Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Easter Monday - Brian Zahnd

The risen Christ did not merely come back from the dead

The risen Christ is not one who has come back from the dead. The risen Christ is the One who has gone through death and opened the door to the new world beyond death.

The risen Christ is not one who has wrestled free from the clutches of death to return to the land over which death still holds sway. The risen Christ is the One who has passed all the way through the black hole of Hades into the world of light and life where death cannot go.

Lazarus is a man who came back from the dead…only to die again. Christ is not a mere survivor of Sheol. Christ is the Conqueror of Sheol who has trampled down death by death.

Christ was raised on the third day. Lazarus on the fourth. But that doesn’t mean Lazarus is one up on Christ. Oh, no! Lazarus merely came back from the grave…but still a subject to the tyranny of death. Christ went all the way through the grave…and emerged as the Vanquisher of death.

To be baptized into Christ is to follow Christ into New Creation.

To feed upon the bread and wine of the Eucharist is to ingest Eternal Life.

To belong to Christ is to belong to the Age to Come.

Our task now is to seek to embody and enact that which belongs to the Age to Come.

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And the Ground Began to Shake - Caleb Miller

By the third day, I'm certain life had begun to gain some sort of semblance of normal for the followers of Christ. His mother, once unconsolable, probably finally started to get some sleep, albeit interrupted by the recurring nightmare of her son, beaten and bloody, stretched out on a cross for all to mock and revile. The smell of his blood as she carried him to the tomb likely still permeated her senses, and the sounds of the cries of her child indelibly burned into her mind. Never mind that he was the Son of God, he was her son. The boy she had held within her womb, the divine child, incarnate grace and love was now quickly becoming nothing more than a memory.

The ground had already shaken when he died, the temple veil torn in two—something that makes us take a step back and contemplate the death of this man—revealing to all around Him that the "presence of God" does not dwell in temples made with human hands. The rending of the veil is the revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven within humanity rather than stone and pomp. 

And during all this shaking and mourning, Christ is descending, deeper and deeper into the darkness and pain of human experience. Descending into all that we could ever be in the worst way. Descending into the past hatred of his people by the Egyptians, into the present hatred by Rome, and into future hatred by Hitler and laying hold of that hatred—rendering it powerless. Descending and with every step His still freshly pierced hands and feet "trampling down death by death", dripping blood on everything He touches. 

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The Way of the Cross: Reflections on the Seven Last Words - Geoff Martens

The Way of the Cross - 

Introduction:

     In this Study will we be looking at the last 7 prayers that Jesus prayed on the cross. "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34), "Father, forgive them; they don't know what they're doing." (Luke 23:34), "Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you enter your kingdom." He said, "Don't worry, I will. Today you will join me in paradise." (Luke 23:42-43), "Father, I place my life into your hands." (Luke 23:46), He said to his mother, "Woman, here is our son." Then he said to the disciple, "He is your mother." (John 19:26-27), "I'm thirsty" (John 19:28), "It's done...complete." (John 19:30) 

     So why should we study these prayers? How are they going to help me grow closer to God? Eugene Peterson, in his book 'Tell it Slant', said, "We are not at the cross to remember or do homage. We are here to probe the meaning of our daily dying in the company of Jesus." (pg. 241) Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:31, "I die daily". Jesus said, "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the drivers seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding you self, your true self." (Matt. 16:24-26) As Christians, every day we should be dying to self and giving Jesus more control. But do we? I hope that as you go through these 7 prayers with Jesus, that you will get to know Jesus in a deeper and more personal way in your daily dying.

Preparatory Prayer

     Jesus, I would like to meet You. Guide me on my way. Teach me to hold onto your Word when I have to walk up the Calvary of my life. Help me so that I - like You - am ready to obey and say, "May Your will be done." Help me to do what You ask me to do. Father, here I am. I would like to embrace the secret of Your Son so that You may acknowledge me as Your child who is returning to You. Amen.

The Gospel According to John Wayne - Jim Forest

One of the unique aspects of being human is the role stories play in our lives and have played as far back as the human story is told. Stories inspire, enlighten, connect, delight, warn, admonish and surprise. We need them with an urgency that resembles hunger. Not merely entertainment, stories can save lives or turn us into killers.

