Christian Easter Quotes

Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

God is not interested in your art but, your heart.

At this gathering [Council of Niceau in 324 AD] many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon ― the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of sacraments, and, of course, the divinity of Jesus... until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet... a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.

...left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there's nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present...is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.

Anyone can be sentimental about the nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer." “If you don’t believe in Easter,” Owen Meany said. “Don’t kid yourself—Don’t call yourself a Christian.

Christmas and Easter Christian.

Maybe I don’t have enough beginnings in my life because I fought against the endings that were about to birth those beginnings.

Easter is a time when God turned the inevitability of death into the invincibility of life.

On Holy Saturday I do my best to live in that place, that wax-crayon place of trust and waiting. Of accepting what I cannot know. Of mourning what needs to be mourned. Of accepting what needs to be accepted. Of hoping for what seems impossible.

Of course God does outrageous things. But in reality, what insanity would prompt me to follow a God who did anything less?

Christ is not alive now because he rose from the dead two thousand years ago. He rose from the dead two thousand years ago because he is alive right now.

Maybe every now and then I need something ‘unbelievable’ to happen to help make that which is ‘believable’ a place where I start, but not a place where I stop.

Easter recognizes that I am living in a prison of my own making, and that God is in the demolition business.

Easter is God throwing everything at death so that I can give everything to life.

Easter says that every ending ever experienced by man is exquisitely crafted to find its own ending at the feet of a fresh beginning.

Easter is the one morning in all of history where the dawn came twice; once on the eastern horizon and again in eternity.

You are called to be truly human, but it is nothing short of the life of God within you that enables you to be so, to be remade in God's image. As C.S. Lewis said in a famous lecture, next to the sacrament itself your Christian neighbor is the holiest object ever presented to your sight, because in him or her the living Christ is truly present.

Life doesn’t always go our way. But one thing we know and can stand upon. Jesus has burst open the gates of LIFE. So we look ahead with great joy. The Story of God is one of hope, promise and life eternal.

Jesus was born in a borrowed barn, he was buried in a borrowed tomb, and in-between it all he borrowed mankind’s sin with the intent of never returning it.

To believe in the story of Easter is to believe that a wall is nothing more than a door in disguise.

Easter is a marvelous affirmation of the genius of our design, but it is likewise the blunt acknowledgement that left to its own devices, the genius of our design will result in the destruction of our lives.

There are an incalculable number of things within me that I frantically wish to be emptied of, and despite my most earnest efforts to remove them, they remain. And it is Easter that reminds me that God empties out tombs.

Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have a Christianity; as Paul says, you are still in your sins.

If I’m only looking at an ending, I’ll assume that an ending is all that there is. And without a doubt, that kind of assumption is the beginning of the end.

We need to know that our limits do not define our limitations. And an empty tomb does exactly that.

Has my life been cheated by the shortness of the time afforded me, or is it possible that the greater part of my life has been saved for a time where there is no time?

The greatest joy is not finding something that we’ve been looking for. The greatest joy is when we’d given up on ever finding it and then it found us.

You see, the bodily resurrection of Jesus isn't a take-it-or-leave-it thing, as though some Christians are welcome to believe it and others are welcome not to believe it. Take it away, and the whole picture is totally different. Take it away, and Karl Marx was probably right to accuse Christianity of ignoring the problems of the material world. Take it away, and Sigmund Freud was probably right to say that Christianity is a wish-fulfillment religion. Take it away, and Friedrich Nietzsche was probably right to say that Christianity was a religion for wimps. Put it back, and you have a faith that can take on the postmodern world that looks to Marx, Freud and Nietzsche as its prophets, and you can beat them at their own game with the Easter news that the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

I am convinced that when we bring our griefs and sorrows within the story of God's own grief and sorrow, and allow them to be held there, God is able to bring healing to us ans new possibilities to our lives. That is, of course, what Good Friday and Easter are all about

The greatest jail break in all of history occurred on Easter morning. Therefore, we must remember that whatever our prisons might be and however impenetrable they might appear, your jail break is just a prayer away.

He has nothing personal against Christ; though raised Unitarian—with its glaring omission of Jesus and a hymnal so unorthodox that it was years before Less understood “Accentuate the Positive” was not in the Book of Common Prayer—Less is technically Christian. There is really no other word for someone who celebrates Christmas and Easter, even if only as craft projects. And yet he is somehow deflated. To travel to the other side of the world—only to be offered a brand he could so easily buy at home.

If I can’t find something worthwhile in my own reflection, how am I ever going to see anything worthwhile in the face of another? Maybe I can solve all of this by seeing the face of Jesus in everyone, starting with myself.

