Meaning Of Easter Quotes

The gifts of the Master are these: freedom, life, hope, new direction, transformation, and intimacy with God. If the cross was the end of the story, we would have no hope. But the cross isn't the end. Jesus didn't escape from death; he conquered it and opened the way to heaven for all who will dare to believe. The truth of this moment, if we let it sweep over us, is stunning. It means Jesus really is who he claimed to be, we are really as lost as he said we are, and he really is the only way for us to intimately and spiritually connect with God again.

The italian nanny was attempting to answer the teachers latest question when the moroccan student interupted, shouting "Excuse me, What is an easter?" it would seem that depsite having grown up in a muslim country, she would have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. "I mean it," She said. " I have no idea what you people are talking about." The teacher called upon the rest of us to explain. The poles led the charge to the best of their ability. It is," said one, "a party for the little boy of god who call his self jesus and... oh shit." She faltered and her fellow country man came to her aid. He call his self Jesus and then he die one day on two... morsels of... lumber." The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm. he die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father." he weared of himself the long hair and after he die. the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples." he Nice the jesus." he make the good things, and on the easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today.

CHURCH, not CHOCOLATE, is the TRUE MEANING of EASTER!!

But a radical new body of evidence shows that people are at their best—physically harder, mentally tougher, and spiritually sounder—after experiencing the same discomforts our early ancestors were exposed to every day. Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.

What do you mean, you "Don't believe in homosexuality"? It's not like the Easter Bunny, your belief isn't necessary.

You mean you're going to send the same form letter to the Great Pumpkin, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny?" "Why not? These guys get so much mail they can't possibly tell the difference... I bet they don't even read the letters themselves! How could they?! The trouble with you, Charlie Brown, is you don't understand how these big organizations work!

When people say they are atheists they don’t mean they can’t prove that there are no gods. Strictly speaking, it’s impossible to prove that something does not exist. We don’t positively know there are no gods, just as we can’t prove that there are no fairies or pixies or elves or hobgoblins or leprechauns or pink unicorns; just as we can’t prove that Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy don’t exist. There’s a billion things you can imagine and nobody can disprove.

If I were the Devil . . . I mean, if I were the Prince of Darkness, I would of course, want to engulf the whole earth in darkness. I would have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree, so I should set about however necessary to take over the United States. I would begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: “Do as you please.” “Do as you please.” To the young, I would whisper, “The Bible is a myth.” I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what is bad is good, and what is good is “square”. In the ears of the young marrieds, I would whisper that work is debasing, that cocktail parties are good for you. I would caution them not to be extreme in religion, in patriotism, in moral conduct. And the old, I would teach to pray. I would teach them to say after me: “Our Father, which art in Washington” . . . If I were the devil, I’d educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull an uninteresting. I’d threaten T.V. with dirtier movies and vice versa. And then, if I were the devil, I’d get organized. I’d infiltrate unions and urge more loafing and less work, because idle hands usually work for me. I’d peddle narcotics to whom I could. I’d sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. And I’d tranquilize the rest with pills. If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine yound intellects but neglect to discipline emotions . . . let those run wild. I would designate an athiest to front for me before the highest courts in the land and I would get preachers to say “she’s right.” With flattery and promises of power, I could get the courts to rule what I construe as against God and in favor of pornography, and thus, I would evict God from the courthouse, and then from the school house, and then from the houses of Congress and then, in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and I would deify science because that way men would become smart enough to create super weapons but not wise enough to control them. If I were Satan, I’d make the symbol of Easter an egg, and the symbol of Christmas, a bottle. If I were the devil, I would take from those who have and I would give to those who wanted, until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious. And then, my police state would force everybody back to work. Then, I could separate families, putting children in uniform, women in coal mines, and objectors in slave camps. In other words, if I were Satan, I’d just keep on doing what he’s doing. (Speech was broadcast by ABC Radio commentator Paul Harvey on April 3, 1965)

A king who dies on the cross must be the king of a rather strange kingdom. Only those who understand the profound paradox of the cross can also understand the whole meaning of Jesus’ assertion: my kingdom is not of this world. 2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Lectures to the Congregation in Barcelona

Currently where you are is on a huge globe with a relatively thin crust of stone, containing fire in its bowels, rotating on its own slightly tilted axis at 1,000 miles per hour in an easterly direction while simultaneously traveling in orbit around an enormous ball of burning hydrogen, 93,000,000 miles away at 66,000 miles per hour. That’s 66,000 miles per hour, or nineteen miles per second, which is much faster that you’ve maybe ever imagined, and means that you will be traveling nearly 60,000,000 miles this coming year. Beauty is, you don’t have to imagine it, you can feel it instead. And if you want to know what it’s like, simply stop. Be still, and in that stillness, whatever you are feeling in your belly: that’s it. this is what it feels like to go 66,000 miles per hour while spinning at one thousand.

Our love for people doesn't end when they pass away. More often our feelings deepen as we realize how much they mean to us and how dearly we miss them.

The History of Ireland in two words: Ah well. The Invasion by the Vikings: Ah well. The Invasion by the Normans. The Flight of the Earls, Mr Oliver Cromwell. Daniel O’Connell, Robert Emmett, The Famine, Charles Stewart Parnell, Easter Rising, Michael Collins, Éamon De Valera, Éamon De Valera again (Dear Germany, so sorry to learn of the death of your Mr Hitler), Éamon De Valera again, the Troubles, the Tribunals, the Fianna Fáil Party, The Church, the Banks, the eight hundred years of rain: Ah well. In the Aeneid Virgil tells it as Sunt lacrimae rerum, which in Robert Fitzgerald’s translation means ‘They weep for how the world goes’, which is more eloquent than Ah well but means the same thing.

Easter? We’re paying more attention to dying than to death. We’re more concerned to get over the act of dying than to overcome death. Socrates mastered the art of dying; Christ overcame death as ‘the last enemy’ (I Cor. 15.26). There is a real difference between the two things; the one is within the scope of human possibilities, the other means resurrection.

True Easter faith is the work of the Spirit, for believing in Christ's resurrection doesn't mean affirming a historical fact, and saying `Oh really?' It means being seized by the life-giving Spirit and experiencing `the powers of the world to come' (Heb. 6.5) in our own living and dying.

