Tag Archives: Easter

How to make a muddle of the Resurrection

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All it requires is an Anglican archbishop.

Here is Archbishop Linda Nicholls taking a simple historical fact and miring it in mushy obfuscation.

This starts well but quickly descends in treacly vagueness:

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the event that defines Christian faith. It is the unique event that affirms Jesus’s identity; and confirms, with power, all that Jesus taught about the love of God. It changes everything for the disciples, who must reframe all they expected through the lens that God is acting in life and even through death into new life. Without the resurrection, as St. Paul says in 1 Cor 15:13-14, 19, our faith is useless and we are to be pitied. With the resurrection we enter the lifegiving possibilities that God opens to us through Jesus Christ in every situation and moment of our lives. We share in the resurrection as the principle of God’s life in and through us.

[……..}

The gift of the resurrection of Jesus is the promise that—whether embraced slowly or quickly—the power of God’s love is stronger than the pain, sin and sorrows of what we see. Since Jesus lives, we will too, by entering into the reality that God is both with us now and waiting for us in the future, even if that future looks very different from what we have known in the past.

After emerging coughing from the fog of “entering into the reality that God is both with us now and waiting for us in the future, even if that future looks very different from what we have known in the past”, I consoled myself with the thought that I am a simple soul and, as such, merely cling to the hope that Jesus came back to life along with a real, improved body as evidence that he had overcome sin and death and reconciled us to the Father. Not only that, He a demonstrated that we, too, will rise from death with real bodies to join him. Just like it says in 1 Cor 15:13ff in the bits that Nicholls missed out.

No Resurrection in the Diocese of Niagara

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Rev. Wayne Fraser thinks the resurrection of Jesus never happened.

Apparently, if we disbelieve in the central tenet of Christianity, “our eyes are opened to see so much more”. We can see that Christianity is essentially political, we can recite tired cliché’s such as speaking truth to power, instead of confronting and repenting of our own sin we can do something much easier: “confront injustice where we find it”, we can stop believing in Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, and we can tell each other things we don’t actually believe like “Alleluia! Christ is Risen”.

And people wonder why we fled the Diocese of Niagara.

From here (page 6):

When I became an adult, I realized the Sunday School teacher had been right. A physical resuscitation of a human body is impossible. The heart will not accept what the brain rejects. What do we celebrate on Easter morning? Without insistence on physical resuscitation, our eyes are opened to see so much more. Understanding the political and religious contexts of the execution of Jesus by Rome, we see the injustice of the state and the courage of the Anointed One to speak Truth to Power. “What is Truth?” Pilate asked, unable or unwilling to see it plainly standing before him. Freed from a literal reading of the gospel accounts of a physical Resurrection, we see the growing enlightenment of the disciples and experience the deep symbolism of the Easter story. We become Resurrection people, enabled to confront injustice where we find it, to love our neighbours as ourselves, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry and befriend the stranger. No longer having to believe the Crucifixion as a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, we can rejoice in the Original Blessings of this life and the At-one-ment of the Indwelling Spirit. Love over and around us lies and we can tap into that source of strength as Jesus did to forgive seventy times seven, to begin anew when we err and to nourish abundant life for all creation. On Easter we can sing together, “Praise with elation, praise every morning, God’s recreation of the new day.” And we can greet one another, “Alleluia! Christ is Risen

The Reverend Dr. Wayne Fraser is Interim Pastor at St.Paul’s (you remember, St. Paul the fellow who said “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” That puts Reverend Dr. Wayne Fraser’s preaching into perspective, at least) Dunnville and can be reached at fraserwayne@gmail.com.

A Green Easter in TEC

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In Katharine Jefferts Schori’s Easter missive, the message of Jesus’ Resurrection is like the seed scattered among the thorns: it is choked by weeds – green weeds.

