Today is the day on which believing Christians remember and celebrate the execution by crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. The word “celebrate” may sound strange applied to a story of betrayal, torture and painful death, all of which Jesus endured on this day. The celebration is inspired by the belief that through his suffering Jesus redeemed the human race from the punishments God had inflicted on us for our sins. The believers are not celebrating suffering but redemption – though the unavoidable fact is you can’t have one without the other.
Redemption involves suffering. It also involves hard work and, in most cases, some serious personal changes. Whether it’s scraping together the cash to get your late mother’s wedding ring back from the Pawn Shop or regaining the respect of a person or group you had needlessly offended, redemption means that you looked yourself in the face, didn’t like what you saw and did something about it.
The sin Jesus was redeeming us from was the human race’s first disobedience, eating the forbidden fruit, which got us thrown out of paradise and made us subject to the human condition – things like pain, work, illness and death. God offering his own son to atone for this sin opened the door to us to escape from these mortal problems in a glorified afterlife. The condition (there’s always a condition) is that if we are to participate in Jesus’ redemption, we must take that hard look at ourselves and follow his teachings and example.
While it’s up to each one of us to decide if this story is the core and foundation of our religious faith or a piece of religious mythology, we need to pay attention, especially today. Mythology should never be underestimated. Myths that last for centuries last because they’re telling us something important, something true. The truth is that that human race is just as much in need of redemption as it’s always been. To get specific and personal, the United States of America is as much in need of redemption today as the Children of Israel were under the heel of the Roman Empire. We’re living under an oppressive rule, and Jesus is nowhere in sight.
So it looks like we’ve all got to be our own Jesus. We’re not looking to get into Paradise, just back to the American Democracy we made the mistake of taking too much for granted. We’re going to have to lug a lot of crosses up a lot of hills to do it. Our starting point might well be a statement from the man who went to the cross for us – “The truth will set you free”. That would be sticking to the actual, real verifiable unspun truth in all matters great and small and also, just as important, to the mythological truth of America, the land of the free. It’s the truth underlying that American mythology that’s at stake here.
We need both more than ever on this not so good Friday. And a few real Christian values like kindness, mercy and treating all people as neighbors not enemies wouldn’t hurt either. Resurrection is going to take more than three days but we’ll get there.
Redemption involves suffering. It also involves hard work and, in most cases, some serious personal changes. Whether it’s scraping together the cash to get your late mother’s wedding ring back from the Pawn Shop or regaining the respect of a person or group you had needlessly offended, redemption means that you looked yourself in the face, didn’t like what you saw and did something about it.
The sin Jesus was redeeming us from was the human race’s first disobedience, eating the forbidden fruit, which got us thrown out of paradise and made us subject to the human condition – things like pain, work, illness and death. God offering his own son to atone for this sin opened the door to us to escape from these mortal problems in a glorified afterlife. The condition (there’s always a condition) is that if we are to participate in Jesus’ redemption, we must take that hard look at ourselves and follow his teachings and example.
While it’s up to each one of us to decide if this story is the core and foundation of our religious faith or a piece of religious mythology, we need to pay attention, especially today. Mythology should never be underestimated. Myths that last for centuries last because they’re telling us something important, something true. The truth is that that human race is just as much in need of redemption as it’s always been. To get specific and personal, the United States of America is as much in need of redemption today as the Children of Israel were under the heel of the Roman Empire. We’re living under an oppressive rule, and Jesus is nowhere in sight.
So it looks like we’ve all got to be our own Jesus. We’re not looking to get into Paradise, just back to the American Democracy we made the mistake of taking too much for granted. We’re going to have to lug a lot of crosses up a lot of hills to do it. Our starting point might well be a statement from the man who went to the cross for us – “The truth will set you free”. That would be sticking to the actual, real verifiable unspun truth in all matters great and small and also, just as important, to the mythological truth of America, the land of the free. It’s the truth underlying that American mythology that’s at stake here.
We need both more than ever on this not so good Friday. And a few real Christian values like kindness, mercy and treating all people as neighbors not enemies wouldn’t hurt either. Resurrection is going to take more than three days but we’ll get there.
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