To be silent does not mean to be inactive; rather it means to breathe in the will of God, to listen attentively and be ready to obey.4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditating on the Word

Here, then, is the message of Easter, or at least the beginning of that message. The resurrection of Jesus doesn’t mean, “It’s all right. We’re going to heaven now.” No, the life of heaven has been born on this earth. It doesn’t mean, “So there is a life after death.” Well, there is, but Easter says much, much more than that. It speaks of a life that is neither ghostly nor unreal, but solid and definite and practical. The Easter stories come at the end of the four gospels, but they are not about an “end.” They are about a beginning. The beginning of God’s new world. The beginning of the kingdom. God is now in charge, on earth as in heaven. And God’s “being-in-charge” is focused on Jesus himself being king and Lord. The title on the cross was true after all. The resurrection proves it.

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.

Archaic humans like Homo erectus “spread like many other mammals in the Old World,” Pääbo told me. “They never came to Madagascar, never to Australia. Neither did Neanderthals. It’s only fully modern humans who start this thing of venturing out on the ocean where you don’t see land. Part of that is technology, of course; you have to have ships to do it. But there is also, I like to think or say, some madness there. You know? How many people must have sailed out and vanished on the Pacific before you found Easter Island? I mean, it’s ridiculous. And why do you do that? Is it for the glory? For immortality? For curiosity? And now we go to Mars. We never stop.

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.

To share Eucharistic communion with someone unbaptized, or committed to another story or system, is odd—not because the sacrament is 'profaned', or because grace cannot be given to those outside the household, but because the symbolic integrity of the Eucharist depends upon its being celebrated by those who both commit themselves to the paradigm of Jesus' death and resurrection and acknowledge that their violence is violence offered to Jesus. All their betrayals are to be understood as betrayals of him; and through that understanding comes forgiveness and hope. Those who do not so understand themselves and their sin or their loss will not make the same identification of their victims with Jesus, nor will they necessarily understand their hope for their vocation in relation to him and his community. Their participation is thus anomalous: it is hard to see the meaning of what is being done.

In fact, one of the main lessons to be learned from the collapses of the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, and those other past societies (as well as from the recent collapse of the Soviet Union) is that a society's steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak numbers, wealth, and power. In that respect, the trajectories of the societies that we have discussed are unlike the usual courses of individual human lives, which decline in a prolonged senescence. The reason is simple: maximum population, wealth, resource consumption, and waste production mean maximum environmental impact, approaching the limit where impact outstrips resources. On reflection, it's no surprise that declines of societies tend to follow swiftly on their peaks.

To be silent does not mean to be inactive; rather it means to breathe in the will of God, to listen attentively and be ready to obey.4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditating on the

If you eat…before bed, you’re not going to have any autophagy. That means you’re not going to take out the trash, so the cells begin to accumulate more and more debris.

And to say “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy” is to lay our hope in the redeeming work of the God of  Easter as though our lives depended on it. Because they do. It means that we are an Easter people, a people who know that resurrection, especially in and among the least likely people and places, is the way that God redeems even the biggest messes we make

Jewish mystic and Christian messiah describe how I see Jesus before and after Easter. To use language from my previous chapter, I see the pre-Easter Jesus as the former and the post-Easter Jesus as the latter.

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 . . .

Why does there appear to be so little magic in the world these days? It is because people have stopped believing in it or lose touch with it as they grow up. It is because we have become so sophisticated and lost our ancient and natural roots. It is because religion, science and education have taught us that magic does not exist. That even supposing it does exist – which to many is far too big an 'if' – then it couldn't possibly work. Their self-fulfilling sophistry complete, they then turn round and say 'There you are you see, there is no magic in the world, just as we said.' And we and the world are all the poorer as a result of this. I mean, what are we left with? Santa, the Easter Bunny, Harry Potter and the Tooth Fairy.

It takes great faith in Easter, particularly faith in the gift of the Holy Spirit, to be honest with our people that we have not a clue to the meaning of some biblical passage, or that we have no sense of a satisfying ending for a sermon, or that we are unsure of precisely what the congregation ought to do after hearing a given text. The most ethically dangerous time within a sermon is toward the end of the sermon, when we move from proclamation to application and act as if we know more than God. 133

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.

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

I reach under Mongo, and my hand lands on something squishy. I grab hold of it, and pull out an orange bunny Peep from a long ago Easter. Even I wouldn’t eat it now. The scary thing is, it still looks perfectly fine. Dusty, but fine. I think Dr. Grady was wrong. At the end of the world will be bacteria, cockroaches, and Peeps.

from the tiny spaceport on Easter Island (the name was an entirely meaningless coincidence—in Galacticspeke, easter means small, flat and light-brown) to the Heart of Gold island, which by another meaningless coincidence was called France. One of the side effects of work on the Heart of Gold was a whole string of pretty meaningless coincidences.

Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him” (Luke 4:8). Jesus knows what that means. It means lowliness, abuse, persecution. It means remaining misunderstood. It means hate, death, the cross. And he chooses this way from the beginning. It is the way of obedience and the way of freedom, for it is the way of God. And therefore it is also the way of love for human beings.

Dell pulled out his cell phone, speed-dialed a number, and put the phone on speaker. A woman answered with a professionally irritated tone: “What do you need now?” “Jade,” Dell said. “Nope, it’s the Easter Bunny. And your keys are on your desk.” Dell shook his head. “Now darlin’, I don’t always call you just because I’ve lost my keys.” “I’m sorry, you’re right. You wallet’s on your desk, too. As for your little black book, you’re on your own with that one, Dr. Flirt. I’m at lunch.” Dell sighed. “What did we say about you and the whole power-play thing?” “That it’s good for your ego to have at least one woman in your life that you can’t flash a smile at and have them drop their panties?” Dell grinned. “I really like it when you say ‘panties.’ And for the record, I knew where my keys and wallet were.” “No you didn’t.” “Okay, I didn’t, but that’s not why I’m calling. Can you bring burgers and fries for me and Brady? Oh, and Adam, too, or he’ll bitch like a little girl.” “You mean ‘Jade, will you pretty please bring us burgers and fries?’” “Yes,” Dell said, nodding. “That. And Cokes.” He looked at Brady, who nodded. “And don’t forget the ketchup.” “You forgot the nice words.” “Oh, I’m sorry,” Dell said. “You look fantastic today, I especially love the attitude and sarcasm you’re wearing.” Jade’s voice went saccharine sweet. “So some low-fat chicken salads, no dressing, and ice water to go, then?” “Fine,” Dell said, and sighed. “Can we please have burgers and fries?" “You forgot the ‘Thank you, Goddess Jade,’ but we’ll work on that. Later, boss.