She marveled at the music that is so often born from misery. A strange paradox, to be sure, but one every Christian understands: victory is born from great sacrifice, salvation from a cross, Easter joy from Good Friday woe...

The beauty of the cross and our crucified Lord cannot be easily fathomed by human mind or by barely reading scriptures in bits, but by careful reading of entire scripture in the spirit which will in turn engulf one with wisdom n love.

The significance of the resurrection claim within “true” Christian descriptions of the self, world and God is that, despite how tragic and hopeless present situations and circumstances appear to be, there is a God who sits high and looks low, a God who came into this filthy, fallen world in the form of a common peasant in order to commence a new epoch, an epoch in which Easter focuses our attention on the decisive victory of Jesus Christ and hence the possibility of our victory over our creature hood, the old creation and this old world, with its history of oppression and exploitation. So to be a Christian is to have a joyful attitude toward the resurrection claim, to stake one’s life on it and to rest one’s hope upon its promise — the promise of a new heaven and a new earth.

We are gravely mistaken if we feel that Christianity is a religion to protect us from the pain and agony of mortal existence. Christianity has always insisted that there is a Good Friday before every Easter, and that the cross we bear always precedes the crown we wear.

May the resurrection power of Christ, awake in us a greater spiritual force and strength, so that we can passionately pursue our God-given dreams.

Arise! Arise! Arise and shine! May Christ message of eternal life fill your heart with everlasting love, hope, happiness and new dreams.

There would be no Christmas if there was no Easter.

Easter is the final solution to the finality of death.

A god of the ‘possible’ is no God.

God emptied out that first tomb so that He could turn around and empty out me.

Less is technically Christian. There is really no other word for someone who celebrates Christmas and Easter, even if only as craft projects.

It was at the point where I was convinced of my own death that God finally convinced me of His life. And I stand amazed that my death birthed His life.

Jesus was buried in a borrowed tomb because He was planning on returning it to its rightful owner after a short weekend.

Although I rail against it, death is the dark demarcation beyond which I am at the mercy of my own end. To the contrary, an empty tomb says that my end is at the mercy of God’s beginning.

Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer.

What if the empty tomb was simply God saying that the miracle that happened there is just a foretaste of the miracles that can happen within us? And if that’s the case, nothing within us is really dead. Rather, it’s just a bunch of stuff waiting its turn to stand up and breathe again.

Most Christian holidays were Pagan holidays first. Christmas trees and Easter eggs have absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. They are Pagan symbols. Christianity is thinly disguised Paganism.

There was between 1821 and 1913 a prolonged and atrocious holocaust which we have chosen to forget, and from which we have learned absolutely nothing. In 1821, between 26 March and Easter Sunday, in the name of liberty, the southern Greek Christians tortured and massacred 15,000 Greek Muslim civilians, looted their possessions, and burned their dwellings. The Greek hero Kolokotronis boasted without qualm that so many were the corpses that his horse’s hooves never had to touch the ground between the town gates of Athens and the citadel. In the Peloponnese, many thousands of Muslims, mainly women and children, were rounded up and butchered. Thousands of shrines and mosques were destroyed, so that even now there are only one or two left in the whole of Greece.

I'll not forget that day nor the message of the Christian church that we celebrate each death as an Easter, each dying as a living, each soul, no matter how poor or sinful, as the child of royalty. At its best, the church treats people as beings of eternal worth, no less at their dying than at their birth, no less in their sins than in their virtue, no less for one than for another.

If I take Easter as the starting point, the one incontrovertible fact about how God treats those whom he loves, then human history becomes the contradiction and Easter a preview of ultimate reality.

I don’t need to paint a picture of what I want my life to look like. What I need to do is to study the picture that God painted of me so that I can better understand how to live out the splendor of the painting.

To summarize, Easter Sunday is the most important Sunday. It is the Sunday of all Sundays. It is the day of the new beginning of the entire cosmos, the day of resurrection. In our worship we must be careful not to reduce our message to the Easter fact only. The Easter fact must include the message this fact proclaims: God makes all things new. It must also include the message that we have been raised with Christ. Calling God's people to die to sin and rise to the new life is central not only to Easter day but to the Easter season.

Sooner or later I will realize that the very things I most desperately need are the very things I am unable to give myself. Therefore, I will either be left despising the fact that I am doomed to live out a life that is perpetually empty, or I will realize that an empty tomb is the single thing that will eternally fill me.

I am pressed to admit that I don’t have the capacity to understand the bloodied horrors of a cross and the wild exhilaration of an empty tomb. But at the point that I think I completely understand God, I have at that very point humanized Him and in that very action I have lost Him. Therefore, I much prefer to simply marvel.

