Frozen North

To everyone who may have thought I was going to Alaska in a month:
I guess I'm not!

Auferstehung (this is part 2)

A friend called me last night after reading that last entry, afraid I had either turned emo, or was feeling like ending it all, which makes me feel like perhaps I overdid the drama just a bit.
So let me put it this way – on that day I was feeling a fraction of the hollowness Jesus’ disciples must have felt on the day he died. The messiah, their one true hope, was going to change everything. He would destroy the hypocritical religious institutions, rip apart the oppressive government, overthrow the gluttonous economy and in their place establish a glorious kingdom of God!
And. Then. He. Died.
No one understood him, he was betrayed by those who he came to save, and then he died. And what was there left to hope for?
I know some people who were about ready to flee the country and move to Canada after the outcome of the last election. Jesus’ death must have been infinitely worse than “four more years.” Where is there to flee to after that?
If I’m using political terms here, it’s because the whole thing is very much about a political situation, and on Saturday I felt very much like a zealot. I wanted Jesus to come back and fix everything in a way that I could understand. And of course, I did not understand at all.
This was the attitude I took with me to church on Easter. Because things seemed the same as they were when Jesus first came, because the world was not made anew, the only answer I had for His death was that the world was simply not good enough for Him. And really, that’s not a very good answer.
But God, believe it or not, was ready to meet me there. Our pastor directly questioned the prevailing answers about Jesus’ death – that he died to undo some spiritual bond, so we could have a relationship with God.
“This may offend some of you,” he said, “but when I hear that I just want to say ‘What the hell?’”
And, well to me “What the hell,” sounded like a relief compared to my harsher prayers the day before.
Now Jesus’ mission on earth did allow us to know God more deeply, and I truly believe that. But now I understand it on a deeper level.
Jesus came to change what it means to be a king, what it means to rule. I wish I could just lay this out as if it were points of a sermon, but that’s not how the church service worked, and that’s now how this was revealed to me. I’m not even sure if I can write it well.
Had the world been wiped clean, had existence been overwritten, that would have been no victory.
The glorious firebombing of Earth, God’s failed experiment.
The heavenly reboot button for when the going gets tough.
The divine stomping of those tiny foolish kingdoms.
Oh Lord, how easy it is to see those things on the horizon. How truly our souls clench in fear – even when we wait for them with patience and zeal, how small and hard our hearts become. How hopeless we are . . .
But that is not God’s plan, and that is now how God works.
And suddenly, I breathe a sigh of relief that is both deep and wide, a breath I did not know I was holding in.
How great Your love for us!
Of course Jesus did not establish an earthly kingdom, because such power is a farce, coercive and only temporary.
Jesus is the true king. And his power is not religious. And it is not political. And it is not economic.
Here is a king, who lived courageously and taught what was true. He had absolute power, but when people turned against him, he did not destroy them, or force them to believe. He forgave them.
And then they killed him. And still, he forgave them.
And he lives!
Hallelujah, what power and what glory, what an upsidedown, beautiful kingdom!
I had a vision of Jesus that Easter – not a physical one, but a spiritual one I suppose, of Him clothed in white, lacking all of the signs of an earthy lord, lacking everything I thrash against as a half-way anarchist and full of wide open, sprawling joy.
Never before have I felt so full of love for Jesus.
And I could no longer stand up. I knelt, as I did before the cross the day before, in the presence of God.