Like a great waterwheel, the liturgical year goes on relentlessly irrigating our souls, softening the ground of our hearts, nourishing the soil of our lives until the seed of the Word of God itself begins to grow in us, comes to fruit in us, ripens in us the spiritual journey of a lifetime. So goes the liturgical year through all the days of our lives. /it concentrates us on the two great poles of the faith - the birth and death of Jesus of Nazareth. But as Christmas and Easter trace the life of Jesus for us from beginning to end, the liturgical year does even more: it also challenges our own life and vision and sense of meaning. Both a guide to greater spiritual maturity and a path to a deepened spiritual life, the liturgical year leads us through all the great questions of faith as it goes. It rehearses the dimensions of life over and over for us all the years of our days. It leads us back again and again to reflect on the great moments of the life of Jesus and so to apply them to our own ... As the liturgical year goes on every day of our lives, every season of every year, tracing the steps of Jesus from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, so does our own life move back and forth between our own beginnings and endings, between our own struggles and triumphs, between the rush of acclamation and the crush of abandonment. It is the link between Jesus and me, between this life and the next, between me and the world around me, that is the gift of the liturgical year. The meaning and message of the liturgical year is the bedrock on which we strike our own life's direction. Rooted in the Resurrection promise of the liturgical year, whatever the weight of our own pressures, we maintain the course. We trust in the future we cannot see and do only know because we have celebrated the death and resurrection of Jesus year after year. In His life we rest our own. ― Joan D. Chittister, The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life - The Ancient Practices Series

The bigger question now becomes, "so what? Who cares?" You will never have an infinite number of balls and you will never have a large enough urn to hold all of them. You will never build a lamp that can turn on and off arbitrarily fast. We cannot investigate time or space past a certain smallness, except when pretending, so what are supertasks, but recreational fictions, entertaining riddles? We can ask more questions than we can answer, so what? Well, here's what. Neanderthals. Neanderthals and humans, us, Homo sapiens, lived together in Europe for at least five thousand years. Neanderthals were strong and clever, they may have even intentionally buried their dead, but for hundreds of thousands of years, Neanderthals barely went anywhere. They pretty much just explored and spread until they reached water or some other obstacle and then stopped. Homo sapiens, on the other hand, didn't do that. They did things that make no sense crossing terrain and water without knowing what lay ahead. Svante Pääbo has worked on the Neanderthal genome at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and he points out that technology alone didn't allow humans to go to Madagascar, to Australia. Neanderthals built boats too. Instead, he says, there's "some madness there. How many people must have sailed out and vanished on the Pacific before you found Easter Island? I mean, it's ridiculous. And why do you do that? Is it for the glory? For immortality? For curiosity? And now we go to Mars. We never stop." It's ridiculous, foolish, maybe? But it was the Neanderthals who went extinct, not the humans.

a secularist colleague of mine once assured me that he didn’t need to bother reading writers like Aquinas, since he “already knew” that they must be wrong – though judging from his grasp of what such writers mean by “God” (he confidently trotted out a few stupid anthropomorphisms, tiresome comparisons to the Easter bunny, etc.), it was obvious that he knew no such thing. It was like trying to discuss Titian with a three-year-old who thinks painting is something you do with your fingers.

Government didn’t say you must stop worshiping God. You must stop praying or preaching the word of God. You must stop believing in God or exercising your faith. You must stop your religion, but what is asking for is everyone should stop human contact. and should social distance themselves, because the virus spread easily in a group of people. By limiting contact, it means not going to church, Easter, clubs, Tavern, events, malls, gym ,school, work. I need you to do your part in order for me to survive.

No...I knew a Martin. And was he wiley? If there was one thing he wasn't was wiley, John. Oh? Poor Martin was an inordinately stupid man. He could barely tie his shoelaces. A ha'penny short? Ah listen. Martin kept animals had more wile in them. What kind of animals? He'd sheep. A few cattle, I suppose. Though they'd have been wind-bothered up that way. They'd have been... Bothered, John. By the wind coming in. The way it would unseat cattle. Unseat them? Cornelius lowers his sad eyes - In the mind. You mean you'd have a cow'd take a turn? Cornelius squares his jaw. Do you realise you're looking at a man who's seen a cow step in front of a moving vehicle? Purposefully. On account of? Wind coming easterly. That's the kind of thing that can leave a beast beyond despair. Because of the pure evil sound of it, John. The way it would play across the country in an ominous way. An easterly? If it was to come across you for a fortnight and it might? Sleep gone out the window and a horrible black feeling racing through your fucken blood. Day and night. All sorts of thoughts of death and hopelessness. This is what you'd get on the tail end of an easterly wind. Man nor animal wouldn't be right after it.

There is a note following “An Order for Burial” in The Book of Common Prayer—according to the use of the Episcopal Church. This note is very sensible. “The liturgy for the dead is an Easter liturgy,” the note says. “It finds all its meaning in the resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be raised. The liturgy, therefore, is characterized by joy …” the notes goes on. “This joy, however, does not make human grief unchristian …” the note concludes. And so we sang our hearts out for Owen Meany—aware that while the liturgy for the dead might be characterized by joy, our so-called “human grief” did not make us “unchristian.

