Sunday noitcelfeR

 

Today, the Christian church marks the resurrection of Jesus in a holy day named for a pagan goddess of spring and fertility. 

Does anyone else see the irony? And, in a very true sense, the hypocrisy. 

Jesus notably said Nicodemus had to be born again. The Jesus Movement of the late Sixties and Seventies took that phrase "born again" and twisted it into a fixed point in time for all believers to be "saved." When I was in college, my pre-disciple period, I could always dismiss the Christian Varsity proselytizers who interrupted my study time by saying, "Why, yes, I'm born again" and giving a random date. They'd "Praise the Lord!" and move on, leaving me in peace to study for upcoming exams.

It bothered me that they thought they could measure my soul's disposition by a few empty shibboleths. That sort of thing is exactly what kept me out of churches for ten years: ritual words, lip service, and a failure to connect with the Holy Spirit.

I heard a story from a friend, that an erstwhile apostle asked a homeless man, "Are you saved?" "Yes," the man replied. "When were you saved?" the young missionary pressed. "About two thousand years ago," the man said.

He didn't need Easter, or a church, or a ritual of litanies and gestures. I'm sure as I am of God that Jesus would have said, "Go your way, your faith has saved you."

In these pandemic times ~ no, I'm not returning to congregational worship yet because I know members of my church are opposed to vaccines and masks ~ I have been pondering the term "congregation of the faithful." Churches like that phrase because they twist it to mean "worship in the pews" or "church membership." 

I've never read it that way. 

I attended Christian music festivals, and on a hillside with six hundred other people, God was present in power. In the early days of AOL, I would sometimes meet in a private chatroom with other Christians from all over the world, and we'd text-pray, and the Holy Spirit showed up with us. I spent years in youth ministry where teens from about a hundred different churches gathered, not in church, but in prayer, and there God was in the midst of us. 

If you celebrate Easter, consider celebrating not just the resurrection of Jesus, but the resurrection of your own soul.