Usually by the time we get through a holiday, the endless marketing machines have usually stripped any holiday of it's zest and
distorted most of its meaning.
, this got me thinking about Easter and how churches have become the marketing machines in how they work so hard, putting on a good show in order to attract people and dollars to their church systems. With the help of paper mache rocks, flying angels, live
animals on the stage, they retell the passion story.
But is this the only time or place this story is told? Not even close.
We all experience some level of suffering. Most of us experience what it is like to be rejected, abused, forgotten, embarrassed, shamed, put down, tormented, kicked, demeaned or overlooked. Most of us will suffer terrible pain, either physically or emotionally.
People of all religions,
all walks of life, in all economic strata, and throughout all human history have not only experienced and endured prolong exposure to these terrible realities, but they have also managed to rise up.
Because this is such a common experience to all humanity, and because the stories that depict this rising up are so vivid and beautiful, many modern people attribute this as simply the "human story." I understand this, but the title minimizes what
is actually taking place.
What if instead of working so hard to focus people backward by retelling a story and fighting over whether it was real or not, people simply acknowledged that the messianic story is being lived out today in the lives of nearly everyone we meet?
If our motivations for leaving those things that keep us stuck, and small, and trapped, are pure, then our rising up is of faith. If our lives are transformed by
this process, then we become the embodiment of this amazing story. And the humanity that is reclaimed in the process is no longer our own, but shared. It's like entering a city--a kingdom.
There are two cities in front of all of us. The city that collapses countless resources into the retelling of the same old story in the same old way. And the city that continues to live out a new experience of the story that made it?
Which
city will you be?
Have a great week.
"Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity..." Hebrews 6:1-2