Reasonably speaking, we can see the cross as entirely possible. But in considering Easter, we see an empty tomb as entirely impossible. And is it possible that God had to do the impossible to finally get our attention?

We can walk to ‘nowhere’ and think that ‘nowhere’ is ‘somewhere.’ For such are the roads paved by men. Yet, the humility of a manger and the magnificence of a cross constructed a road to the ‘everywhere’ that forever abolished the ‘nowhere’ of men.

To give myself over in the service of others may mean that I will forfeit everything that I want, but it also means that I will receive everything that I need. And if I am not big enough to let go of the former, then I am not yet big enough to handle the latter.

If we live solely within the scope of our sorely limited humanity, the word ‘end’ will mean nothing other than what it says. But if we dare to live within the scope of God’s eternal promises, every time the word ‘end’ appears the word ‘beginning’ will be hot on its heels.

Our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to the world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to the world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to the world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion.

Crucified Love lives with us today and till the end of times as He promised.Amen.The beauty of the cross and our crucified Lord cannot be fathomed by human mind or by barely reading scriptures in bits, but by careful reading of entire scripture in the spirit which will in turn engulf one with wisdom and love.

What would behoove me to instantly declare God not to be God unless He followed my script in some tediously exacting manner? I must confess that I am less likely to believe that it’s a matter of some narcissistic demand that I freely pen my own script. Rather, I think it’s fear that I’m too inadequate to follow God’s.

Have we ever considered that God is so enraptured with beginnings that He permits the pain of endings so that we can experience the exhilaration of beginnings?

The unbelievable is nothing more than my lack of faith in action. Easter is nothing less than God building my faith by putting the unbelievable into action.

Men expect a return on what they give, while God returns any such expectations on what He gives.

He has nothing personal against Christ; though raised Unitarian—with its glaring omission of Jesus and a hymnal so unorthodox that it was years before Less understood “Accentuate the Positive” was not in the Book of Common Prayer—Less is technically Christian. There is really no other word for someone who celebrates Christmas and Easter, even if only as craft projects.

self-denial is a necessary aspect of a Christian life; that the cross is central to human understanding; and that, without the atonement, every one of us would stand forever in the role of Judas.

I have seen how in our history, people of color have been enslaved by “Bible-quoting” Christians. When slavery was finally threatened with being relegated to the dustbins of history in America, it was that section of this country known as “the Bible Belt” that rose to defend the enslavement of black people in the bloodiest war of American history. When slavery finally died as a legal option on the battlefields of Gettysburg, Antietam and Appomattox, the Christians of the Bible Belt, once again quoting their scriptures for justification, instituted laws of segregation with the full support of the federal government. When those segregation laws finally began to fall in the 1950s and 1960s, I watched the Bible being quoted to justify the use of lead pipes, police dogs, fire hoses and even the bombing of black churches in which little girls in their Easter finery were killed—all in an attempt to preserve “white supremacy.” I notice that even today the political party in America that most claims to represent what is called “the Christian vote” is still working to impede the political process for black people, to make voting so difficult as to prevent them from casting their ballot.

Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism. There are many parts of the world we can’t do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us call “myself.

The greatest sacrifice is to unreservedly give the whole of oneself to another, knowing full well that such a gift must be wholly rejected, blithely tossed aside and trampled underfoot as some worthless filth because (much like ourselves) the depravity of the recipient is such that they can only be saved through the death of the giver. And I don’t know of any human who would do that, but I know a God Who did.

Like the rest of Holy Week, Easter is also a terrific story. It starts as tragedy: the hero broken and bloody, against all expectation dead, his followers' joyful hope in him entombed with his corpse, the rock rolled into place, sealing their despair. But the curtain doesn't fall there. The next morning at dawn they discover the rock has been rolled back. The tomb is empty, the body's gone! A missing corpse? Great stuff. A whisper of comedy. Now a touch of farce as Mary Magdalen and the guys chase frantically around looking for help, or the corpse, when suddenly, out of nowhere, up it pops—alive! Of course it's Jesus, who's done the impossible and beaten death. And they're so amazed they think he's the gardener! It's a payoff way beyond the Hollywood ending: all the flooding emotion and uplift of a tragedy followed by all the bubbling joy and optimism of a comedy. Is that possible? Not just to live happily ever after but to die—and still live happily ever after? It's the most audacious claim of Christianity, the one element that marks the brand indelibly, that trumps the claims of all other major faiths.

For the Jew, Passover is a sign of salvation, of “God with us” at a particular historical moment in the past. For the Christian, Easter is a sign of “God with us” in the past, but with us now also and at a time to come, as well.

