Looking Forward


Dear Eugene,

If I am not a Christian, would I care enough to even ask what Easter is all about?

The answer is a resounding No.

It is one thing to question the truthfulness of a bodily resurrection, but quite another to not care enough to begin to question it.  The former is about resisting lunacy; the latter ignoring irrelevance.

By "Christian" I mean the tradition that I grew up in, Protestant, evangelical.  There's an impoverishment of imagination in its moral universe that the living out of this particular brand of faith is like a rumpled plum: you know there once has been juice in it but now only joylessness--which is different from sadness.  At places where you expect to meet joy you see a vacuum.

I feel nothing.  Nothing in my tradition speaks anything half meaningful to me during this supposedly most holy week.  Is there anything that I need to consider?  How am I supposed to feel, considering what Jesus was heading towards?  There is a disconnect I can't deny, a poverty that speaks of a missing richness.

One who can't articulate how one is implicated in the killing of Jesus can't begin to call oneself a "Christian," I am convinced.  None can meet the eyes of Christ on the cross.  To not acknowledge that one can't reach in the same basket to share some fish n' chips with the risen Christ either.

If I once was blind and now claim to see, what I am first unblinded of should be the reality of my complicity in the killing of Jesus, my involvement in the plundering of God's good creation, things seen and unseen, things I have done to myself and others, past present and future.

How does it feel?
How does it feel
To be without a home
With no direction home?
Like a complete unknown?
Like a rolling stone?

Famous words from Dylan, in what the Rolling Stone magazine called the "#1 greatest song of all time."  The song speaks to me deeply.

I wondered, often, what part does such a stingy, unforgiving song play in the Christian imagination?  These certainly can't be the words Jesus spoke with his eyes when meeting Peter's right before the rooster crowed?  The Jesus I know is all about giving and forgiving and dying for my sins; he couldn't possibly accuse me of what he said he wouldn't count against me, could he?  That's bad theology for a made man like me.

"But what is the 'right' direction?" a colleague asked yesterday, deep into our conversation.

"What do you think?" I answered.  Long pause.  It's not a rhetorical question.  I was not ready to answer--even less answer for--my friend.

"Think about our past disappointments in life.  Why are they disappointments?  Why are they the failed, false promises they turned out to be?"

We then talked about the fragility of relationship, the most prevalent and profound kind of brokenness a person is to witness and experience here on earth.

"I don't want you to think about what is the 'right' way yet.  One needs to first take an honest look at what's wrong with life to see the value of turning to the right way.  Or else a person will always go down the same wrong way, saying to himself the last few times were just bad luck."

"Man's greatness comes from knowing he is wretched."  We need to take account of what is burning to look forward to resurrection.

Yours, Alex


Comments

  1. TimApril 18, 2019 at 12:21 PM

    Once again you pull me in... and in so many directions, Alex. But it's your stunning, astute observation that "None can meet the eyes of Christ on the cross" ... THAT really got to me.

    ReplyDelete

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