David Henson, a candidate for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church who received his Master of Arts from Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley, CA), recently wrote what has become for me the most thought provoking post I have read this year on the topic of Easter. He writes:
Frankly, I don’t care if you believe Jesus was literally or metaphorically resurrected. And neither does Easter. I find it laughable we try to reduce the power of Easter to a proposition, as if the resurrection could be a prostitute for our petty debates about faith. A better conversation would involve a discussion about whether Easter is true rather than whether it is historical.
He then drives home his point with a statement followed immediately by a challenging question:
Easter asks us not to believe the resurrection, but to imagine it, to practice it. What would it look like if we imagined a world in which Easter is true, a world in which way of death, violence and oppression had been broken and robbed of their power?
So What?
This year, why not set aside the intellectual inquiry that seeks to explore or explain the details of your preferred perspective or theological vantage on what Easter is in order to focus on seeking living the power of Easter? How would such an emphasis shape your world during this 50 day season?