He cannot do anything deliberate now. The strain of his whole weight on his outstretched arms hurts too much. The pain fills him up, displaces thought, as much for him as it has for everyone else who has ever been stuck to one of these horrible contrivances, or for anyone else who dies in pain from any of the world’s grim arsenal of possibilities. And yet he goes on taking in. It is not what he does, it is what he is. He is all open door: to sorrow, suffering, guilt, despair, horror, everything that cannot be escaped, and he does not even try to escape it, he turns to meet it, and claims it all as his own. This is mine now, he is saying; and he embraces it with all that is left in him, each dark act, each dripping memory, as if it were something precious, as if it were itself the loved child tottering homeward on the road. But there is so much of it. So many injured children; so many locked rooms; so much lonely anger; so many bombs in public places; so much vicious zeal; so many bored teenagers at roadblocks; so many drunk girls at parties someone thought they could have a little fun with; so many jokes that go too far; so much ruining greed; so much sick ingenuity; so much burned skin. The world he claims, claims him. It burns and stings, it splinters and gouges, it locks him round and drags him down… All day long, the next day, the city is quiet. The air above the city lacks the usual thousand little trails of smoke from cookfires. Hymns rise from the temple. Families are indoors. The soldiers are back in barracks. The Chief Priest grows hoarse with singing. The governor plays chess with his secretary and dictates letters. The free bread the temple distributed to the poor has gone stale by midday, but tastes all right dipped in water or broth. Death has interrupted life only as much as it ever does. We die one at a time and disappear, but the life of the living continues. The earth turns. The sun makes its way towards the western horizon no slower or faster than it usually does. Early Sunday morning, one of the friends comes back with rags and a jug of water and a box of the grave spices that are supposed to cut down on the smell. She’s braced for the task. But when she comes to the grave she finds that the linen’s been thrown into the corner and the body is gone. Evidently anonymous burial isn’t quite anonymous enough, after all. She sits outside in the sun. The insects have woken up, here at the edge of the desert, and a bee is nosing about in a lily like silk thinly tucked over itself, but much more perishable. It won’t last long. She takes no notice of the feet that appear at the edge of her vision. That’s enough now, she thinks. That’s more than enough. Don’t be afraid, says Yeshua. Far more can be mended than you know. She is weeping. The executee helps her to stand up.

Jesus’s use of the phrasing “a new commandment” is frequently scanted in light of its implicit ramifications. Because Jesus at the Last Supper has executed the “new covenant” with his disciples, the Great Commandment itself now acquires an unprecedented meaning. Its new meaning belongs to this sudden revelation not merely about who God is but also about what love is. Previously the Great Commandment bade us to love God and our neighbor. Now this love can be comprehended only in an incarnational situation. Its incarnate presence is the activation of profound rhizomic relations that explode from the center toward the ends of the earth. We are commanded to be incarnational in relation to one another just as God at the cross was incarnational in Christ. . . . We are no longer simply Christ’s “followers" - the pre-Easter form of relation to a master-and-teacher that is conventionally called “disciple” - but also perpetual Christ incarnators . . .

As I was about to complain that this 2020 is not the year I have ordered. Then I remembered Romans 5:3-11 3 We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. 4 And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. 5 And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love….

From a theological point of view, Easter is the center of the Church year; but Christmas is the most profoundly human feast of faith, because it allows us to feel most deeply the humanity of God. The crib has a unique power to show us what it means to say that God wished to be “Immanuel”—a “God with us”, a God whom we may address in intimate language, because he encounters us as a child. This makes Christmas a feast that invites us in a special way to meditation, to an internal act of looking at the Word.

People referred to the symbolism of the empty Cross more than once on its journey. It would seem obviously to point to our faith in Jesus’ resurrection. It’s not quite so simple though. The Cross is bare, but in and of itself the empty Cross does not point directly to the Resurrection. It says only that the body of Jesus was removed from the Cross. If a crucifix is a symbol of Good Friday, then it is the image of the empty tomb that speaks more directly of Easter and resurrection. The empty Cross is a symbol of Holy Saturday. It’s an indicator of the reality of Jesus’ death, of His sharing in our mortal coil. At the same time, the empty Cross is an implicit sign of impending resurrection, and it tells us that the Cross is not only a symbol of hatred, violence and inhumanity: it says that the Cross is about something more. The empty Cross also tells us not to jump too quickly to resurrection, as if the Resurrection were a trump card that somehow absolves us from suffering. The Resurrection is not a divine ‘get-out-of-jail free’ card that immunises people from pain, suffering or death. To jump too quickly to the Resurrection runs the risk of trivialising people’s pain and seemingly mapping out a way through suffering that reduces the reality of having to live in pain and endure it at times. For people grieving, introducing the message of the Resurrection too quickly cheapens or nullifies their sense of loss. The empty Cross reminds us that we cannot avoid suffering and death. At the same time, the empty Cross tells us that, because of Jesus’ death, the meaning of pain, suffering and our own death has changed, that these are not all-crushing or definitive. The empty Cross says that the way through to resurrection must always break in from without as something new, that it cannot be taken hold of in advance of suffering or seized as a panacea to pain. In other words, the empty Cross is a sign of hope. It tells us that the new life of God surprises us, comes at a moment we cannot expect, and reminds us that experiences of pain, grief and dying are suffused with the presence of Christ, the One Who was crucified and is now risen.