In reading her Easter guide to spring planting, I remain uncertain as to whether or not the gardener is Jesus. I note the lack of a capital “G”. He himself is planted and then spring[s] up green, so my abiding suspicion is that this is nothing other than a roundabout way of encouraging churches to enhance their electrical plant by installing more rooftop solar panels.

Meaning does occasionally struggle defiantly to raise its head in this epistle, but it is ruthlessly suppressed by the keen mind of the Presiding Bishop.

You can read the whole panegyric to Easter shrubbery here:

She peers in once more – who are these, so bold appearing? “Fear not, woman… why do you weep?” She turns away and meets another, who says the same – why do you weep, who are you looking for? This gardener has himself been planted and now springs up green and vibrant, still rising into greater life. He challenges her to go and share that rising, great news of green and life, with those who have fled.

Still rising, still seeking union with Creator, making tender offering to beloved friends – briefly I am with you, I am on my way. Go and you will find me if you look.

The risen one still offers life to those who will look for evidence of his gardening – hope, friendship, healing, reunion, restoration – to all who have been uprooted, cut off, to those who are parched and withered, to those who lie wasting in the desert. Why do we weep or run away when that promise abides?

We can find that green one, still rising, if we will go stand with the grieving Marys of this world, if we will draw out the terrified who have retreated to their holes, if we will walk the Emmaus road with the lost and confused, if we will search out the hungry in the neighborhood called Galilee. We will find him already there before us, bringing new and verdant life. The only place we will not find him is in the tomb.

An Anglican Church of Canada Easter

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It’s all about politics, apparently: “oppressive political regimes, torture, capital punishment, non-violent political action, and martyrdom.”

From here:

The church where I served as student minister has a number of very large stained glass windows: Christ with the children, the women at the empty tomb, and a rather lurid depiction of Christ on the cross, featuring a great deal of purple and agony. My son was three years old while we were at this particular parish and, of course, he loved that crucifixion. As a result, we (or rather, my husband and son, as I was generally otherwise occupied at church) talked quite a lot about Christ’s death, conversations that naturally (for my husband and son, at least) became conversations about oppressive political regimes, torture, capital punishment, non-violent political action, and martyrdom. Holy Week is not for the faint of heart.

According to the Rev. Rhonda Waters, the “good news of God’s Kingdom” is not that Jesus bore our sins on the cross, suffered the wrath of God on our behalf, reconciled us to God the Father and ensured that we would live with him in eternity. No, that is far too trite; instead Easter invites us to confront the really profound truths that the “world is a deeply loved and loveable place”. Non-transcendent Christianity at its finest:

Jesus still taught the radical good news of God’s Kingdom because the world is not a hopeless place. In fact, the world is a deeply loved and loveable place, and Holy Week invites us to confront the depth of both of these truths.

As is so often the case with vapid Christianity, the pageantry is the only part that remains intact – even the Resurrection, although I suspect it signifies something different to the author:

As Christians, we need to experience Holy Week in its fullness—and we should include our children in that journey. By participating in Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil, and finally the Feast of the Resurrection on Sunday morning.

Although Jesus’ death was at the hands of the Romans, the instigators were the religious authorities of the day – an unpalatable truth for Waters, probably because, given the opportunity, the religious establishment would do it again. So the villain was empire building:

empire will go to horrifying lengths to preserve itself

Fred Hiltz’s Easter message misses the mark

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Primate Fred Hiltz delivered his Easter message on video. You can watch it all here (I’m sure he would be grateful: it only has 52 hits thus far). Most of it is maudlin Residential School hand-wringing delivered in a lugubrious monotone. This next clip I found interesting, though:

Holy Week is “all about reconciliation”, of course but not primarily reconciliation with one another: it is firstly and most importantly about reconciliation with God under whose wrath we justly find ourselves until delivered by the penal substitutionary atonement of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

In the Anglican All You Need is Love Church of Canada, God’s wrath, our sin, our deserving of punishment, our inability to “do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us” have all been buried in the bog of sentimental liberal theological mush that has been oozing into the denomination for decades.