Having written some pages in favor of Jesus, I receive a solemn communication crediting me with the possession of a “theology” by which I acquire the strange dignity of being wrong forever or forever right. Have I gauged exactly enough the weights of sins? Have I found too much of the Hereafter in the Here? Or the other way around? Have I found too much pleasure, too much beauty and goodness, in this our unreturning world? O Lord, please forgive any smidgen of such distinctions I may have still in my mind. I meant to leave them all behind a long time ago. If I’m a theologian I am one to the extent I have learned to duck when the small, haughty doctrines fly overhead, dropping their loads of whitewash at random on the faces of those who look toward Heaven. Look down, look down, and save your soul by honester dirt, that receives with a lordly indifference this off-fall of the air. Christmas night and Easter morning are this soil’s only laws. The depth and volume of the waters of baptism, the true taxonomy of sins, the field marks of those most surely saved, God’s own only interpretation of the Scripture: these would be causes of eternal amusement, could we forget how we have hated one another, how vilified and hurt and killed one another, bloodying the world, by means of such questions, wrongly asked, never to be rightly answered, but asked and wrongly answered, hour after hour, day after day, year after year—such is my belief—in Hell.

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 am putting up a signpost, not offering a photograph of what we will find once we get to where the signpost is pointing. I don’t know what musical instruments we shall have to play Bach in God’s new world, though I’m sure Bach’s music will be there. I don’t know how my planting a tree today will relate to the wonderful trees that there will be in God’s recreated world, though I do remember Martin Luther’s words about the proper reaction to knowing the kingdom was coming the next day being to go out and plant a tree. I do not know how the painting an artist paints today in prayer and wisdom will find a place in God’s new world. I don’t know how our work for justice for the poor, for remission of global debts, will reappear in that new world. But I know that God’s new world of justice and joy, of hope for the whole earth, was launched when Jesus came out of the tomb on Easter morning, and I know that he calls his followers to live in him and by the power of his Spirit and so to be new-creation people here and now, bringing signs and symbols of the kingdom to birth on earth as in heaven. The resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit mean that we are called to bring real and effective signs of God’s renewed creation to birth even in the midst of the present age.

..."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.

Hunsford, near Westerham, Kent, 15th October. “Dear Sir,— “The disagreement subsisting between yourself and my late honoured father always gave me much uneasiness, and since I have had the misfortune to lose him, I have frequently wished to heal the breach; but for some time I was kept back by my own doubts, fearing lest it might seem disrespectful to his memory for me to be on good terms with anyone with whom it had always pleased him to be at variance.—’There, Mrs. Bennet.’—My mind, however, is now made up on the subject, for having received ordination at Easter, I have been so fortunate as to be distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, whose bounty and beneficence has preferred me to the valuable rectory of this parish, where it shall be my earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her ladyship, and be ever ready to perform those rites and ceremonies which are instituted by the Church of England. As a clergyman, moreover, I feel it my duty to promote and establish the blessing of peace in all families within the reach of my influence; and on these grounds I flatter myself that my present overtures are highly commendable, and that the circumstance of my being next in the entail of Longbourn estate will be kindly overlooked on your side, and not lead you to reject the offered olive-branch. I cannot be otherwise than concerned at being the means of injuring your amiable daughters, and beg leave to apologise for it, as well as to assure you of my readiness to make them every possible amends—but of this hereafter. If you should have no objection to receive me into your house, I propose myself the satisfaction of waiting on you and your family, Monday, November 18th, by four o’clock, and shall probably trespass on your hospitality till the Saturday se’nnight following, which I can do without any inconvenience, as Lady Catherine is far from objecting to my occasional absence on a Sunday, provided that some other clergyman is engaged to do the duty of the day.—I remain, dear sir, with respectful compliments to your lady and daughters, your well-wisher and friend, “William Collins

Guess it didn't go so well, huh?" "What was your first clue?" I turned my head slightly, then went back to staring blankly out at the city street below. "Did your really expect it to? I mean the two of you together make no sense at all. It's like putting the Easter Bunny together with a crocodile. At first everyone's all nervous and shit like 'Oh, how cute. Look how they're getting along.' And then of course the predicable happens, the rabbit's a reptile snack and all the kids are cryin' 'cause Easter ain't comin' next year.

To be rescued rather painfully points out the fact that we don’t have the resources to rescue ourselves. Thanks to the stubbornness of our stale pride we choose to refuse rescue and embrace anguish, which means that the greatest thing that we need to be rescued from is ourselves.

Art has a way of expressing the thoughts, feelings, and events of the artist. Some paintings show things as simple as merry childhood memories while others have the complexity of inner strife and pain. Whatever the art, there will always be a meaning.

The greatest gifts of all create space for the greatest sacrifices imaginable. For if we simply receive something that does not press us to give something in return, we will die fat with possessions but starved of meaning.

No one seeks for God,” Paul wrote in Romans 3:10, meaning not that no one seeks for the divine and transcendent or for spirituality in general, but that no human being seeks the true God. We seek spirituality, but the human heart always wants a God who fits our desires, a God we can control, who doesn’t challenge our self-assessments and narratives.

To live in the light of the resurrection - that is what Easter means

Alfred Métraux (1902–1963, a Swiss ethnologist who studied Easter Island extensively) wrote, “When the Easter Islanders of today are asked about the means by which the statues were transported, they only say: ‘King Tiikoihu, the great magician, used to move them with the words of his mouth’” (Wolff 1948, 157, citing Métraux 1939, 771).

Then look at Easter. What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, aas found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar. The worship of Bel and Astarte was very early introduced into Britain, along with the Druids, "the priests of the groves." Some have imagined that the Druidical worship was first introduced by the Phoenicians, who, centuries before the Christian era, traded to the tin-mines of Cornwall. But the unequivocal traces of that worship are found in regions of the British islands where the Phoenicians never penetrated, and it has everywhere left indelible marks of the strong hold which it must have had on the early British mind.

And this hope is not wishful thinking but is grounded in history, the sign of which is the risen Christ.

Most people today rarely step outside their comfort zones. We are living progressively sheltered, sterile, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged, safety-netted lives. And it’s limiting the degree to which we experience our “one wild and precious life,” as poet Mary Oliver put it. But a radical new body of evidence shows that people are at their best—physically harder, mentally tougher, and spiritually sounder—after experiencing the same discomforts our early ancestors were exposed to every day. Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.