Everything that God does is nothing that He needs done, for He is eternally complete. Yet, He is never still and He is forever working. Therefore, I am left with both the conviction and the evidence that God’s agenda is nothing other than that which is incomplete in you and I.

When the author of Genesis says that God made man in His own image, he may have pictured a vaguely corporeal God making man as a child makes a figure out of plasticine. A modern Christian philosopher may think of a process lasting from the first creation of matter to the final appearance on this planet of an organism fit to receive spiritual as well as biological life. But both mean essentially the same thing. Both are denying the same thing—the doctrine that matter by some blind power inherent in itself has produced spirituality. GOD IN THE DOCK “Dogma and the Universe

The four-week period of Advent before Christmas—and the six-week period of Lent before Easter—are times of penance and life change for Christians. In our book The Last Week, we suggested that Lent was a penance time for having been in the wrong procession and a preparation time for moving over to the right one by Palm Sunday. That day’s violent procession of the horse-mounted Pilate and his soldiers was contrasted with the nonviolent procession of the donkey-mounted Jesus and his companions. We asked: in which procession would we have walked then and in which do we walk now?

It is impossible for those who tasted Christ to fall back upon the old foolish ways ,and if he or she does, then that act of commission or omission comes within the ambit of sin and that would indubitably imply that the person is  crucifying Christ all over again and exposing Him to contempt , being the bearer of His name ( Christian).

The entire future of Israel depends, in each generation, on the capacity and resolve of YHWH to make a way out of no way. This reiterated miracle of new life in a context of hopelessness evokes in Israel a due sense of awe that issues in doxology. Well, it issues in laughter: “Now Sarah said, ‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me’ ” (Gen. 21:6). In subsequent Christian tradition, that laugh has become an “Easter laugh,” a deep sweep of elation that looks death and despair in the face and mocks them. The ancestral narratives attest to the power of YHWH to create new historical possibilities where there is no ground for expectation. IV

MELITO OF SARDIS Melito, bishop of Sardis, died around the year A.D. 180. Until recently, few students of church history paid much attention to him. One of the reasons might be that he ended up on the “wrong side” of the ancient debate over how to determine the date of Easter. Only recently a sermon on the Passover was found, penned by Melito. It provides us with a tremendous insight into the theology of the late second century. I reproduce here just one section, which requires no commentary, only a hearty “Amen!”: And so he was lifted up upon a tree and an inscription was attached indicating who was being killed. Who was it? It is a grievous thing to tell, but a most fearful thing to refrain from telling. But listen, as you tremble before him on whose account the earth trembled! He who hung the earth in place is hanged. He who fixed the heavens in place is fixed in place. He who made all things fast is made fast on a tree. The Sovereign is insulted. God is murdered. The King of Israel is destroyed by an Israelite hand. This is the One who made the heavens and the earth, and formed mankind in the beginning, The One proclaimed by the Law and the Prophets, The One enfleshed in a virgin, The One hanged on a tree, The One buried in the earth, The One raised from the dead and who went up into the heights of heaven, The One sitting at the right hand of the Father, The One having all authority to judge and save, Through Whom the Father made the things which exist from the beginning of time. This One is “the Alpha and the Omega,” This One is “the beginning and the end” . . . the beginning indescribable and the end incomprehensible. This One is the Christ. This One is the King. This One is Jesus. This One is the Leader. This One is the Lord. This One is the One who rose from the dead. This One is the One sitting on the right hand of the Father. He bears the Father and is borne by the Father. “To him be the glory and the power forever. Amen.” The deity of Christ, His two natures, His virgin birth, His being the Creator, His distinction from the Father—all part and parcel of the preaching of the bishop of Sardis near the end of the second century.

At the festival of Easter, when we remember the Passion of Christ, the rooster signifies the Resurrection. Are you aware that the Cross, now the generally accepted symbol of Christianity, appeared only relatively recently, in the mid-fifth century? Until that time, Christians used other symbols, very frequently a rooster, which is an image of the Son of God Who came to awaken mankind.

