Easter Op-eds

A few select quotes from the Good Friday opinion pages. They made quite intriguing reading today. I think the first piece challenges us to think about how we can make our churches more 'culturally-relevant' without changing the message. The second article by Melbourne Critic Peter Craven spoke about how Christian literacy is disappearing and that our culture lost something as a result. I was taken by the issue of 'truth' which was raised in the final two pieces.

I'm always blown away by the 'conclusion' to Mark's gospel, which I really identify with, as I could see myself responding in a similar manner on Good Friday, so I finished with two verses from Mark and Acts, which summarised to me the amazing transformation in the disciples; from fear and confusion to faith and certainty.

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As a report in The Age today shows, an increasing number of younger Australian Christians are seeking solace and spiritual comfort in smaller groups, away from a church that they regard as daunting and too institutional. They have a friend in Jesus, but, for them, Jesus has left the main building and is more easily sought in cafes, clubs, homes or galleries more hospitable to private contemplation and prayer.
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Even worse, we live in a culture of forgetting and any loss of knowledge of the icons of Christianity can seem like the loss of the most precious tokens in the world. Intellectuals don't come more secular and liberal — and Jewish — than the late Susan Sontag, but towards the end of her life she deplored the fact that most American art history students were not religiously literate enough to know the Stations of the Cross .... And this is more than a loss of symbol recognition. It's also a loss of a climate of feeling.
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If we knew for sure what happened, there'd be no need for faith: doubt is both the engine and the essence of faith.
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This order of truth is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago. It offers release from the bondage of despair, a basis for hope that what we know of our lives and deaths is not all there is to either, and trust in the intrinsic value of every human being and of the ultimate purpose God has for all humanity
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And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Mark 16:8

Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. (Apostle Peter)
Acts 2:36

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Good Friday - Easter Weekend.

At bible study last week we talked of our plans for the weekend. I have to confess that I am very glad that this is a four-day weekend. I am very glad for the break from work. And seriously, at this point it hasn't really entered into my mind _why_ we have this four days. I was not looking forward to Easter so that I might contemplate the reason for our hope.

:: Aside :: - Guan - a disease infected post is to come.. ;) :: End Aside ::

Deb posted a brief excerpt from an article that appeared in The Age during the week, about a church in Melbourne that was using an alternative worship styles to present the Easter Message. Thought I'd expand on my reflections a touch here, I think that there is perhaps some merit here - (IF, and only if it is framed properly)~ I think that emotion can play a valuable role in the expression and growth of our faith.

For example - the movie The Passion of the Christ, can provoke a deep a personal response to the death of Christ as an innocent. (Aside: If you were redoing the movie the Passion of the Christ - how would you emphasises the "spiritual/psychological" suffering of Christ to appease the Evangelicals?)

But there is a danger in not framing the emotional response, without giving a context, or a realisitic view of the struggles and pains of the Christian life?

Perhaps noone disputes that emotion can and should be used as servants, but if we are ruled, governed or lead solely by our emotion, this is a dangerous thing.

This was illustrated perhaps at the service I went to with my parents (at their church) this morning, didn't have a passage "preached on", or explained from the pulpit. John 19-20 was read, in stages. During the service, people came up to a wooden cross which had words - Hope, Joy, Faith, Love, and Peace, written on paper, and burned them, as they describes responses you could imagine the disciples would have had on that first Good Friday. I am sure that I couldn't sit through a service like this every Sunday, but I often think I need to hear the story afresh, anew, each Easter. Oh I intellectually know the story, but I think I need the Spirit to work that it might reasonate each year. That I would hear that wondrous story, that God became man, that God entered His creation and died, that we would not, as if for the first time.

Courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald, some reflections on Easter, and Good Friday.

Hugh Mackay.

The Radical Challenge of Easter - Editorial Good Friday, 2005.