Peter is showing us what Paul in 2 Corinthians 7:10 calls “godly sorrow” and true repentance rather than “worldly sorrow.” The former heals, restores, and changes us permanently; the latter, while often accompanied by intense emotion, is a passing thing.

to say “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy” is to lay our hope in the redeeming work of the God of  Easter as though our lives depended on it. Because they do. It means that we are an Easter people, a people who know that resurrection, especially in and among the least likely people and places, is the way that God redeems even the biggest messes we make 

THE “THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS” SPEECH Son/Daughter, Please sit down over here by me. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time, and I think you’re old enough now. I know you believe with all your heart that there is a person called Santa Claus who brings you presents every year if you are good. But the truth is that there is no Santa Claus. “Santa Claus” is really all the parents in the world, who love their children very much and buy them presents to show how much they love them. Your presents are not made by elves in a toy shop at the North Pole. There is no such thing as an elf; and the North Pole is actually one of the loneliest and most desolate places on Earth. The truth is that mom and dad buy all your presents at the mall, and we’re the ones who eat Santa’s cookies and drink Santa’s milk. Reindeer can’t fly, either. But don’t cry. This doesn’t mean that the spirit of Santa Claus isn’t real. “Santa Claus” is inside all of us, whenever we give presents to those that we love or those who are less fortunate. When you grow up, you can be Santa, too. Or the Easter Bunny. Or the Tooth Fairy.

Despite a thousand Easter hymns and a million Easter sermons, the resurrection narratives in the gospels never, ever say anything like, “Jesus is raised, therefore there is a life after death,” let alone, “Jesus is raised, therefore we shall go to heaven when we die.” Nor even, in a more authentic first-century Christian way, do they say, “Jesus is raised, therefore we shall be raised from the dead after the sleep of death.” No. Insofar as the event is interpreted, Easter has a very this-worldly, present-age meaning: Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world’s true Lord; Jesus is raised, so God’s new creation has begun—and we, his followers, have a job to do! Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven! To be sure, as early as Paul the resurrection of Jesus is firmly linked to the final resurrection of all God’s people.

Wafa Wanaka, our elders say. Not only does this mean that death is the ultimate peace, it also means that we are not to speak ill of the dead. Once a person has crossed over to the real of the spirits, he takes his transgressions with him, and we speak only of the good. - 'Something Nice from London

The statement, "Jesus Is Lord" is not a religious statement, it is a political one. When you become a follower of Jesus, when you make him Lord, you are swearing off allegiances to all other rulers of the world. Easter is a proclamation that there is a new Lord in town and all the governments of the world are now subservient to Him. To be a citizen of the Kingdom of God means you are now a part of a Kingdom that loves their enemies and prays for those who persecute them. You are now a part of a kingdom that overwhelms its enemies not with violence, but with the love of God.

The Church, at an early date, selected the heathen festivals of Sun worship for its own, ordering the birth at Christmas, a fixed time, and the resurrection at Easter, a varying time, as in all Pagan religions; since, though the Sun rose directly after the vernal equinox, the festival, to be correct in a heathen point of view, had to be associated with the new moon." [496:5]

The intruders spoke no words as they rushed in. Five boys carrying baseball bats and tire irons. They wore an assortment of Halloween masks and stocking masks. But Derek knew who they were. “No! No!” he cried. All five boys wore bulky shooter’s earmuffs. They couldn’t hear him. But more importantly, they couldn’t hear Jill. One of the boys stayed in the doorway. He was in charge. A runty kid named Hank. The stocking pulled down over his face smashed his features into Play-Doh, but it could only be Hank. One of the boys, fat but fast-moving and wearing an Easter Bunny mask, stepped to Derek and hit him in the stomach with his aluminum baseball bat. Derek dropped to his knees. Another boy grabbed Jill. He put his hand over her mouth. Someone produced a roll of duct tape. Jill screamed. Derek tried to stand, but the blow to his stomach had winded him. He tried to stand up, but the fat boy pushed him back down. “Don’t be stupid, Derek. We’re not after you.” The duct tape went around and around Jill’s mouth. They worked by flashlight. Derek could see Jill’s eyes, wild with terror. Pleading silently with her big brother to save her. When her mouth was sealed, the thugs pulled off their shooter’s earmuffs. Hank stepped forward. “Derek, Derek, Derek,” Hank said, shaking his head slowly, regretfully. “You know better than this.” “Leave her alone,” Derek managed to gasp, clutching his stomach, fighting the urge to vomit. “She’s a freak,” Hank said. “She’s my little sister. This is our home.” “She’s a freak,” Hank said. “And this house is east of First Avenue. This is a no-freak zone.” “Man, come on,” Derek pleaded. “She’s not hurting anyone.” “It’s not about that,” a boy named Turk said. He had a weak leg, a limp that made it impossible not to recognize him. “Freaks with freaks, normals with normals. That’s the way it has to be.” “All she does is—” Hank’s slap stung. “Shut up. Traitor. A normal who stands up for a freak gets treated like a freak. Is that what you want?” “Besides,” the fat boy said with a giggle, “we’re taking it easy on her. We were going to fix her so she could never sing again. Or talk. If you know what I mean.” He pulled a knife from a sheath in the small of his back. “Do you, Derek? Do you understand?” Derek’s resistance died. “The Leader showed mercy,” Turk said. “But the Leader isn’t weak. So this freak either goes west, over the border right now. Or…” He let the threat hang there. Jill’s tears flowed freely. She could barely breathe because her nose was running. Derek could see that by the way she sucked tape into her mouth, trying for air. She would suffocate if they didn’t let her go soon. “Let me at least get her doll.

How did it get this way?" "It got this way because he hates her, Easter. And he hates you, too." "Then why does he stay?" "Because he's lazy. And mean.

Dr. John G. Jackson quotes Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie as follows: “From the woolly texture of the hair, I am inclined to assign to the Budda of India, the Fuhi of China, the Sommanoacom of the Siamese, the Xaha of the Japanese, and the Quetzalcoatl of the Mexicans, and the same, and indeed an African, or rather ‘Nubian’ origin.” Most of these black gods were regarded as crucified saviours who died to save mankind by being nailed to a cross, or tied to a tree with arms outstretched as if on a cross, or slain violently in some other manner. Of these crucified saviors, the most prominent were Osiris and Horus of Egypt, Krishna of India, Mithra of Persia, Quetzalcoatl of Mexico, Adonis of Babylonia and Attis of Phrygia. Nearly all of these slain savior-gods have the following stories related about them: They are born of a virgin, on or near December 25th (Christmas); their births are heralded by a star; they are born either in a cave or stable; they are slain, commonly by crucifixion; they descend into hell, and rise from the dead at the beginning of Spring (Easter), and finally ascend into heaven. The parallels between the legendary lives of these pagan messiahs and the life of Jesus Christ as recorded in the BIBLE are so similar that progressive Bible scholars now admit that stories of these heathen have been woven into the life-story of Jesus.