We live, therefore, between Easter and the consummation, following Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and commissioned to be for the world what he was for Israel, bringing God's redemptive reshaping to our world. Christians have always found it difficult to understand and articulate this, and have regularly distorted the picture in one direction or the other. [ ... ] When God does what God intends to do, this will be an act of fresh grace, of radical newness. At one level it will be quite unexpected, like a surprise party with guests we never thought we would meet and delicious food we never thought we would taste. But at the same time there will be a rightness about it, a rich continuity with what has gone before so that in the midst of our surprise and delight we will say, 'Of course! This is how it had to be, even though we'd never imagined it.

So it is that this man named Jesus handily performed feats that were astounding in their scope and utterly impossible in their nature. And as if that were not enough, He then does something as outrageous as inviting us to a life of doing the same. And yet it would seem that the most astounding and impossible thing of all is for us to blithely reject that invitation in favor of the aching emptiness and endless darkness that rides hard on the heels of just such a rejection.

The radio was playing ‘Easter Parade’ and I thought, but this is Jewish genius on a par with the Ten Commandments. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then He gave to Irving Berlin ‘Easter Parade’ and ‘White Christmas.’ The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ—the divinity that’s the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity—and what does Irving Berlin brilliantly do? He de-Christs them both! Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow.

Easter was late in April that year; my first three tours of trenches occupied me during the last thirty days of Lent. This essential season in the Church calendar was not, as far as I remember, remarked upon by anyone in my company, although the name of Christ was often on our lips, and Mansfield (when a canister made a mess of the trench not many yards away from him) was even heard to refer to our Saviour as ‘murry old Jesus!’ These innocuous blasphemings of the holy name were a peculiar feature of the War, in which the principles of Christianity were either obliterated or falsified for the convenience of all who were engaged in it. Up in the trenches every man bore his own burden; the Sabbath was not made for man; and if a man laid down his life for his friends it was no part of his military duties. To kill an enemy was an effective action; to bring in one of our own wounded was praiseworthy, but unrelated to our war-aims. The Brigade chaplain did not exhort us to love our enemies. He was content to lead off with the hymn ‘How sweet the name of Jesus sounds’!

The pre-Easter Jesus is the historical Jesus. This Jesus is a figure of the past, a finite mortal human being born around the year 4 B.C.E. In his early thirties, after one to three years of public activity, he was executed by Roman authority (most likely in the year 30 C.E.). That Jesus—the flesh-and-blood Galilean Jewish peasant of the first century—is no more.6 The post-Easter Jesus is what Jesus became after his death. More specifically, the post-Easter Jesus is the Jesus of Christian tradition and experience (and both nouns are important).

Holidays: Imagine if the great holidays and seasons of the Christian year were redesigned to emphasize love. Advent would be the season of preparing our hearts to receive God’s love. Epiphany would train us to keep our eyes open for expressions of compassion in our daily lives. Lent would be an honest self-examination of our maturity in love and a renewal of our commitment to grow in it. Instead of giving up chocolate or coffee for Lent, we would stop criticizing or gossiping about or interrupting others. Maundy Thursday would refocus us on the great and new commandment; Good Friday would present the suffering of crucifixion as the suffering of love; Holy Saturday would allow us to lament and grieve the lack of love in our lives and world; and Easter would celebrate the revolutionary power of death-defying love. Pentecost could be an “altar call” to be filled with the Spirit of love, and “ordinary time” could be “extraordinary time” if it involved challenges to celebrate and express love in new ways—to new people, to ourselves, to the earth, and to God—including time to tell stories about our experiences of doing so.

I cannot bring myself to surrender to the belief that any ending is permanent, despite the fact that many endings arrogantly allege that the scope of their finality is sufficient to make just such a declaration. I have found that my humanity rails against such declarations and therefore sets itself on a journey (however perilous) to find a beginning nestled in the declared finality of every ending. And in all of my many journey’s (as perilous as many of them have been), I have yet to experience an ending that did not hold a beginning somewhere within the finality of itself.

From its very beginning Christianity has been the proclamation of joy, of the only possible joy on earth. It rendered impossible all joy we usually think of as possible. But within this impossibility, at the very bottom of this darkness, it announced and conveyed a new all.-embracing joy, and with this joy it transformed the End into a Beginning. Without the proclamation of this joy Christianity is incomprehensible. It is only as joy that the Church was victorious in the world, and it lost the world when it lost that joy, and ceased to be a credible witness to it. Of all accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy.

