After someone dies those who loved them sit in silence, in tears, in a kind of mental spin of grief.
They also tend to remember things, to begin to think back through all the memories they had of the person they loved.
On this Holy Saturday, I've been thinking about some of my favorite moments or teachings of Jesus, the ones I carry around with me that shape who I am and try to be.
Jesus said, "Don't swear, but let your yes be yes and your no be no." When I grasped the significance of this teaching, I stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance. It's helped me untangle myself from the strange form of Christian nationalism we are all steeped in.
Jesus made use of five loaves of bread and two fish a young boy supplied and fed 5000 people with it. When I really paid attention to this story, and other stories of Jesus centering children, I realized we had it all backwards when we said children had to wait for communion until they were old enough to 'understand.’ It's entirely the other way around, it is adults who need to learn regularly from the faith and reverence of children.
Jesus did not say "just wait until you die and then you'll experience the kingdom." Jesus said, "The kin-dom of God is at hand." The powers of this world may want us to wait for a kingdom by-and-by, but Jesus was revolutionary in announcing an actual kin-dom... now.
Jesus was very comfortable eating food supplied by others, taking shelter supplied by others. People around Jesus were very comfortable feeding others, and offering space for Jesus and others to sleep.
Jesus said wherever we encounter "the least of these," we encounter him.
Jesus was incredibly impatient with a specific group--religious leaders. And he lived and acted in such a way as to be perceived as a threat by another group--those with political power.
The people, on the other hand, the sick and lame and poor and working class... they loved him. And to them he was consistently kind, gentle.
Jesus had a really mixed relationship with his blood relatives and was unusually open to interacting with those not of his ethnic group. I think this challenges almost all of the popular notions of "family" in populist American Christianity.
We don't know Jesus' sexual orientation and even his gender identity is fairly mysterious, given his was a virgin birth and he presented as male.
He died as he lived.
I entirely believe and trust the eye-witness testimonies to his resurrection, and have no reason to doubt his bodily resurrection. In fact, I live my life committed to bodily resurrection as integral to the life of the church, because I understand myself to be living AS that body.
The only struggle I experience: I sure wish there were more overt signs in the world that resurrection was taking hold and establishing the kin-dom Christ proclaimed. Come, Lord Jesus.
As I sat at the Good Friday service, it finally hit me how losing a son, as she did, is so excruciating, since I have now experienced losing my son Kent. Thank you again for your care and willingness to have a memorial service in his memory. The exhilarating He Is Risen, He is Risen indeed on Easter are comforting words indeed.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. This is a two dimensional universe. The heaven is the spiritual realm while the. Earth is the physical realm. This is reflected in Genesis. Chapter 1 speaks primarily of a spiritual creation God said, While Chapter 2 speaks primarily of a physical creation, God planted a garden and formed man out of the dust of the ground. These accounts occur simultaneously. When we are in our “God image.” We are in the spiritual world, while we are in the flesh we are in the physical world. Visually they appear the same but we are to be in the world and not of the world. So it is we vascilate between the two realms. We are not saint and sinner but rather saint OR sinner depending on the realm we are in. If you have ever used any of the following phrases “ Where did the time go?” Or “ it seems like only yesterday.” Or “time flies when you’re having fun” You have been in the spiritual dimension. Why? Timelessness is a feature of the spiritual world.