by the world? We cannot embrace the Jesus of majesty and reject the Jesus of mockery. They are the same.The Apostle John learned this when he was given a vision of heaven. One of the elders announced with majestic language the arrival of Jesus, “Behold, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, who has conquered.” But when John turned to look at this almighty, triumphant King he saw a Jesus of utter weakness: “I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.”  DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 27:27–31  REVELATION 5:5–6 WEEKLY PRAYERKarl Barth (1886–1968) O Lord God, our Father. You are the light that can never be put out; and now you give us a light that shall drive away all darkness. You are love without coldness, and you have given us such warmth in our hearts that we can love all when we meet. You are the life that defies death, and you have opened for us the way that leads to eternal life. None of us is a great Christian; we are all humble and ordinary. But your grace is enough for us. Arouse in us that small degree of joy and thankfulness of which we are capable, to the timid faith which we can muster, to the cautious obedience which we cannot refuse, and thus to the wholeness of life which you have prepared for all of us through the death and resurrection of your Son. Do not allow any of us to remain apathetic or indifferent to the wondrous glory of Easter, but let the light of our risen Lord reach every corner of our dull hearts. Amen.

As Holy Week begins, Richard Rohr reflects on how quickly we tend to transmit our pain to others:  

Human nature, when seeking power, wants either to play the victim or to create victims of others. In fact, the second follows from the first. Once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse, or attack—and with impunity! It settles the dust quickly, and takes away any immediate shame, guilt, or anxiety. In other words, it works—at least for a while. 

When we read today’s news, we realize the pattern hasn’t changed much in all of history. Hating, fearing, or diminishing someone else holds us together for some reason. Scapegoating, or the creating of victims, is in our hard wiring. Philosopher René Girard called “the scapegoat mechanism” the central pattern for the creation and maintenance of cultures worldwide since the beginning. [1] 

The sequence, without being too clever, goes something like this: we compare, we copy, we compete, we conflict, we conspire, we condemn, and we crucify. If we don’t recognize some variation of this pattern within ourselves and put an end to it early on, it’s almost inevitable. That’s why spiritual teachers of any depth will always teach simplicity of lifestyle and freedom from the competitive power game, which is where it all begins. It is probably the only way out of the cycle of violence. 

It’s hard for us religious people to hear, but the most persistent violence in human history has been “sacralized violence”—violence that we treated as sacred, but which was, in fact, not. Human beings have found a most effective way to legitimate their instinct toward fear and hatred. They imagine they are fearing and hating on behalf of something holy and noble: God, religion, truth, morality, their children, or love of country. It takes away all guilt, and one can even think of oneself as representing the moral high ground or being responsible and prudent as a result. It never occurs to most people that they are becoming what they fear and hate. [2]  

Therapist Matthias Roberts describes how Jesus defied the scapegoating pattern:  

Jesus walked willingly into a human world defined—as it still is today—by violence and dependence on scapegoats…. He was murdered not because God wanted or needed his sacrificial death but because as humans, when the stakes are high, we determine who is in and who is out through violence and death.  

But Jesus … broke the system because what was supposed to happen didn’t.  

The scapegoat didn’t stay dead. And the victors, in this case, didn’t get to write the only version of the story.  

The scapegoat came back to life and told a different story, a truer story, a story about life and love. And through his story, Jesus revealed our ideas about God had been wrong all along.  

God and Jesus are nothing like the violent and vengeful world we live in. [3] 

A Gospel According to Scapegoats

Theologian Jennifer Garcia Bashaw describes how the Gospels are liberating for the excluded and scapegoated:  

From the inception of the Gospel narratives, we can see that they were not just stories written about a scapegoat—they were stories written by scapegoats…. When the [New Testament] authors told the stories of Jesus’s life or of the early church, they wrote and interpreted from this fringe position. The Gospel writers also focused on the stories of the marginalized…. These were the people Jesus taught, healed, and befriended in his life—the societal victims and outcast people who lived not only on the periphery of the empire but on the periphery of their own culture. The gospel story, then, is a story about a victim, written by victims, and featuring victims. It is good news for victims; it is a scapegoat’s gospel. [1]  

Jesus’ death on the cross reveals the violence of scapegoating.  