Why in the world a book on Christ for Unitarian Universalists (UUs)? Less than 20 percent of us identify as Christians.1 But more than 70 percent of Americans identify as Christian, and we UUs are only 0.3 percent of America at best.2 So, primarily, this is a book to help us talk intelligently about Christ with our Christian friends. We Unitarian Universalists actually have had a lot to say about Christ over the years as well (that is, centuries, and perhaps even millennia), and we have generally done that in dialogue with mainstream Christians. But not much anymore. This book is meant to encourage us to do so again, not just by referencing our history, but also by speaking freshly as Unitarian Universalists in the twenty-first century. Why in the world a book on Christ for Unitarian Universalists, when we virtually never use that title for the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth? Again, primarily because that’s how the rest of the world speaks. They refer to themselves and others who stand in the tradition of Jesus as Christ-ians, not Jesus-ians. Why? Because they tend to be less interested in the Jesus of history than in the Christ of their present faith. Jesus lives with them in their daily lives now as the Christ. Christ is an honorific title that technically means “the anointed one” of God. For most Christians, Jesus is the post-Easter Christ, the resurrected Christ, who is actually with them now in real time—who companions them and comforts them and challenges them in their daily lives—not just a prophet and teacher of first-century Israel.

I heard myself next praising the greatest Diasporist of all, the father of the new Diasporist movement, Irving Berlin. “People ask where I got the idea. Well, I got it listening to the radio. The radio was playing ‘Easter Parade’ and I thought, But this is Jewish genius on a par with the Ten Commandments. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then He gave to Irving Berlin ‘Easter Parade’ and ‘White Christmas.’ The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ—the divinity that’s the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity—and what does Irving Berlin brilliantly do? He de-Christs them both! Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow. Gone is the gore and the murder of Christ—down with the crucifix and up with the bonnet! He turns their religion into schlock.

The man seemed not to have heard him. ‘At this life-giving time of the year, Professor Scrooge,’ said the pastor, clicking his pen, ‘it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight contribution to babes and adults, who lie languishing in hospitals and care facilities, standing on street corners and under bridges, or living alone at home during this time. Many are in need of blood transfusions or food or pregnancy care every day in our large community; many others – especially the elderly – are in want of comfort and cheer.’ ‘Are there no abortion clinics?’ asked Scrooge. ‘Plenty of clinics,’ said the pastor, clicking the pen tip in again. ‘And Euthanasia facilities?’ demanded Scrooge. ‘Are they still in operation?’ ‘They are. Still,’ returned the gentleman, ‘I wish I could say they were not.’ ‘Welfare and Food Stamps are in full swing, then?’ said Scrooge. ‘Both very busy.’ ‘Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,’ said Scrooge. ‘I’m very glad to hear it.’ ‘Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,’ returned the gentleman, ‘a few churches are endeavoring to raise a fund to provide those in need with medical care and food as well as the comfort of a human presence and the message of eternal life through Jesus. We choose this time to sow into others’ lives because it is a time, of all others, when we rejoice in the life God gave to us through His Son. What shall I put down – in time, money, or blood – for you?’ ‘Nothing!’ Scrooge replied. ‘You wish to give anonymously, then?’ ‘I wish to be left alone,’ said Scrooge.

Church is important to most folks in the South. So the most important thing going is basically ruled by men as decreed by the Big Man himself. Not only that, but the church puts pressures on women that it does not put on men. Young women are expected to be chaste, moral, and pure, whereas young men are given way more leeway, ’cause, ya know, boys will be boys. Girls are expected to marry young and have kids, be a helpmate to their husbands (who are basically like having another child), and, of course, raise perfect little Christian babies to make this world a better place. So while it’s the preacher man who controls the church, it’s the women—those helpmates—who keep that shit going. They keep the pews tidy and wash the windows; type up the bulletins; volunteer for Sunday school, the nursery, youth group, and Vacation Bible School; fry the chicken for the postchurch dinners; organize the monthly potluck dinners, the spaghetti supper to raise money for a new roof, and the church fund drive; plant flowers in the front of the church, make food for sick parishioners, serve food after funerals, put together the Christmas pageant, get Easter lilies for Easter, wash the choir robes, organize the church trip, bake cookies for the bake sale to fund the church trip, pray unceasingly for their husband and their pastor and their kids and never complain, and then make sure their skirts are ironed for Sunday mornin’ service. All this while in most churches not being allowed to speak with any authority on the direction or doctrine of the church. No, no, ladies, the heavy lifting—thinkin’ up shit to say, standing up at the lectern telling people what to do, counting the money—that ain’t for yuns. So sorry.