In 1955, when I was thirteen, I went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York to see a photo exhibition that has haunted me ever since. Its theme was “The Family of Man.” The curator, Edward Steichen, brought together a vast sequence of photos that not only asserted but demonstrated that, for all the diversity of culture, skin color, local economy and development, varieties of religion and differences of clothing, we are indeed one human family bound together in love, pain, labor, awe, anger, gratitude and death. I bought the exhibition book and have hung onto it through many moves, returning to it ever since as if it were a Bible without words. Taken as a whole, the collection has as its golden thread the radical us-ness of being. It helped me understand that beneath our separateness is our unity. It’s about the “our” in the Our Father.

Among the images that I especially love is one of an old African storyteller in a fire-illuminated hut. We see him at the top of a circle of young people, boy and girls who are listening to the old man with absolute attention and wonder. The storyteller’s eyes are wide open, his mouth a perfect O, his eyebrows arched high into his forehead, his hands raised above his head, all ten fingers outstretched. If he were telling the story of Jesus’s life, this might be the moment when the disciples discover the empty tomb.

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And Death Was Embittered - Caleb Miller

Imagine the devastation the followers of Jesus must've felt the day after they laid his body in the grave. No hope that tomorrow would bring anything to calm their grief. No hope that they would see Jesus again. No hope that Rome would ever be defeated. No hope that love would win the day. Jesus' mother was likely unconsolable, no parent wants to bury their own child. 

The miracles? Memories. 
The sermons? Silent.

I'm sure their minds traced back and forth, I doubt anyone got any sleep, and I'm sure nobody was smiling. 

Except Jesus.

In the midst of the sadness and pain of loss, Jesus was laying waste to the gates of hades. His descent into hades signifies to us that there is nowhere he won't go to be with us, to reach us, to save us. 

The text really doesn't tell us that Jesus descended "into flames" or "into fire", because hades isn't a place of burning in mythology. It was a place of darkness, where all souls go post mortem. It was a place of fear and trembling, where the souls of the ages eagerly awaited the King of Glory. 

"The light shines in the darkness".

The light of the world sent to the darkest place the world "knew" existed? What darkness can stand in that presence? "Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess" just might be historical commentary as well as eschatological prophecy, as Jesus was preaching to the souls gone before. In the darkness of humanity's rage and self deceit, the man of sorrows, the lover of our souls began to preach.

And what do we think he preached?

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Religious Culture Wars and the Millennial Generation - Abp. Lazar Puhalo

     There is little doubt that there is a form of "culture wars" going on in almost every part of our world (the world does not have "corners"). Too many people misread this culture dislocation in terms of "left/right"; liberal/conservative; religious/anti-religious dichotomies". This is not useful.  

    The culture wars are far more generational and have more to do with the information and knowledge revolutions than any political "wingism". Another, profound aspect of the rift is the brain evolution of younger generations, enhanced and driven by the technology age.

    Much of the dichotomy is in mental and attitudinal orientation. Clinically we are aware that people with enlarged or over-active amygdale regions of the brain are more reactive because of the fear generated emotions, and this is often beyond their control. "Liberals" are often too quick to embrace any new notions that appear, without due consideration or research.

    For younger people, particularly the millenials, liberal/conservative dichotomies are not so significant, they are more facts and knowledge based. This is where the real culture war divisions arise, particularly in religious bodies.

And Then the Grave - Caleb Miller

Remembering the cross of Christ, as well as the crucifixion (for clarification, see yesterday’s post) is crucial to our understanding of the atonement, but it isn’t the whole story. That’s likely why I’ve never really liked the old hymn “The Old Rugged Cross”. I get the point, it’s a big part of our faith, but it’s only the beginning. There’s all sorts of metaphors we can make about the piercing of his side and the fact that it remained open, shades of how Adam’s side was opened for the bride to come out. Isn’t it great that Jesus’ side was left open?

You see, we also need to remember to cling to the old dusty grave. Something happened in that grave, something larger than we can ever imagine. Paul says that during the cave time of Jesus, he descended into Hades, and led captivity captive. Thousands of years of Christian tradition have trivialized the grave of Christ, turning his descent into Hades into nothing more than a quaint little phrase we say, usually only on Easter, sometimes on Good Friday, but not nearly enough. 

So what was that grave?

