And in all truth, it’s been a strange season for me. Holy Week as well. I am immersed in the Christian world and yet I think Lady Gaga’s new controversial single “Judas” has prompted more spiritual reflection in me than anything else this week. It’s been amusing to follow the controversy and to read the outrage of those who are incensed that anyone would dare admit to being tempted to love Judas over Jesus. Because, of course, none of the rest of us ever betray Jesus in any way. None of the rest of us lives in the real world full of its tensions and murky conflicts. We all must preserve the façade of who we declare Jesus to be without admitting to the reality of the world we inhabit. Or something like that.

So while Lady Gaga’s song was a well-timed publicity stunt, it is brilliantly proving its own social commentary in how it is being received. A world that hypocritically denies its own hypocrisy is throwing a fit at having that hypocrisy pointed out in such an outrageous manner. The Jesus they claim to follow doesn’t match the lives they live and it is a divided life that they are fine with until someone like Lady Gaga forcefully pulls down the dividing curtain. But as I thought about it, I realized that it is that crazy divided life and disconnect from reality in the church that has defined my experience this Lent.

During this season of spiritual reflection and sacrifice as Christians theoretically prepare ourselves to respond to the sacrifice of Christ by becoming living sacrifices ourselves, the church as I’ve experienced it this year has been hell-bent on defending tooth and claw its own personal construction of Jesus apart from the reality of the world. On one hand there have been the vicious attacks on any who would dare suggest that maybe, just maybe, God’s love is stronger than death and will win in the end. For some, theirconception of a limited God must be defended above relationships or the even the communion of saints. Then on the other hand this season has been defined by large sections of the church campaigning to ensure that our government doesn’t waste our hard-earned tax dollars on programs for the poor and disadvantaged in our nation. ‘Jesus’ must be defended at all costs, but never to the point that he actually crosses that dividing line into our real lives (and budgets). This is how we have been preparing to celebrate the Resurrection this year.

Instead of letting the sacrifice of Christ prompt us to live eucharistically as the body of Christ that shares the abundant blessing and gifts of God with each other, this Lent has been defined by selfish hoardings of God’s love. We limit God’s love to only those who intellectually assent to the same cognitive propositions as we do, and we then hoard God’s freely given blessings as if we’ve done something to deserve them or something. We love Judas and the pieces of silver too much to actually follow the Christ we proclaim – but unlike Lady Gaga, we refuse to admit it.

So this is Easter and what have we done? It hurts my soul to see how the church has spent Lent this year. We are the Body of Christ, why can’t we live like it?

The argument that really gets me (which was brought up at church during the discussion) is the whole "the Easter story is just too fantastic and imperfectly told to be made up. The disciples couldn't have made up this story if they had tried." I used to buy that argument, but I've come to realize it's utter absurdity. It's premise rests on two assumptions. One that the gospel story is so unique it has to be true, and two, that imperfections in the writing techniques lend credibility to the story because no good author would allow such discrepancies. My response to proponents of the first premise is – have any of you guys ever read literature or studied history?! Of course authors come up with far more fantastical stories on a daily basis – even in ancient times. Ever read the Epic of Gilgamesh of Greek mythology? How about the Odyssey? In fact many of those old mythological stories about dying gods coming to life are pretty dang similar to the Easter story. How about looking into why we call the day Easter to begin with. Even if the story is true, it is not unique.

And as for the second premise, it assumes that the point of the gospels is to convince people to believe. I guess if we have made Easter all about believing in certain facts, it is understandable that some would assume that the gospel writers had that same purpose in mind. But I have a hard time believing that these stories were written down as evidence to convince us to believe. Jesus didn't instruct the disciples to spread his story so that everyone would know it was true, he instructed them to train others in the disciplines of the Kingdom. The books we have are tools for helping us understand how to follow Christ. Not just to know what he did and believe it happened, but to live it out. We are to respond to the Resurrection in the ways Jesus called us to live. We can argue all we want about it happening or not, but in the end that does nothing to serve Christ. Choosing to respond and actually live in the way of Christ is where the true significance lies.

You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason
We should dream that the world would ever change
You're saying love is foolish to believe
'Cause there'll always be some crazy with an Army or a knife
To wake you from your day dream, put the fear back in your life

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify
What's stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late, he's almost in defeat
It's looking like the Evil side will win, so on the Edge
Of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins
It is….