Introduction THE TRUTH of the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time has proved to be difficult for many Catholics to relate to. It is an area of theology that many find irrelevant to their everyday lives; something perhaps best left to the placard-wielding doom merchants. However, the clarity of this teaching is to be found throughout the pages of Sacred Scripture, through the Tradition of the Church Fathers, notably St. Augustine and St. Irenaeus, and in the Magisterium of the popes. A possible reason for this attitude of incredulity is the obvious horror at the prospect of the end of the world. In envisioning this end, the focus of many consists of an image of universal conflagration where the only peace is the peace of death, not only for man but the physical world also. But is that scenario one that is true to the plans of Divine Providence as revealed by Jesus? In truth it is not. It is a partial account of the wondrous work that the Lord will complete on the last day. The destiny of humanity and all creation at the end of time will consist of the complete renewal of the world and the universe, in which the Kingdom of God will come. Earth will become Heaven and the Holy Trinity will dwell with the community of the redeemed in an endless day illuminated by the light that is God—the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I suspect that the ignorance of many stems from the lack of clear teaching coming from the clergy. There is no real reason for confusion in this area as the Second Vatican Council document, Lumen Gentium, and the Catholic Catechism make the authentic teaching very clear. With the knowledge that the end will give way to a new beginning, the Christian should be filled with hope, not fear, expectation, not apprehension. It is important to stress at this point that it is not my intention to speculate as to specific times and dates, as that knowledge belongs to God the Father himself; rather the intention is to offer the teachings and guidance of the recent popes in this matter, and to show that they are warning of the approaching Second Coming of the Lord. Pope Pius XII stated in his Easter Message of 1957: “Come, Lord Jesus. There are numerous signs that Thy return is not far off.” St. Peter warns us that “everything will soon come to an end” (1 Pet. 4:7), while at the same time exercising caution: “But there is one thing, my friends, that you must never forget: that with the Lord, a “day” can mean a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day” (2 Pet. 3:8). So let us leave the time scale open, that way controversy can be avoided and the words of the popes will speak for themselves.

But Easter means that the powers of this world do not have the last word.

Since most Christians never learn Hebrew, most of them never learn that the name LORD means Ba’al.  They are also typically ignorant of the fact that the name Asherah means Easter.  However, most of those that do learn the difference usually still ‘hop between two opinions’, calling Him both YHWH and LORD, in an attempt to simultaneously please Him, and man:

Though my approach throughout the book will be positive and expository, it is worth noting from the outset that I intend to challenge this dominant paradigm in each of its main constituent parts. In general terms, this view holds the following: (1) that the Jewish context provides only a fuzzy setting, in which ‘resurrection’ could mean a variety of different things; (2) that the earliest Christian writer, Paul, did not believe in bodily resurrection, but held a ‘more spiritual’ view; (3) that the earliest Christians believed, not in Jesus’ bodily resurrection, but in his exaltation/ascension/glorification, in his ‘going to heaven’ in some kind of special capacity, and that they came to use ‘resurrection’ language initially to denote that belief and only subsequently to speak of an empty tomb or of ‘seeing’ the risen Jesus; (4) that the resurrection stories in the gospels are late inventions designed to bolster up this second-stage belief; (5) that such ‘seeings’ of Jesus as may have taken place are best understood in terms of Paul’s conversion experience, which itself is to be explained as a ‘religious’ experience, internal to the subject rather than involving the seeing of any external reality, and that the early Christians underwent some kind of fantasy or hallucination; (6) that whatever happened to Jesus’ body (opinions differ as to whether it was even buried in the first place), it was not ‘resuscitated’, and was certainly not ‘raised from the dead’ in the sense that the gospel stories, read at face value, seem to require.11 Of course, different elements in this package are stressed differently by different scholars; but the picture will be familiar to anyone who has even dabbled in the subject, or who has listened to a few mainstream Easter sermons, or indeed funeral sermons, in recent decades.

by the grace of God, I was able to follow in their footsteps on April 6, 1996, when, at the great vigil of Easter, I was confirmed as a Catholic. I chose St. Augustine of Hippo as my patron saint. And I mean literally that I made my decision by God’s grace alone. No intellectual process, no course of reading, can ever, in and of itself, bring a man to faith—either in Christ or in His kingdom, the Church. Faith is a miracle. And what the four witnesses had offered to me was the story of another miracle—another incarnation. I knew, and already believed with all my heart, that the Son of God had become Man at Bethlehem for my salvation; “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14). But now I could see that the early Fathers believed more: They believed that His Bride had become flesh too. The

Passover enables us to pause and observe His death in preparation for Easter Sunday. Good Friday and Easter – or Resurrection Sunday – is the crux of our Christian faith and heritage. However, over time this season has been downgraded in our culture to a “Happy Spring,” “Easter Bunny,” and candy-egg sort of event. While the church still emphasizes Easter (hopefully), Americans in general have lost sight of its true meaning. While these other practices may be harmless, they distract from the very reason for the Easter celebration, which is the bodily resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is time to recapture the wonder and rich tradition of this season, beginning with Passover, a purposeful meal around the dinner table.

In my defense, the Easter Bunny is the weakest link in magical lore. I mean, you have to admit that the whole thing is ridiculous. A giant rodent who sneaks into people's homes at night to leave eggs filled with candy? How in the world is that symbolic of the Easter celebration?

Ask: What should I do with my life? Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to be doing? Who am I? What does all this beautiful order mean? Those are questions you have to ask yourself seriously, and answer.

Jesus Christ saves the world through the Great Reversal.

