Have you ever tried to tell the story of Easter to a child? It’s daunting.
In the first place, it’s at least R-rated. There is political manipulation, payoffs, treachery, fear, horrific torture, as well as the death of the hero. No wonder we want to skip from Palm Sunday to Easter Bunny and call that the holiday.
But at some point, we have to grow up and face the darkness. Not only what happened during the original Holy Week, but…..
Whether we admit it or not, most of us want to believe in heaven as the place we go when we die. Its notion that there we will live “happily ever after” echoes our primal fairy tale mentality.
Because of this, some people doubt the Easter story of Jesus’s resurrection…..
I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word, “Repent!” I’m picturing a crazy person with a placard proclaiming the end of the world. Somehow it seems difficult to treat the idea of “repenting” seriously.
Maybe it’s because we think only really big wrongs call for repentance. It’s not…..
Years ago I rented the movie, “The Sixth Sense,” famous for its surprise ending. Unfortunately, while I was in the video store, I had heard people talking about the movie and, about halfway through watching it myself, I realized their comments had clued me in to the twist at…..
I have friends who have dual-citizenship, and therefore, two passports. This means that if they’re traveling in Europe, for instance, they use their European passport because they can pass through the entry points more easily. Then they use their US passport to come home.
We actually all have several forms of…..
A continuation of last week’s post: At the Cross. An imagining of Johanna’s experience of Easter and its aftermath based on Matthew 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-12, 33-53; and John 20:1-22.
In the days following that first Resurrection Day when she had gone with the Marys to the tomb and…..
A continuation of last week’s post Finding Purpose. An imagining of the crucifixion based on Matthew 27:55; Mark 15:40-41; Luke 23:26-46; and John 19:25-27.
Thank God John had come to tell Jesus’s mother. Under a sky still black with night, the alarm sounded from house to house among the women……
A further imagining based on Matthew 9:18-26/Mark 5:21-43/Luke 8:40-56 and Luke 8:1-3. A continuation of last week’s post New Life.
In the months that followed her healing, Johanna, who had lived twelve years an outcast, now found herself embraced with community. As much as she could, she joined along with the women…..
We all know the headline of Easter: Christ is risen! I wonder if people who show up in church just for Easter are looking simply to be reminded of the good news that we can go to heaven when we die.
But the message of Easter is more nuanced than that. When someone you love…..
Last week I posed the question: Why do people come to church for Easter and then not return?
I noted Easter represents a complicated story – not one you can fully appreciate from the scripture reading or sermon you’d hear in a single Easter worship service. But the story itself…..