A FAITH OF EVOLUTION: THE IMPORTANCE OF HOLY WEEK
I felt the urge to reshare this devotional I wrote last year about Jesus entering Jerusalem for the time Christians honor as Holy Week.
More specifically it is on my heart to remind those who honor this week to not rush to Good Friday, and don't rush to the Resurrection.
There is a deep importance of sitting with the experience of Jesus entering the city all the way to his crucifixion. Jesus represented a better theology, a better personal and communal ethic, and a better embodiment of love.
And yet this offering was still rejected. He wasn't crucified because God required his suffering, he was crucified because people refused to open their hearts and minds to a better embodiment of faith and God's love for us.
This week it is important for Christians to examine how we embody our faith. We have people doing the work that Jesus started, but we'd rather crucify them in modern ways because we'd rather cling to the familiarity of doctrine and traditions that do not honor the divinity and humanity in our neighbors.
Every time we find it within our power to tell our Queer siblings that they are sin, evil, and other destructive language, we commit another crucifixion.
There has been research and scholarship that tells us that how scripture was once interpreted and used is incorrect and harmful, and yet we refuse to change because it requires a confrontation of ourselves and the power we've acquired from hate.
Every time we turn Christianity into a power structure dependent on domination and the erasure of other faith traditions and beliefs, we commit another crucifixion.
The life of Jesus was one that saw the value of all people of all faiths and from all spaces.
Every time that we leap to excuse the harmful actions of the church and those serving within it, but rush to shame, diminish, and ignore the suffering & trauma caused by those of us inside and outside of the church, we commit another crucifixion.
Instead of prioritizing the suffering of our communities as Jesus did, we take comfort in the systems of supremacy that allow us to put restrictions on the capacity of God's love and care that we are charged to extend to one another.
I'm saying all of this because the life of Christ and the value in his story is lost if we continue to celebrate his overcoming of evil, while still embodying it and perpetuating it in our world today.
This week should challenge us to evaluate our perspectives and living out of our faith. We should be able to see where we have been the crowd celebrating his arrival to Jerusalem, and the same crowd anxious to crucify him for not fitting into our understanding of life and faith.
The history of the world, and specifically of this country is one that holds way too many crucifixions, and not enough restoration and resurrection of life.
This week should push us to set new and better intentions of embodying the love and teachings of Christ. It should push us to take accountability of how we have chosen to crucify way more than make room for the beauty, diversity, and divinity of all of creation.
If our theology and christology is dependent on power structures and judgement of what we don't fully understand, we miss out on the good news that Jesus sought to offer years ago, and those today who seek to offer that same love and news in all spaces to all people.
It's not enough to simply make room for the underdog, we have to stop participating in hateful ideas and beliefs that convince us that the ultimate purpose of the underdog requires their suffering on a cross.
Jesus didn't die so that we would continue to pick up a hammer and nails instead of love and an open door.
