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The four gospels all tell a different story with regard to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. The facts are all different, but the essence is the same: something divine was present in Jesus.

Throughout my ministerial service, numerous people have expressed to me their discomfort and disagreement with the language of the “Lord’s Prayer.” For years I didn’t ‘get it,’ and I used the “traditional” version (which, of course, is not Jesus’ words as he did not speak English).

The four gospels all tell a different story with regard to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. The facts are all different, but the essence is the same: something divine was present in Jesus. The values he taught and lived were sacred.

May blessings abound for you where they are not expected.

Today is Holy Saturday, that period of mourning, disillusionment, anger, fear, and other heart-wrenching emotions that occurs between our recognizing the realities of injustices and tragedies of the past and present, and our harboring the hopes for life and resurrection that hang on tenuously, if at all, for a better future.

Have you ever wondered what Jesus did to deserve being tortured and crucified to death? How could someone so good be treated so inhumanely?

Happiness is often assumed to be the aim of life — that state of being where life is at least fine, if not blissful. But is it? Too often people, even the wisest among us, assume happiness is this idyllic bubble where you just change your mindset and your problems either go away, or you overcome them with a choice of the mind.

Jesus is not my scapegoat / for any wrong I’ve done
It isn’t fair to place on him / what he had never done

I was blessed at birth
And have struggled to reclaim the blessing
In my innocence, I was loved unconditionally
Simply for being me,

If we all have a soul, and that soul contains the image of God or God’s virtues and values, then our individual deaths are not the end of what is most important about us. It is shared by all.

O God, who does love me / And brought me to birth
With me through my childhood / You welcomed my mirth
I still can remember / When to you I would pray
You promised to love me / To never skip a day

O God, let us take in the moment of this day of crucifixion, not remembering it in the context of what came after it, but how it left Jesus’ disciples and followers in tragic sadness and heart-wrenched disillusionment.

Blaise Pascal wagered that it is better to believe in God as if God existed than not believe as if God didn’t. He argued that if God exists and we believe, then we are positioned by our beliefs to gain eternal happiness; whereas if we don’t believe, then we might have positioned ourselves for eternal torment in hell for not believing. The gains or losses are therefore infinite if God exists.

I used to think that the addition of ‘another member of the church’ was a cop-out, and that we really should forgive everyone without counting. Yet in another place Jesus specifically tells his disciples to kick the dirt off their feet as protest to those who will not accept them. This doesn’t sound like forgiveness.

Was he contradicting himself? Some would say ‘yes.’ I have even done so myself. But my own cultural circumstances in 2020 have made me revisit this and come out with a different conclusion.

Let us use our moral imaginations to try to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt (just as we should do with each other in our daily lives). We all know that there are those who are poor and suffering who still side with the wealthy and healthy rather than with their own people. It is ironic, but we see such things common even in our own time.

When we care enough to listen to others, not so much as to give them advice, but to understand them…not so much to solve their problems but to be their confidante…not so much to inspire them but to be there for them, we become to them a trustworthy friend.

We are all spiritually, if not physically/chemically, intertwined to symbiotically and synergistically coexist for the mutual benefit of all.

Incarnation is about that which is divine becoming real in what is natural, banal, human, or secular. What is the divine?

As long as we treat Biblical and political statements as distinct, we have given up the power of the divine message.

We the creatures of this earth
Raise grateful voices for our birth
Nourished by sustaining care
In us the hopes of others bear

We the creatures of this earth
Raise grateful voices for our birth

From cradle to coffin we live out our time
We ponder existence seeking reason and rhyme

Prayer invites us to quiet our spirits,
to quell the distractions that otherwise avert our attention
from virtues to banalities of existence.

Prayer invites us to quiet our spirits,
to quell the distractions that otherwise avert our attention
from virtues to banalities of existence.

Faith and facts deal with differing realms of our reality. To think otherwise is to make a category mistake — one which diminishes both the depth and breadth of human life, and limits our understanding to the impoverishment that we refer to as narrow-mindedness.

Reminding us symbolically of this union of body and spirit, Jesus took a loaf of bread, broke it like we are often broken in our relationships with one another, and showed us the way to reconciliation by asking us to share our bread with one another in remembrance of his own example.

The language of faith is mytho-poetic, not literal. It describes the meaning of reality, not the facts. Thus the contemporary question of whether Jesus was factually born of a virgin or was the biological son of God confuses the very intention of the ancient authors.

Perhaps it is time we not only remember those who have died in the wars from our own country, but from others.

For if we see the damage done, and to who it is done, viz., the poorer and middle classes of all warring nations, we will finally recognize that all these wars have been constructed by the wealthy and powerful to preserve and bolster their own interests.

The wise and teaching Jesus proclaimed an egalitarian ethic of loving and serving others, even our enemies, as ourselves. The compassionate and practicing Jesus worked and advocated for equality, justice, and mercy for the despised, poor, sinful, and oppressed. The judicious and brave Jesus decried the hypocrisy and illuminated the spiritual perils of the wealthy, powerful, haughty, judgemental, and privileged. The betrayed and arrested Jesus commanded the nonviolent laying down of swords and the restoration of severed ears to hear. The tortured and dying Jesus exhibited forgiveness to those who persecuted him. The resurrected and empowered Jesus encouraged and gave the gift of peace to all who would follow his example and go forth to revolutionize relationships with all humanity and creation.

What is coming we yearn to know
As fallen leaves herald winter snow
Will what comes be worth the wait ?
Will past hungers our future sate?

To live by the virtues and values of Christ (i.e., love/compassion, peace/nonviolence, and justice/egalitarianism) as summed up in “The Great Commandment” and “Golden Rule

From modern eyes, it is hard to think Thomas was any different than any other disciples who had already witnessed the resurrected Jesus. Thomas alone had not seen with his own eyes what the others claimed to have seen. And here it is so easy to get pulled into thinking that seeing with one’s eyes is the real issue.

I see prayer as intentionally engaging our conscious mind with our highest values. In prayer, I’m reminded of the things that matter most–not only for myself, but for others. By aspiring to focus my mind and heart on these things, I become more open to the possibilities I can wisely (hopefully) choose to make life more meaningful, purposeful, or beautiful.

What we we think is perfection, and what Jesus and the ancients meant by it, are different. When he said, “Be perfect, even as God is perfect,” he did not mean without error; or, as some have assumed, as merely complete in who you are (as if one’s own uniqueness is different from another’s, and that everyone needs to only be true to their own selves).

*Centering Our Soul “Speak To Us…Let Us Listen”

If God is love, if love is an integral part of God’s essence, then God must act with and by love — no exceptions. If God does not condone violence, injustice, hatred, and vengefulness in humanity, then God would need to live up to at least as high of a standard.