Jewish mystic and Christian messiah describe how I see Jesus before and after Easter. To use language from my previous chapter, I see the pre-Easter Jesus as the former and the post-Easter Jesus as the latter. The affirmation in the title thus also includes an implicit negation. Namely, I am not persuaded that the pre-Easter Jesus thought of himself as the messiah, and so I describe him in nonmessianic categories. Instead of seeing any of the exalted metaphors as reflecting Jesus’ own self-awareness or sense of identity, I see them as post-Easter affirmations. They are the early Christian movement’s witness to what Jesus had become in their experience, not his own testimony about himself. Such language is “history metaphorized,” and in this case it is Jesus himself, his life and his death, who is metaphorized.

God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is

The fire of God’s glorious presence that Moses saw in the burning bush and that will renew the world at the end of time has come into us, as signified by the tongues of flame over the head of every disciple on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:3). Every Christian is now a small burning bush, a new creation, being made into Christ’s image, as we behold his glory by faith.

In short, I could accept that Jesus saw his own death the way that Tom suggests only if there were very strong historical evidence for it. I find it more historically persuasive, and religiously compelling, to see the purposeful understanding of Jesus’ death as post-Easter interpretations, and as history metaphorized, not history remembered.

As early Christianity developed, the post-Easter Jesus increasingly functioned as a divine reality within the community. Even before the gospels were written, prayers were addressed to Jesus as if to God, and hymns praised Jesus as divine. By the early second century, Ignatius could speak of “our God, Jesus Christ.

The glory of God coming to earth does not only produce radically changed individuals, but a whole new kind of human community—the church. Paul writes: “But our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:19–20). The word translated as “citizenship” is politeuma, a word that is better translated as “commonwealth” or “colony.” It means a politically organized body with both laws and loyalties that govern the behavior of its citizens. Literally it tells Christians that their politics—the way they conduct themselves in society—is to be based on the life of “heaven.

Q. Did I understand correctly—you have Jesus being crucified on a Thursday night instead of Good Friday? A. Yes. I read an excellent answer for what has been called “The Passover problem,” which details the Jewish feasts that coincided with the death of Christ. If Jesus died on Nisan 14, Thursday afternoon, Passover day, he died at the very hour the Passover lambs were being killed at the Temple. The people ate the Passover meal after sundown, on Nisan 15, which was a special Sabbath because it was the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The next day, Nisan 16, was a Saturday, a “regular” Sabbath, and the next day, Nisan 17, was the day after the regular Sabbath during Pesach—the Feast of Firstfruits. If we follow this pattern, Jesus fulfills his own words found in Matthew 12:40: “For just as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.” If Jesus died on a Friday night and rose on Sunday, he was only in the heart of the earth for two nights, not three. This is by no means a new idea; it has been around for years. But people are so accustomed to the traditional Easter story that they are surprised to realize that crucifixion on a Friday doesn’t fulfill Jesus’s prophecy.

In idealizing or romanticizing America, a Jewish songwriter would inevitably change it. Irving Berlin suppressed his own Jewish identity, but he also did something much more dramatic and extraordinary. In a memorable riff in Operation Shylock (1993), Philip Roth dubs Berlin “the greatest Diasporist of all” and writes, “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.” The passage is hilarious, the tone that of a tummler, but the argument couldn’t be more serious. “Is that so disgraceful a means of defusing the enmity of centuries? Is anyone really dishonored by this? If schlockified Christianity is Christianity cleansed of Jew hatred, then three cheers for schlock. If supplanting Jesus Christ with snow can enable my people to cozy up to Christmas, then let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.”21 Though the passage is unequivocal in its endorsement of Berlin’s “means of defusing the enmity of centuries,” note that Roth himself, whom Jewish critics used to lecture for showing disrespect to the fathers and the faith, could not sound more Jewish in this passage and in Operation Shylock as a glorious whole. The

The spreading out of garments likewise belongs to the tradition of Israelite kingship (cf. 2 Kings 9:13). What the disciples do is a gesture of enthronement in the tradition of the Davidic kingship, and it points to the Messianic hope that grew out of the Davidic tradition. The pilgrims who came to Jerusalem with Jesus are caught up in the disciples’ enthusiasm. They now spread their garments on the street along which Jesus passes. They pluck branches from the trees and cry out verses from Psalm 118, words of blessing from Israel’s pilgrim liturgy, which on their lips become a Messianic proclamation: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mk 11:9-10; cf. Ps 118:26). This acclamation is recounted by all four evangelists, albeit with some variation in detail. There is no need here to go into the differences, important though they are for “tradition criticism” and for the theological vision of the individual evangelists. Let us try merely to understand the essential outlines, especially since the Christian liturgy has adopted this greeting, interpreting it in the light of the Church’s Easter faith. First comes the exclamation “Hosanna!” Originally this was a word of urgent supplication, meaning something like: Come to our aid! The priests would repeat it in a monotone on the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles, while processing seven times around the altar of sacrifice, as an urgent prayer for rain. But as the Feast of Tabernacles gradually changed from a feast of petition into one of praise, so too the cry for help turned more and more into a shout of jubilation (cf. Lohse, TDNT IX, p. 682). By the time of Jesus, the word had also acquired Messianic overtones.

His meaning becomes clear if we recall the story recounted by all three Synoptic evangelists, in which children were brought to Jesus “that he might touch them”. Despite the resistance of the disciples, who wanted to protect him from this imposition, Jesus calls the children to himself, lays his hands on them, and blesses them. He explains this gesture with the words: “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mk 10:13-16). The children serve Jesus as an example of the littleness before God that is necessary in order to pass through the “eye of a needle”, the image that he used immediately afterward in the story of the rich young man (Mk 10:17-27). In the previous chapter we find the scene where Jesus responds to the disciples’ dispute over rank by placing a child in their midst, taking it into his arms and saying: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” (Mk 9:33-37). Jesus identifies himself with the child—he himself has become small. As Son he does nothing of himself, but he acts wholly from the Father and for the Father. The passage that follows a few verses later can also be understood on this basis. Here Jesus speaks no longer of children, but of “little ones”, and the term “little ones” designates believers, the company of the disciples of Jesus Christ (cf. Mk 9:42). In the faith they have found this true littleness that leads mankind into its truth. This brings us back to the children’s Hosanna: in the light of Psalm 8, the praise of these children appears as an anticipation of the great outpouring of praise that his “little ones” will sing to him far beyond the present hour. The early Church, then, was right to read this scene as an anticipation of what she does in her liturgy. Even in the earliest post-Easter liturgical text that we possess—the Didachē (ca. 100)—before the distribution of the holy gifts the Hosanna appears, together with the Maranatha: “Let his grace draw near, and let this present world pass away. Hosanna to the God of David. Whoever is holy, let him approach; whoever is not, let him repent. Maranatha. Amen” (10, 6). The Benedictus also entered the liturgy at a very early stage. For the infant Church, “Palm Sunday” was not a thing of the past. Just as the Lord entered the Holy City that day on a donkey, so too the Church saw him coming again and again in the humble form of bread and wine.