Love that mixed the mortar
And it's love who stacked these stones
And it's love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we're alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it's love that wrote this play…

This is what is in my head today. Not my depravity. Not guilt at killing Christ. Not pressure to repent because someone died for me.  But instead I feel hopeful.  Hope that the incarnation means that a better world is possible. Hope that there is a reason to fight injustice.  Hope that Jesus meant what he said.  Hope that his life as well as his death demonstrate the best way to live.

I look to the victory of Christ not just over personified evil, but over a way of life that denies love. In a world where injustice seemingly prevails, Jesus taught us to follow another path. His incarnation demonstrated the possibility of living a life of love, peace, and justice. And it also reminds us how the world fears and fights against such a way of life. God chose to live among us in a way that turned upside down the system of power and greed the world holds dear.  He encouraged his followers to love their enemies, to serve the poor, to live in humility.  This way of life was so important to him that he even chose to die for it.

Resurrection is a reminder that in the end love does win, but so is the crucifixion. It is a reminder that this way of life was so important and vital that Christ would die for it. I find that hopeful. It is one thing to know that in the end everything will work out, but it is another to believe that we can live that way already.  We can live knowing love prevails – and our living so ushers in the reality.  I can live into that incarnation of love.  I can hope in the good and be the good that I am hoping for.  Even in the seeming despair of death I must claim hope – not just in resurrection and new life, but in a way of life defined by love.  For both victory and new life are hollow without love.

I like this approach to learning about the faith.  I like that the children are encouraged to speak up and explore what they believe and the rituals of the faith.  They aren't told to just be quiet and learn what the teacher wants them to know.  In the Seder tradition, there are no bad or wrong questions.  The child who asks the tricky or even the silly questions is not looked down upon, what is worrisome is the child who asks no questions.  Wrestling with faith or even attacking the faith are preferred to passively and unthinkingly going through the motions of faith.

My daughter is four, and is a chatterbox incessantly asking "why?".  One of her favorite shows is Sid the Science Kid, a show about a preschool boy who each morning runs into a question he has about the world and then asks that question at preschool where the day is then spent answering his question.  She finds that fascinating, and loves the experimental approach they take to figuring out the answers.  I watch the show with her with chagrin.  No school (or Sunday school) is truly like that – allowing the inquisitive nature of kids guide the learning process.  While I understand the impracticalities of such a method, I wonder at what stage kids learn that questioning is bad.  Where absorbing facts, memorizing concepts, and reproducing them when asked replaces wondering about the world and wrestling with truth?  Even in Seminary my husband says the professors play the poor pedagogical game of having students parrot back the answer they want to hear.  Education has become about amassing information instead of learning to think.

So I want to tell the stories to my daughter and to enact the rituals of the faith with her, but I want her to know that those too can (and must) be questioned.  She shouldn't just learn about her faith, she needs to live it.

First – that as the church we haven't always been so divorced from the practice of celebrating Resurrection. In the pre-industrial world people were much more attuned to the fading and returning of life in the unfolding of the seasons. Their feast days (which our Christian holy days attempt to co-opt) marked the turning points of the seasons – solstice, equinox, solstice – in an endless ritual. Each year the world enacted the play of death and resurrection as winter crept in and stole life and light away and then summer brought everything back to life again. But this wasn't just a ritual – it was life. Marking and understanding this cycle meant the difference between life and death. One had to know when to plant and when to harvest and how much to store up against winter starvation. Life was cherished, and light as the harbinger of life revered. But we've lost that in the modern world. In our wired and climate-controlled homes we have little need to mark the passing of seasons except for how they effect our comfort. We know we can go to any store and buy produce no matter the season. We have disconnected ourselves from the cycle – living in an artificial (and unsustainable) now. We have little need to yearn for or celebrate the return of life to the earth. We take that life for granted and so have gotten out of the habit of practicing resurrection.

I believe this falling into the habit of remembering the death and not the life has marred our faith. The resurrection stands for hope – for remembering that good does win. The resurrection ushers in the Kingdom, calling us to live in that hope by following in the way of Christ. The resurrection encourages us to spread that hope – doing good, righting wrongs, caring for others. But instead we dwell simply on the death. We see less hope and possibility for improvement and instead see depravity. We make the death about us – how it serves us, how it defines us. Not that those questions are invalid, but to solely focus on them leads to a highly imbalanced faith. Our faith becomes about endings rather than beginnings. We can't break free of the eternal now that is but a pseudo-life and embrace the return of the light. I think we can learn from the cultures that marked the passing of the seasons – even on the darkest day when it looked like death may have won the people are not called to mourn or to remain in darkness. No, they light a bonfire and chase away that very darkness asserting that the light will return and with it the life that sustains.

