I consider myself a Christian, and yet I often feel very confused by the imagery of Easter. Jesus’s death and resurrection are a mystery, and even though there have been moments when I felt I understood them in a profound way, I still feel baffled by their mystery. I often feel very uncomfortable with the Christian language that surrounds the Easter event and the ways in which this language has been distorted and misused by our culture. Yet this year, one thing that seems clear to me, strangely clear, is that it is possible to raise the dead. Jesus sends out his disciples with these mysterious instructions: “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.“ This might seem to be asking the impossible. Yet in this past year I feel that I have seen people raised from the dead, that I have been raised, and I have helped to raise others. There are ways in which we become dead, blocked, stuck, blind, sick, possessed. And there are moments when we are somehow able to be completely alive. Moments when we see someone else who is stuck and we reach out our hand. While I can’t claim to understand the mystery of Easter, I will try to walk through the world looking for those moments when I can be raised myself and then reach out my hand to the dead.
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I consider myself a Christian, and yet I often feel very confused by the imagery of Easter. Jesus’s death and resurrection are a mystery, and even though there have been moments when I felt I understood them in a profound way, I still feel baffled by their mystery. I often feel very uncomfortable with the Christian language that surrounds the Easter event and the ways in which this language has been distorted and misused by our culture. Yet this year, one thing that seems clear to me, strangely clear, is that it is possible to raise the dead. Jesus sends out his disciples with these mysterious instructions: “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.“ This might seem to be asking the impossible. Yet in this past year I feel that I have seen people raised from the dead, that I have been raised, and I have helped to raise others. There are ways in which we become dead, blocked, stuck, blind, sick, possessed. And there are moments when we are somehow able to be completely alive. Moments when we see someone else who is stuck and we reach out our hand. While I can’t claim to understand the mystery of Easter, I will try to walk through the world looking for those moments when I can be raised myself and then reach out my hand to the dead.
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