Edinolochniks [individual peasant farmers] are whitewashing their khatas [simple Ukrainian houses]. They look at us with a challenge in their eyes: ‘It’s Easter.’ The implication behind this strange remark in autumn was the hint that they were celebrating the arrival of the most joyful moment of the year. Some historians have suggested that the Germans, with black crosses on their vehicles, were seen as bringing Christian liberation to a population oppressed by Soviet atheism. Many Ukrainians did welcome the Germans with bread and salt, and many Ukrainian girls consorted cheerfully with German soldiers. It is hard to gauge the scale of this phenomenon in statistical terms, but it is significant that the Abwehr, the Germany Army intelligence department, recommended that an army of a million Ukrainians should be raised to fight the Red Army. This was firmly rejected by Hitler who was horrified at the suggestion of Slavs fighting in Wehrmacht uniform.

Christmas In India Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow -- As the women in the village grind the corn, And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born. Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway! Oh the clammy fog that hovers And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry -- What part have India's exiles in their mirth? Full day begind the tamarisks -- the sky is blue and staring -- As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke, And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring, To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke. Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly -- Call on Rama -- he may hear, perhaps, your voice! With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars, And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!" High noon behind the tamarisks -- the sun is hot above us -- As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan. They will drink our healths at dinner -- those who tell us how they love us, And forget us till another year be gone! Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching! Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain! Youth was cheap -- wherefore we sold it. Gold was good -- we hoped to hold it, And to-day we know the fulness of our gain. Grey dusk behind the tamarisks -- the parrots fly together -- As the sun is sinking slowly over Home; And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether. That drags us back how'er so far we roam. Hard her service, poor her payment -- she is ancient, tattered raiment -- India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind. If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter, The door is hut -- we may not look behind. Black night behind the tamarisks -- the owls begin their chorus -- As the conches from the temple scream and bray. With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us, Let us honor, O my brother, Christmas Day! Call a truce, then, to our labors -- let us feast with friends and neighbors, And be merry as the custom of our caste; For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after, We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

..."facts" properly speaking are always and never more than interpretations of the data... the Gospel accounts are themselves such data or, if you like, hard facts. But the events to which the Gospels refer are not themselves "hard facts"; they are facts only in the sense that we interpret the text, together with such other data as we have, to reach a conclusion regarding the events as best we are able. They are facts in the same way that the verdict of a jury establishes the facts of the case, the interpretation of the evidence that results in the verdict delivered. Here it is as well to remember that historical methodology can only produce probabilities, the probability that some event took place in such circumstances being greater or smaller, depending on the quality of the data and the perspective of the historical enquirer. The jury which decides what is beyond reasonable doubt is determining that the probability is sufficiently high for a clear-cut verdict to be delivered. Those who like "certainty" in matters of faith will always find this uncomfortable. But faith is not knowledge of "hard facts"...; it is rather confidence, assurance, trust in the reliability of the data and in the integrity of the interpretations derived from that data... It does seem important to me that those who speak for evangelical Christians grasp this nettle firmly, even if it stings! – it is important for the intellectual integrity of evangelicals. Of course any Christian (and particularly evangelical Christians) will want to get as close as possible to the Jesus who ministered in Galilee in the late 20s of the first century. If, as they believe, God spoke in and through that man, more definitively and finally than at any other time and by any other medium, then of course Christians will want to hear as clearly as possible what he said, and to see as clearly as possible what he did, to come as close as possible to being an eyewitness and earwitness for themselves. If God revealed himself most definitively in the historical particularity of a Galilean Jew in the earliest decades of the Common Era, then naturally those who believe this will want to inquire as closely into the historical particularity and actuality of that life and of Jesus’ mission. The possibility that later faith has in some degree covered over that historical actuality cannot be dismissed as out of the question. So a genuinely critical historical inquiry is necessary if we are to get as close to the historical actuality as possible. Critical here, and this is the point, should not be taken to mean negatively critical, hermeneutical suspicion, dismissal of any material that has overtones of Easter faith. It means, more straightforwardly, a careful scrutiny of all the relevant data to gain as accurate or as historically responsible a picture as possible. In a day when evangelical, and even Christian, is often identified with a strongly right-wing, conservative and even fundamentalist attitude to the Bible, it is important that responsible evangelical scholars defend and advocate such critical historical inquiry and that their work display its positive outcome and benefits. These include believers growing in maturity • to recognize gray areas and questions to which no clear-cut answer can be given (‘we see in a mirror dimly/a poor reflection’), • to discern what really matters and distinguish them from issues that matter little, • and be able to engage in genuine dialogue with those who share or respect a faith inquiring after truth and seeking deeper understanding. In that way we may hope that evangelical (not to mention Christian) can again become a label that men and women of integrity and good will can respect and hope to learn from more than most seem to do today.