Apokalipsis

I confess that sometimes I cannot wait for the end of the world. Because the world is nothing but vanity. So many people tuned out and stuck following patterns, chasing after the wind, in cycles of self-involved, selfish boredom. Self-imposed apathy. And meanwhile wars are raging and people are starving, and all around me everyone is posing for family portraits in the photo studios, drowning in pop radio and excess, agonizing over video rentals and dying without meaning, and there is so much horror in the world that we work so relentlessly to gloss over (myself very much included), that I find sometimes I am overwhelmed with a desire to see all that horrible truth burst from the sky and come cascading down, inescapable, like that scene in The Shining when an ocean of blood bursts from the elevator doors.
Lord, I want to see this façade, this farce of an existence, torn to shreds.
It is the Saturday before Easter and I am kneeling before a wooden cross in a room lit by candles. I am supposed to be reflecting on what Jesus’ death. I should be focusing on redemption and repentance, being made clean and blameless by his suffering.
But I can’t.
And this is my prayer:
I feel fed up with this world, tired of fighting it, tired of fighting myself, sick with inadequacy and hopeless, and I don’t really see how it matters that my sins were forgiven. I still sin every single day – You call us to be perfect, but still I am not perfect. Maybe I don’t have enough faith, but I’ve yet to meet a perfect person, and the people who think they are perfect seem to be the furthest from it. This is obvious.
And I realize, I realize, that Your death abolished sin and death and I should be grateful, but honestly? I don’t see any end in sight. People still cling desperately to their sins. Who can lead them? They would not even listen to You when You walked with them! What hope does Your imperfect, fallen church have?
So Lord, I know that it is wrong, but I am filled with a zealous rage for the end of the world.
You came to establish the Kingdom of Heaven. Apparently. I mean that’s what they say.
But Lord, Lord, You could have ripped this world asunder. You could have unveiled something glorious and sparkling and new and blameless. Lord of the Universe – You could have done anything!
But You didn’t.
You died.
And why, exactly?
So I could be washed clean?!
I would like to believe that. I really, really would, but look at me.
You call this clean?
I don’t feel clean. And beyond that, this world does not feel redeemed.
I’m sorry, Jesus, but I do not see how this world could even BE redeemed. Just wipe it out. Please. Me and everyone. Soon. Now. I don’t care.
Today, at the foot of this cross, the most uplifting message I can scrape together is that Christ was too good for the world. Or something. But I can’t even seem to cling to that.
There are only two sour prayers echoing in my mind:
The first is that I ache for the end of the world
The second is a phrase I’ve always forbidden myself from thinking, but now it throbs inside of my spirit, like a dull, shapeless bruise.
I cannot help it.
I cannot help but pray, “God damn it.”

...

(this is only part one, taken from last Saturday . . . part two is coming . . .)

Superstar Judas

A little while back an ancient document containing a manuscript called The Gospel of Judas finally made it into the hands of the sort of people who study translate such things. Although apparently there's an unwritten rule about making this sort of document available to other scholars and the general public as soon as possible, something of a gag order was placed on The Gospel of Judas until two weeks ago when National Geographic put out a book and TV special about it, and just in time for Easter.
There's something rather sensational just about the name "The Gospel of Judas," and the press was all over the story. I know this because Marv Meyer, one of the super-secret elite team of international scholars to work on the project is a professor at Chapman University where, I work in the PR department. I got to see the media blitz first-hand. Not that I was all THAT impressed by it. After all, Happenings, the Chapman staff and faculty newsletter that I am managing editor of, broke the story before it hit the international press, meaning I will forever be able to say that I scooped the New York Times. How's that for hard-hitting journalism???
Of course The Gospel of Judas is not nearly as shattering or newsworthy as it has been hyped to be. It's arguments are nothing new, it's been known to exist for over 1200 years (although it was lost for most of that time), and quite obviously it was not actually written by Judas.
There's a great article about the whole ordeal in the New Yorker right here that hits pretty much everything I would want to say about it, actually.
EXCEPT
1). I scooped the New York Times!
and
2). There is serious talk of making The Gospel of Judas the cover story of the next issue of Chapman Magazine because the connections between it and The DaVinci Code (which is amazingly STILL on the Best Seller list -- it seems that there must be more copies of that book than literate adults in America by now) are too great to pass up. Which is fair, I guess, that's good PR or something. Except that we put Marv Meyer on the cover of Chapman Magazine over TWO YEARS AGO for the SAME reasons! Hasn't the zeitgeist moved on by now? Or are we doomed to keep hyping the hype because others have hyped it?!
I probably am in the wrong industry.

xxxooo
Happy Easter