Goodness is not acting in a set way. It is acting in many different ways, but out of set motives and desires.” “If that’s goodness, then what is sin?” asked Ann. “Sin is knowingly acting to destroy justice, mercy and love,” he said. “To sin is to be in opposition to the light I have placed in you.” “I thought it meant breaking the Ten Commandments,” I said. “That's a somewhat dangerous way of putting it,” said my client. “Because people of your time tend to control one another by means of rules, the idea of commandments is, perhaps, not the best way to encourage holiness. If you think of commandments as justice and mercy in the perfect balance of love, fine; but if you think of commandments as rules to control others in order to prohibit evil and promote good—well, that’s not such a good thing. It won’t promote holiness. Love promotes holiness. On love hang the law and the prophets. But no human is perfectly just, perfectly merciful, or perfectly loving. People are not born with love nor can they achieve love as a perfect balance of justice and mercy. They can find it only by coming to terms with the shadow in themselves and accepting the light I offer them. That is why people must repent and forgive. It is the way of life.

By this he does not mean any kind of theocratic take-over by the church. Rather, he says that when Christians make the love of their neighbor and the glory of God the highest aims in their work, then in the fields of “science . . . art . . . the state . . . [and] commerce and industry” more just and right relationships will be established. People will not advance at one another’s expense, by living for their own glory. Rather people will flourish through inter-dependence and love.

As many contemporary thinkers have pointed out, when you create an identity by despising other groups, it makes you dependent in many ways on them. Ironically, the “other” becomes part of who you are. You need for them to stay in their place and to fit your stereotypes of them. And if something threatens your one-dimensional, negative view of them, it shakes your very foundations. This is what brought Cain to kill Abel, and why Peter responded violently as well. Their false identity was shaken, and rather than change it and give it another foundation, they lashed out at the people who were endangering it.

But the cultural trajectory over the last thousand, and especially the last few hundred, years has led us to quantify everything and believe that quantification means absolute truth.

Yet we never define what health means to us in the first place.

Death cannot keep back love; love is stronger than death. The meaning of Good Friday and Easter Sunday is that God’s path to human beings leads back to God.11 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Lectures to the Congregation in Barcelona

This humility and willingness to give up control of your life is impossible to produce without God’s help.

Pope Benedict XVI General Audience To repent [or convert] is to change direction in the journey of life: not, however, by means of a small adjustment, but with a true and proper about turn. Conversion means swimming against the tide, where the “tide” is the superficial lifestyle, inconsistent and deceptive, that often sweeps us along, overwhelms us, and makes us slaves to evil or at any rate prisoners of moral mediocrity. With conversion, on the other hand, we are aiming for the high standard of Christian living; we entrust ourselves to the living and personal Gospel which is Jesus Christ. He is our final goal and the profound meaning of conversion, he is the path on which all are called to walk through life, letting themselves be illumined by his light and sustained by his power which moves our steps. In this way conversion expresses his most splendid and fascinating Face: it is not a mere moral decision that rectifies our conduct in life, but rather a choice of faith that wholly involves us in close communion with Jesus as a real and living Person. To repent and believe in the Gospel are not two different things or in some way only juxtaposed, but express the same reality. Repentance is the total “yes” of those who consign their whole life to the Gospel, responding freely to Christ who first offers himself to humankind as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, as the only One who sets us free and saves us. This is the precise meaning of the first words with which, according to the Evangelist Mark, Jesus begins preaching the “Gospel of God”: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15).

Sometimes the ideas of the biblical text burst the banks of the intellect, as it were, and become like a light to see or like food to eat. The truths become as sweet and strengthening as a feast.

And, if the prevailing theory is true, the Easter Islanders started to starve before the fall of their civilization. In other words, even after it had stopped providing for them, it retained its fatal proficiency at sustaining a fixed pattern of behaviour. And so it remained effective at preventing them from addressing the problem by the only means that could possibly have been effective: creative thought and innovation. Attenborough regards the culture as having been very valuable and its fall as a tragedy. Bronowski’s view was closer to mine, which is that since the culture never improved, its survival for many centuries was a tragedy, like that of all static societies.

Origen Commentary on Matthew Judas means “confessor.” Luke the Evangelist numbers both “Judas the son of James and Judas Iscariot” among the twelve Apostles (Luke 6:16). Since two of Christ’s disciples were given this same name and since there can be no meaningless symbol in the Christian mystery, I am convinced that the two Judases represent two distinct types of confessing Christians. The first, symbolized by Judas the son of James, perseveres in remaining faithful to Christ. The second type, however, after once believing and professing faith in Christ, then abandons him out of greed. He defects to the heretics and to the false priests of the Jews, that is, to counterfeit Christians, and (insofar as he is able) delivers Christ, the “Word of truth,” over to them to be crucified and destroyed. This type of Christian is represented by Judas Iscariot, who “went out to the chief priests” (Matt. 26:14) and agreed on a price for betraying Christ.

As Frederick Buechner1 says, Easter means “we can never nail him down, not even if the nails we use are real and the thing we nail him to is a cross.

Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.

Before this Alaska trip, I don’t think I’d actually ever experienced a problem with hunger. Food’s always been available and I usually ate it because it was time for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Or because I was stressed or bored. Or because it was just…there. The Japanese call this kuchisabishii, which literally means “lonely mouth” and describes our constant mindless eating. I couldn’t recall the last time I experienced stomach-deep hunger lasting more than a day.

During the crisis many churches took their Sunday and other gatherings online, and to their surprise they often got many times more viewers than they had members. It meant that at least some people were “looking in” who previously had not thought they needed spiritual resources. What we all need in such frightening times is faith in the resurrection.