I Hope You Die (Happy Easter)

Often for Easter we celebrate as if to say to Jesus, 

"Congratulations, you have been resurrected!"

Really Easter is Jesus saying to us,
"Congratulations, YOU have been resurrected!"

-Richard Rohr

I grew up in a faith tradition that was obsessed with the resurrection. We saw it as proof of Jesus' divinity, our own religion's victory, and our main selling point for evangelism.... how holy. 

Lately though, I've found a lot more meaning in the Crucifixion. 

I've found solidarity in a God who stands on the side of the oppressed. 

I've found solace in a God who is persecuted by his own religion.

I've found hope in a God who is as human as I am.

I've found strength in a God who suffers. 

I've found myself in a God who dies, just as I've found myself in my own death. 

In the death of everything I was told to be, in the loss of all I believed and hoped for, I am finding that I am so much more. I am more human and more holy when I let go of all I once held onto. I think this is what Jesus meant when he told us to pick up our own cross. I think it's what Paul meant when he said, "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." I think the spiritual path was always supposed to mean dying to what we were told to be. 

The hope I hold onto this Easter is the possibility that in loss and dying, we are given new life. 

So to all my friends, I hope you die. 

I hope you experience suffering that reveals your great strength and I hope you lose everything that makes you small. And most of all, I hope you find your very own resurrection. 

"Resurrection is another word for change, 

but particularly positive change- which we tend to see only in the long run. 

In the short run, it often just looks like death." 

-Richard Rohr (again)