So I wonder what it will take for us to do more than utter a few "He is risen indeeds" on Easter and to choose to live in the Resurrection. To refrain from dwelling in despair and darkness and to affirm life instead. To live in the hope of the resurrection – choosing to bring life into the world.

At least that is what I am asking myself as I prepare for Holy Week.

The quote of the day. After the war-protesters were arrested at Holy Name Cathedral this morning, Cardinal Francis George responded "We should all work for peace," George said, "but not by interrupting the worship of God."

Because this is America. Peace has nothing to do with worship, or Easter, or Jesus…

Edited to clarify my thoughts -

I honestly have really mixed reactions to the whole thing.  I don't think the protest was the best approach to getting the message out there.  As the paper mentioned this morning, doing something like that in Chicago in the wake of the NIU shootings is a bit too much.  Luckily this was a Catholic church and not an evangelical megachurch or the protesters could have been shot on site.

But I understand the need to do something for peace and that yes shocking people out of complacency is needed.  They might have had a somewhat sympathetic audience at the cathedral, but how many people there are actively working to bring an end to violence?  If their words don't translate into action what are they worth? (and yes I am speaking to myself here as well).  Perhaps the homily would have encouraged some to action, perhaps not.  This is an issue that goes much deeper than politics and should not be ignored by the church because it can be labeled "political."  If we care about peace, if we care about the Iraqis who deal with real horror everyday, we wont shut such things out of our worship services.  We wont be more pissed off that our "Easter finery" got fake blood on it and that we had to think about uncomfortable things than the fact that those horrific things are happening to real people.

This was an Easter service.  A celebration that God has overcome death – that enemy has been destroyed.  It comes just a week after we remember when Jesus challenged political powers in a triumphal entry into Jerusalem and then marched into the Temple to speak out (in physical action) against the injustices being perpetrated there against foreigners and the poor.  Was what he just did a silly stunt to gain a bit of media attention?  Shouldn't he just have let the people worship the way they expected to worship over the Passover holiday?

Honestly I'm conflicted.  I don't know if the protest was useful, but I think something is needed.  What would have been better and effective?  How can the message of Jesus and the hope of Easter be translated into action and not just warm fuzzies?  How can we get over just our comfort and care about the needs of others (in Iraq and elsewhere)?  There are deeper questions here than just the "disturbance of peace" and I think they need to be addressed instead of just brushed aside because something challenges our assumptions regarding what is appropriate behavior for church.

John 20
The Empty Tomb
1Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"

3So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. 8Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

I am not one to get up early. If I had my way I would sleep late everyday. I like sleep. I try to sleep as much as I can. But then there are those nights when the world just seems so wrong, so off, so empty that sleep seems far away. How can one sleep when everything has gone wrong? When all of one's hopes, dreams, and plans have come to an abrupt end? Why sleep when you have to wake up to that slow sad realization that everything has changed – your life has fallen apart?

It was nights like those that came to mind as I read the Resurrection passage here. Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.. I picture her unable to sleep since the crucifixion – unwilling to accept the horror and get on with life by subcumming to such an everyday habit of life as sleep. So while it is still dark she goes to the tomb.

The experience of the past few days cannot be processed. How could she ever come to terms with what happened? He had promised a new Kingdom and a new and more glorious way of life. He had challenged what was wrong with the world and offered hope to the suffering. He had encouraged her as a woman to follow him. How could he let this happen? How could it all just be over?

I picture Mary going to the tomb because there was no where else she felt she could possibly be. Annointing spices were a good reason, but like so many others across time, she had to return to that which she had lost. The life, the promises, the man. Life cannot go forward, she can't get back what had been lost. The grieving process has hardly begun and so all she can think to do is go to the tomb. Be as close as she can to that which was lost.

To find that the stone had been moved.

Anger, rage, confusion, fear. How does one handle the torrent of emotions? How does one respond to this new affront? At this point how can there be any hope of a happy ending?

Easter for us is a time of joy. It is the symbol of hope and of life. The first day of the week is a time of celebration, time to express our joy. But I wonder what extremities of emotion those who discovered the empty tomb experienced before the truth was fully revealed.

I pray for a blessed Easter for all who read this. And I pray that the joy and celebration will not just be a veneer on the realities of life. I pray that the trappings and the traditions will not just be perfunctory elements this year, but instead be personal and transformative. May the message of Jesus and the hope of the Resurrection permeate your life and meet you in the midst of whatever you are dealing with. May Christ be celebrated for conquering death, setting captives free, and healing the brokenhearted.

He is Risen.

May we be able to answer with all that we are – He is Risen Indeed!