Today is the day that Jesus went to hell, the place of the dead, with hope. If everyone else rightly abandoned hope in the inferno, Jesus came full of hope, faith and love and set the captives free. Death fought Hope and Hope won. As a boy, I used to think of Holy Saturday as the “day off” in the Holy Days. God died on Good Friday and the tomb was empty on Easter morning. Holy Saturday felt like a... Read more

“Jesus looks asleep.” The first time I saw Christ on the Cross on an Eastern icon, that was my thought. My very wise pastor said this representation said many things, but that two of them were the fact that Christ was in control and that the central fact of Good Friday was not the evil done to the Lord, but the good Jesus was doing. Jesus was making a very bad thing into a very good thing. We do not... Read more

One of the last things Jesus did before death was to eat and drink with His friends. In fact, during this last meal, Jesus served his students as if He were not the teacher and also transformed the relationship. Jesus said: Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. One of my... Read more

A cartoon character doesn’t fall until he looks down. Evidently, cartoon physics requires knowing something is wrong before things go wrong. Reality is tougher. If you have never worked at a place where bad news is the problem and not the bad ideas that caused the bad news, count yourself blessed. I have seen leaders look for data that confirmed their beliefs and become irritable over data that contradicted what the plan demanded. Jesus was the sort of person nobody ignored:... Read more

To see a son help carry his mother’s casket out of the church is hard. To do so without hope would be harder. Instead, today Hope and I experienced: “hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast . . . ” We were sad, but not without hope. There are reasons for this hope and arguments that could be made in favor of the rationality of the good news, but today was not a day for... Read more

Prayer as Necessary to the Dialectic  Today just for once I would like to pray well, meditate deeply, and discourse sincerely. These are all hard to do and doing all at once seems even harder, but this (perhaps!) has been my problem. Prayer is not meditation is not discourse, but the man who can pray well will meditate deeply and be able to discourse sincerely. Prayer is not meditation or discourse, just as breathing isn’t running or speaking, but it... Read more