In these past few years as I have learned from and experienced so many different faith traditions, I still find myself drawn to Christianity. I love the story and ritual and experience of it, and most of all I cannot look away from the fact that we are the one religion that killed our own god.
When Jesus was announced as a Messiah his followers believed he would save them. They lived in an oppressive government where they had to fight for their very existence. Their money and lives were not their own, they lived in constant risk and fear. They saw Jesus as a warrior who would overcome the government and set them free... it all held so much hope for a broken people.
And then he died.
Once again, they were left wondering where to put their trust and what they could hope in. I resonate with that experience more than I know how to fully articulate.
I think of all the things I've given myself to hoping they would save me. In work and in people, in seeking a way to define myself that makes sense. I've looked for what foundation to build my life upon hoping I would find some sort of safety. Until that thing I hoped for fell apart and I was left once again wondering where the next step was. And how do you make that first step when all the steps before weren't stable enough to hold you up? How do you move forward when nothing around you feels safe?
Now, it seems as if our whole culture is going through this with COVID. We're asking ourselves, "Who is safe?". When even our friends and family, our source of food and the places where we found one another feel dangerous- how do we find movement without being paralyzed by fear? What can we do when we can't even leave? So we sit here watching everything we gave our time and energy to fade away and we are left with ourselves in our homes.
We are collectively asking, where is safety and where is hope? What will save us?
As crazy as it sounds, I think there is a freedom in losing what you thought would save you. Because when we realize that none of these things- not the jobs or people, not the titles or churches are going to save us.. we are forced to let those things fade away and must choose to look within ourselves.
Not to jump too quickly to the end of the story, but in this narrative Jesus came back. He said that we were connected to the divine just as he was, he said that we would do greater things than he ever did. I think the whole message was that we were supposed to stop seeking god outside of ourselves and instead find we are safe in the fullness of our humanity. What is Jesus was fully human and fully divine not to save us from ourselves, but to save us from the illusion that divinity is separate from us.
As Richard Rohr said, Easter is not a time for humanity to say to god, "Congratulations, you have been resurrected". Instead it is a time for Christ... universe... the divine to say to us, "Congratulations, you may be resurrected".
So my resurrection prayer is that you would die to all you thought would save you. My hope for us all on this Good Friday is that we would find the essence of who we are, that holy light within us, the existence of ourselves that is beyond any definitions or limitations we could attempt to place on it. May we find our holiness intertwined with all of our humanity, and may we discover the life that comes after each death.
