“I don’t want to go to Heaven. None of my friends are there.” Oscar Wilde
A friend of mine at work recently asked for help in crafting a note to her department to commemorate the Easter holiday. The catch was, it could not be implicitly religious. For some reason I thought this was a somewhat funny request and so I sent her a snarky email. “Well,” I said, “Good luck with that. Easter is by nature a religious holiday.” She sent me a note back some time later and told me she felt terrible that so many people had been offended by her request. I actually wasn’t offended. I just thought it was funny. Easter without religion. As if!
In a similar vein, I have never paid much attention to Lent. So, when it began in February this year I gave it little thought until a co-worker and I were talking about Ash Wednesday. She told me that she and a friend have an annual tradition where they mock the religious folk who go to church that day and get ashes put on their foreheads. She mocked the sign of the cross and some of the pious things “they” say. “It’s all a bunch of nonsense,” she said. “As if putting ashes on your head actually does something.”
Everybody has their own idea of what religion is and does depending on their personal history, belief system and prejudices. Whether it be from television or the Jehovah’s witness that shows up on our doorstep trying to give us a magazine. We all form our assessment of reality based on personal experience. Our understanding of religion is no different. Preconceived notions abound and we aren’t casually convinced we should believe differently. I mean, sure, The Exorcist was scary, but we don’t actually believe there is a real devil. And if there was one, wouldn’t he have more important things to do than possess a little girl?
Still, we all have our little curiosities about faith. I watched a Hallmark movie recently called, “Apple Mortgage Cake” about a single mother who was down on her luck and 6 months behind on her mortgage. She was a very moral person who volunteered at a charity and gave career advice, even though she did was unable to personally find work. She made a practice of donating her famous apple cake for various community events and, upon being notified of her impending eviction, decided to start selling the cake in order to save her family home. At one point in the movie it appeared she wasn’t going to make her goal but she said something to her teenage boys along the lines of, “We just have to have faith.” And then, because it’s a Hallmark movie, a newspaper reporter offered to write an article about her plight, she became an overnight media sensation and they received hundreds of orders in a matter of hours. See? They just needed faith! But as I watched them bake all those cakes in one night I had to wonder… faith in what? Faith in religion? Faith in the apple cake recipe? Faith in the boyfriend who gave good advice? It wasn’t exactly clear, and all three contributed to the house being saved in the end. (sorry for the spoilers!)
I saw the Easter Bunny at Wal-Mart today. He was handing out suckers to children. Many of my good friends will celebrate Easter with a Sunday brunch. Fully bellies and family commemorate the holiday along with visuals of tulips, daffodils and the famous Easter Lilly. A lot of people will even put on nice clothes and go to church for an hour or so. They might hear a story about a guy who was born a long time ago, who claimed he had the power to forgive sins, maybe did some magic tricks and then died. Some zealots claim he rose from the dead, but who really believes that? Was Jesus the first zombie? Everybody knows there is no such thing. The Easter eggs will be consumed over the course of a week, then pitched, and the basket full of candy will diminish as it accumulates around the waistline. Everyone will relax until Memorial Day rolls around and they have another excuse for a big meal. Besides, if there is a god, he certainly doesn’t want me to starve!
What does it really matter if God is real? Who cares if there’s a heaven or hell? Maybe your religion is Cardinal Baseball. Who could fault you for that?
But maybe you are reading this and you have real questions. Maybe you recently found out there is an 80% chance you won’t be around this time next year. Maybe you just stood over the grave of the person you never thought would die. Maybe all your faith in miracles was crushed when you didn’t have apple mortgage cake to save your family home. Maybe you are dealing with crippling anxiety or back pain or a horrible auto-immune disorder that promises to make the rest of your life particularly miserable. Maybe you do have questions but asking them means giving legitimacy to something you have always considered mockable. Maybe all your friends and family will laugh at you if they found out.
But maybe no matter how much you try to squash them, your niggling doubts won’t subside. Maybe you have only your tears to keep you company as you lay awake at night wondering if he or she will ever come back, will ever hold you again, say “I love you” again. Maybe the disappointments in life have stacked so high that you feel crushed beneath the weight of them.
Maybe, just maybe, this blog was written exclusively for you.
“He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.” Isaiah 25:8
What if the bible isn’t full of religious mumbo jumbo? What if the bible speaks of a loving father who yearns for relationship with wayward children? What if it speaks of justice for an oppressed people with instructions for how to care for widows and orphans? What if the greatest commandment ever given was to love your neighbor as yourself and then describes a neighbor that does not share your ethnicity? What if the bible actually speaks about a God who is willing to take off his royal robes, leave his throne room, enter into the suffering of his people? Doesn’t that kind of God sound more like, well, a hero?
But maybe all you’ve ever seen is people who pretend to be “righteous” but are actually hateful. Maybe all you’ve ever experienced is judgmental bigots who condemned behavior they didn’t agree with. Maybe you have only ever been on the receiving end of words that broke your heart, justified abuse, or made you feel as if you could never, ever be good enough. And so, you just stopped trying.
Well, I have really good news for you. The bible is for people just like you.
A co-worker shared with me last week that she planned to attend church services for Easter but she is wary of the people, and so she sneaks in and out and speaks to as few people as possible. She said, “It’s because I don’t know everything.” I smiled and said, “I too am easily intimidated by religious people because I don’t know everything either.”
But I do know a good place to go when I have questions.
In the book of Luke (7:36) the author describes Jesus receiving love and care from a woman who is a “sinner.” The religious men of that day give him a hard time about it. Jesus forgave her sins and these guys sat there and said, “who is this, who even forgives sins?” And they hated him. The religious people hated Jesus. And so they figured out a way to kill him.
In the gospel of John, Jesus talks to his friends and says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” The world’s peace is not real peace. It is fleeting. By that I mean that we think a thing will satisfy us, but it doesn’t. We think the cigarette will satisfy our craving, but it returns in a short time. We think food will satisfy us, but our hunger returns. We think the drug will numb our pain but it wears off. We think the new car will remove fear of breaking down, but then we have an accident.
In the gospel of John, Jesus speaks with a woman at a well (John 4). “Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
I want that kind of water, the water that delivers eternal peace. In a world of constant violence, who doesn’t want peace?
Jesus is not afraid of your questions. He knows the hungers of your heart. He knows your anguish, your fears and your history. And he says come, drink, and you will never be thirsty again.
There is someone I love very much who tells me that every night he lays down to sleep and asks God to forgive his sins but he doesn’t actually believe God can do that. He lives with deep regret and the dark shadows of wounds he has caused and born in the course of a long life. But the bible says God can and will forgive sins, even the worst sins, because he loves us. And he proved it on the cross.
Easter is the day when people who love Jesus celebrate the moment he rose from the dead after being killed for the sins of everyone in the world. If I was sinless, I wouldn’t need a savior. But I do. And maybe you are reading this and realize you do too.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” – Jesus
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