Jesus willingly becomes a scapegoat to draw attention to the scapegoaters; he submits to death on a cross to draw attention away from the scapegoats.… In his life, Jesus championed women, befriended and healed the poor and the disabled, and welcomed in the outsiders. In his death, Jesus becomes the woman, the infirmed, and the outsider. The Jesus who saved women from society’s shaming was himself publicly shamed, stripped naked, and despised. The Jesus who healed sick and disabled bodies became disabled himself, flesh pierced and torn, weakened and held captive by nails and his failing body.… If Jesus’s life reversed the fate of victims he had met, then his death reverses the fate of future victims. He becomes the scapegoat to end all scapegoats—and exposes the truth that could end human blame and violence once and for all.  

As they tell the Jesus story, the Gospel writers ensure that followers of Jesus see his scapegoat death for what it is…. They show us the innocence of Jesus so that we might recognize the innocence of all scapegoat victims before it is too late…. After Jesus became a victim on the cross, exposing the scapegoat mechanism and its fatal effects, the story is carried forward by the scapegoats of Jesus’s society. It is the women disciples who discover the tomb (Mark 16:1–8; Matthew 28:1–10; Luke 24:1–11; John 20:1–18) and become the first witnesses to the resurrection and the first evangelists to carry the news to other Jesus-followers. [2] 

 Jesus’ death compels us to join in solidarity with the scapegoated. Bashaw continues:  

Without a clear comprehension of Jesus’s pattern of life and death, those of us who follow Jesus can unknowingly become the ones who scapegoat rather than the ones who follow the scapegoat. When we enter the story of Jesus with an eye on society’s victims, however, we can grasp more fully the life, ministry, and death of the scapegoat that was supposed to end all scapegoats—Jesus. Maybe then we can stop creating scapegoats and work on their behalf instead. [3] 

Note: For Holy Week, we are taking a short break from the “Lessons from Naaman” series to reflect on the events leading up to Jesus’ death. We will return to the Naaman series on April 1. The great power and authority that Jesus had revealed day after day was not on display after his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. Miraculously healing the severed ear of the guard in the garden was the final miracle Jesus would perform. The mighty prophet from Nazareth who had healed the blind and raised the dead appeared powerless by the time of his trial in the courtyard of the high priest. With a word he had silenced the sea, but he did nothing to silence the false witnesses and evil accusers that night. Frustrated by his lack of cooperation, the high priest finally came to the heart of the matter: “Are you the Messiah, the Son of God, or not?” he demanded. “I am,” Jesus said. His words were chosen deliberately to invoke the proper Hebrew name of God. “And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.” He was quoting a familiar image of the Messiah from the prophetic words of the Old Testament, but the vision of power and authority stood in sharp contrast to the man in chains before them. His claim sounded as ridiculous as it was blasphemous. Here was a mouse claiming to be a lion.It was too much for them to take. This passive, uncooperative carpenter could not be the mighty Messiah, the Savior of Israel, and God himself in human form. The priests tore their robes at Jesus’ blasphemy and unanimously condemned him to death. They slapped him, spit on his face, and mocked him. To these men, Jesus was worse than a liar and more embarrassing than a blasphemer. He was a joke.Amazingly, these men were the most educated scholars in Israel. They had memorized the Scriptures from childhood and had parsed their meaning all of their lives—and yet they could not recognize the God of Scripture when he stood before them clearly declaring his identity. It is easy to stand in judgment of these elders and priests, just as they stood in judgment of Jesus. But we dare not because their blindness could easily be our own. Instead, humility should lead us to learn from their example so we do not repeat their mistake. They possessed the scriptures, acquired knowledge, studied their theological traditions, and occupied important religious offices. But these things did not give them the ability to see the truth or to discern the presence of God. Likewise, we must be careful that our knowledge, traditions, and ministries do not cause us to miss the true presence of God. While we search for him in the powerful, the spectacular, and the impressive, the Lord may pass us by in the faces of those we deem worthless. DAILY SCRIPTURE MARK 14:60–65  JOHN 5:39–40 WEEKLY PRAYER. Karl Barth (1886–1968) O Lord God, our Father. You are the light that can never be put out; and now you give us a light that shall drive away all darkness. You are love without coldness, and you have given us such warmth in our hearts that we can love all when we meet. You are the life that defies death, and you have opened for us the way that leads to eternal life. None of us is a great Christian; we are all humble and ordinary. But your grace is enough for us. Arouse in us that small degree of joy and thankfulness of which we are capable, to the timid faith which we can muster, to the cautious obedience which we cannot refuse, and thus to the wholeness of life which you have prepared for all of us through the death and resurrection of your Son. Do not allow any of us to remain apathetic or indifferent to the wondrous glory of Easter, but let the light of our risen Lord reach every corner of our dull hearts. Amen.