The grave of Christ is not just about death of the physical body, some mysterious place where all our physical infirmity was somehow taken away. No, the grave represents the very darkest parts of our human experience. Depression, sadness, loneliness, bitterness, hurt, anger, suicide, murder, rage. That is the grave of Christ. It’s the same cave we all live in from time to time, and the message of that cave (and the grave) is: Jesus has descended into Hades. And not just the metaphorical Hades of lore, but the literal place where our depression leads. The solitude and loneliness produced by death (whether spiritual or otherwise). 

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Zealous for Truth - David Goa

Someone who has actually tasted truth is not contentious for truth. Someone who is considered by people to be zealous for truth has not yet learnt what truth is really like; once he has truly learnt it, he will cease from zealousness on its behalf. – St. Isaac the Syrian (1)

The age of relativism is also the age of zealousness. They go hand in hand, codependent twins in service to the same human passion, symptoms of a shared dis-ease. Both are responses to the longing of the human heart. Relativism and zealousness are distinct ways of misunderstanding our deep desire for a firm truth. Both are misunderstandings in the strict sense for they fail to discern aright what stands under the desire we have for that which is true. In both we see this human desire turned into an appetite. Whatever we come to look at and care about is then forced into conformity with the idea, image, or ritual that we have erected as absolute. We begin to hang all our hopes and dreams on the truth of our chosen framework, our precious absolutes (including the relativists’ precious absolute that there is nothing of ultimate value). Our longing is captured by an absolute of our own making. It follows, almost without saying, that once we hang all our hopes and dreams on something that we claim as absolute, it is a short step to hanging all our fears on it as well. In this moment the holy longing of the human heart and mind that lies behind the search for absolutes becomes polluted. Zealousness for the truth frames how we see and understand and reshapes our response to the fragility of the life of the world.

It is this passion, this disease, that St. Isaac says we are freed from when we learn what truth is really like. But we are only open to learn what truth is like when our understanding of truth itself is transformed.

For the relativist this transformation requires the letting go of the deep disappointment in the discovery that no abstract value, no matter how ultimate it may appear, holds in all times and all places. The spiritual source of relativism is often if not always a result of the loss of faith in the god of the philosophers and it leads directly to cynicism. “If my absolute is not claimed by all, including god, then the search for absolutes is itself nothing but human foolishness.”

The zealous, often religious men and women, have yet to walk through the valley of shattered absolutes. They erect elaborate temples of truth, statement-by-statement, fact-by-fact, temples that have turrets strategically located, each well armed and poised to fire at a moment’s notice. Both the relativist and the zealous are spiritual adolescents at best, and in our fragile world, where the news media often shape the public discourse, they have bonded with each other to divert attention away from serious encounter with “what truth is really like.”

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Jesus Died for Us ... Not for God - Brian Zahnd

Golgotha by Edvard Munch, 1900

“You killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead.” –The Apostle Peter, Acts 3:15

Golgotha is where the great crimes of humanity — pride, rivalry, blame, violence, domination, war, and empire — are dragged into the searing light of divine judgment. At Golgotha we see the system of human organization that we blithely call “civilization” for what it is: an axis of power enforced by violence so corrupt that it is capable of murdering God in the name of what we call truth, justice, and liberty.

Golgotha is also the place where the love of God achieves its greatest expression. As Jesus is lynched in the name of religious truth and imperial justice he expresses the heart of God as he pleads for the pardon of his executioners. At the cross we discover that the God revealed in Christ would rather die in the name of love than kill in the name of freedom. Our savior is Jesus Christ, not William Wallace.

The cross is both hideous and glorious, simultaneously ugly and beautiful. It’s as hideous as human sin and as glorious as divine love. It is a collision of sin and grace. But it is not a contest of equals. In the end love and beauty win. We call it Easter.

What the cross is not is a quid pro quo where God agrees to forgive upon receipt of his Son’s murder. What the cross is not is an economic transaction whereby God gains the capital to forgive. These legal and fiscal models for understanding the cross simply will not do.

Jesus does not save us from God, Jesus reveals God as savior. 

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Human Religious Impulse and the Unique Revelation of Christ - Brian Schmidt

As postmoderns, we often criticize Evangelicalism (the particular religion we grew up with). However, all religion has (necessary) stages of growth that mimic human development. All religions can serve the ego and/or the Spirit. 

