{"id":20479,"date":"2020-04-14T06:00:18","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T10:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/?p=20479"},"modified":"2020-04-14T20:06:03","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T00:06:03","slug":"dont-put-jesus-back-in-the-tomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/freelancechristianity\/dont-put-jesus-back-in-the-tomb\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Put Jesus Back in the Tomb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

During his Easter Sunday homily last year, my friend Mitch\u2014the rector of the Episcopal church I attend\u2014told the story of Gladys, a life-long pillar of her Congregational church, one of only three churches within a seventy-mile radius in her area of the rural Midwest; the other two were Lutheran and Roman Catholic. One fateful Easter morning, Gladys arrived with her three children in tow, ready for Easter festivities. The homily was given by young man who, according to Gladys, was \u201ctoo smart for his own good.\u201d The elements the sermon wove together included spring, new life, and baby rabbits, but nary a word was said about Jesus or the resurrection. That was Gladys\u2019 last time at the Congregational church; starting the next Sunday she and her family joined forces with the Lutherans down the road, a church where, according to Gladys, \u201cthey at least knew how to get Jesus out of the tomb!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So how do we who profess the Christian faith get Jesus out of the tomb and keep him out, two millennia after the supposed historical event that was celebrated last Sunday? Because after all, Gladys\u2019 complaints about the Congregational preacher notwithstanding, Easter is about more than the fact that Jesus supposedly walked out of the tomb he had been in for three days. It is about transformation, new life, and how to live that new life on a daily basis. It\u2019s an affirmation of God\u2019s love for humanity, a statement that all are invited into relationship with the divine.<\/p>\n

I came across a CNN interview with Barbara Brown Taylor the morning after Easter that got me to thinking about this, as well as to considering the various ways that Christians manage to stuff Jesus back into the grave.<\/p>\n

CNN interview with Barbara Brown Taylor<\/a><\/p>\n

Taylor is one of my favorite writers on religion and spiritual matters; as she describes in the interview, one of the undoubted reasons that her books regularly hit the top of the New York Times best seller list, and that she is a speaker in great demand, is that she regularly \u201csays things that you aren\u2019t supposed to say,\u201d including the dark side of faith, leaving the Episcopal priesthood because of a faith crisis, and in her most recent book,\u00a0Holy Envy<\/em>, what every person of faith can and should learn from religious traditions other than her or his own.<\/p>\n

Writing and speaking about such questions and topics have, not surprisingly, attracted both high praise and severe criticism. As the interview reports, the sharpest criticism has, sadly but not surprisingly, come from a certain type of Christian, people Taylor calls \u201ctrue believers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTrue believers are among the meanest people I\u2019ve ever met,\u201d she says, stretching out her legs in a cozy living room filled with books on poetry, religious icons and a photo of her posing with Oprah. \u201cI cannot think of anybody of another faith who has wounded me like Christians,\u201d she says. \u201cJudged, condemned to hell, cast out of the body of the faithful \u2014 look me up online.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sad to say that, in my own small way, I know what Barbara Brown Taylor is talking about. I find myself in communication with people of faith and people of no faith on a regular basis, on my blog as it is shared through Patheos and various social media outlets. \u201cTrue believers\u201d are indeed mean people; strangely, they regularly justify their meanness with their faith.<\/p>\n

For instance, my Good Friday blog post focused on Jesus\u2019 crucifixion (big surprise), including wondering what the Good Friday story would tell us if it was not followed three days later by the resurrection.. I wrote that \u201cif the story ended with Jesus executed as a criminal and dead in a tomb, we still would have reason to believe in a God of love. Our very existence, as well as the existence of the reality we inhabit, is evidence of God\u2019s choice to create in order to love\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually, He Died<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n