I see religion as the stem and husk that can house and serve the growth of the seed (Spirit). The problem is, we tend to get attached to the stem and husk and mistakenly consider them to be our nutrition!

I think it's helpful to not only look at fundamentalist/conservative Evangelicalism or even ‘religion’ itself as the problem. In a recent CNN show on atheists, one atheist claimed that if we got rid of religion, humanity would have no problems. Really? No more racism, classism, genderism? Talk about a belief system rivaling pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die! As it turns out, key atheist apologists, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, are huge male chauvinists!

I think it's more helpful to look at religion anthropologically—including its political, sociological, and psychological aspects. Regardless of the religion, human nature is prone to us-versus-them and is constantly finding reasons to divide and feel superior (e.g., Catholic vs. Protestant, Shiite vs. Sunni, and various denominational splits ad nauseam) and to find a scapegoat (gays, infidels, women, whomever).

What does the Cross reveal? - Caleb Miller

The cross of Christ is much more than just a horrendous method of torturing someone. The cross reveals to us the heart of humanity, rather than the heart of the Father. The cross gives us a picture each and every year of the depths of human depravity and violence. 

For the life of me, I cannot make sense of any atonement theory that says the Father punished Jesus, emptied his wrath upon Jesus, used Jesus as a cosmic go-between to save people from the fury and anger of the divine dungeon master or any variation thereof. That is extremely basic faith. The church fathers didn’t propose PSA1 as a view on the atonement because it laid waste to the Trinity. We’re so inundated with modernity though, we have no idea why. 

 

To propose that the Father turned his back on the son, poured out his wrath on the son, or otherwise judged him for our various actions (except other religions and gayness, Jesus didn’t include those in his death) we say that there was a moment when Father and Son were not “of the same being, of the same substance”. They become a cosmic good cop, bad cop with Jesus becoming the happy hippy arm of the furious old man in the sky. 

 

Never mind that Paul said “God was IN CHRIST reconciling the world unto himself”. Sort of hard to forsake or “turn on” someone you’re in.

Watching and learning about Work at Gethsemane - Henk Smidstra

gethsemane - nicholas mynheer

As our Lenten journey becomes Passion Week and Easter, there is just too much unrest and tragedy in the world for me to simply focus liturgically on the passion of Christ as a sacred event of the past. It was for the world, the present world included, that Jesus was born, suffered, died, and rose again. In this our 21^st century world there is still so much unbelief, abuse of power, and suffering born of humanity’s inhumanity to itself, that one can ask, “has anything changed?” In our humanity we can’t help lament as we connect with the suffering of our co-humanity in the world, mostly because of senseless acts of destruction, war, and exploitation….I need not list the arenas of conflict and war, or of political rhetoric arguing to expand the scope of waging of war and living by the sword. I listen to our nation’s policy makers take advantage of public fear to pass heartless, not to mention needless, crime policies, to them minimizing poverty and homelessness issues to name a few. Too long have I experienced our country’s leaders avoiding proactive problem solving in areas of social and criminal justice, poverty, homelessness, and racism, that I no longer ask, where is God? I ask rather, “What were they thinking!”; “Where are the wise and just citizens of our society, the compassionate and humble servants for the Good; where is the Church, the Body of Christ?” I no longer believe that absolutely everything that happens is by the will of God; much that happens is simply sinful individual and corporate moral irresponsibility, in a social mentality, consumptive individualism, and, positivist liberalism; and as has been said, that, too many good people do nothing.

My implicit neo-Calvinist vita activa disposition also asks, “what is the relevance our Easter liturgies and of the Easter messages to our lives and this world in this our 21^st century world that seems to be falling apart at the seams; is the church corporately and individually not called to be salt, light, and servants for the common good, especially for the least of those in our global world, including our enemies?” Something must be done! Perhaps, to Use Bonhoeffer’s phrase, it is time to be” this- worldly” in our following Christ today, not other-worldly or narrowly “religious” sense by merely going down memory-lane. I conclude, though, that “church services” are vital, but not sufficient in themselves, and that the manner of our response to this world must conform, not to this world, but to the model of God in Christ. The relevance of our liturgies of the word and sacrament is that they point us to the person and work of Christ and invite us to follow in his footsteps.