Category Archives: Easter

If you want to understand Easter watch The Life of Brian

Posted on by
2

Christmas and Easter bring out the worst in Anglican Church of Canada clergy.

The rest of the year they content themselves by waxing eloquent on the evils of climate change, women’s reproductive rights, using correct pronouns, diversity, inclusion and non-binary gender categories.

The major Christian festivals call for major absurdities.

Thus, we have Rev. Michael Coren, currently employed by the Diocese of Niagara a bastion of deranged theology, advising Christians to see the 1979 film The Life of Brian for their Easter edification.

From here:

There’s one film that I highly recommend to anybody who wants to learn something about Easter. I refer to Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.” Confusion, extremism, religious pedantry, failure to grasp the message and laughter. Humour is big in the Gospels, if only people would understand it. Don’t, whatever you do, opt for Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” It’s more medieval caricature than ancient reality.

In case you haven’t seen it, The Life of Brian is a satire on Christianity, Christians, the church and Jesus. The Monty Python crew denied that it satirized Jesus, but it did.

I have nothing against satire directed at Christians – we do some odd things on occasion – but why would a clergyman point to a parody of his alleged beliefs to convince others of their truth?

When, I wonder, will we see a Monty Python film satirizing the life of Mohamed?

O Risen Lord

Posted on by
3

A song I wrote for Easter Sunday:

O Risen Lord                                  David Jenkins
The Son of God was hung upon a tree
to bear our sin; he died for you and me.
In pain and darkness, all our debt he paid:
a precious gift, to all who ask he gives.
Chorus
O risen Lord, ascend now to your throne, all of creation is yours.
O King of Kings, Redeemer of this world, all honour belongs to you now.

They nailed his hands, a spear pierced his side;
A crown of thorns was thrust upon his head.
As darkness fell his Father forsook him;
His cry was heard through heaven and through hell.

On the third day the stone was rolled away;
The tomb was empty, an angel standing there.
Folded grave clothes where the body lay,
Jesus, the Christ has risen from the dead.

(c) 2021 David Jenkins

Resurrecting the Anglican way: myth, confusion, uncertainty and doubt

Posted on by
1

The point about the Resurrection of Jesus is that by any normal standards it is so preposterous that it cannot possibly have happened. Unless God himself intervened and made it happen. There is no half-measure that will soften the absurdity of the claim: it doesn’t help to say Jesus was partly resurrected, “spiritually” resurrected, resurrected as a myth or resurrected as some quasi-mystical Jungian inner resurrection.

It is entirely binary, either/or. One moment there was a corpse, the next a living Jesus in a real body. Either believe it or don’t but, for God’s sake – and I mean that literally – don’t turn it into a watery imitation of what it claims to be. Like this:

Confusion about the resurrection continues to this day. I think that many of the original chronicles were essentially myths created by the first believers to help them make sense of events beyond human explanation. Their uncertainty is probably best summed up in a comment by one of the men at dinner in Emmaus—“We had hoped,” he said, “that he might have been the one who would redeem Israel.” But at this point, obviously, that hope was fragile.

Jesus makes an attempt to explain how his passion and death had long been intimated in the Hebrew scriptures; but even then, he is met by hesitant disbelief.

It took time and spiritual discernment for the early Christian community to come to experience the meaning, if not the actuality, of Jesus’ reappearance.

Eventually, however, “The Lord is risen; he is risen indeed!” became an experiential truth, a claim that many would make personally. Still later came the conviction that everyone could experience a personal resurrection just like Jesus. What started as a claim from a few confused people matured into a global confession of faith.

Recognizing how the reality of “resurrection” burst upon a perplexed group should remind us that there will always be stages of doubt as well as conviction. I continue to evolve in my own discernment of what it all means.

A gun-control Easter

Posted on by
1

Easter isn’t about bunnies, eggs and chocolate: it’s about gun control. According to Bishop Melissa Skelton’s Easter message, at least:

 As I write this, snow is on the ground covering the many crocuses and snowdrops that were just popping up last week to remind us that spring is indeed on the way. Also as I write this, almost two weeks have passed since the deadly shooting at a school in Florida in which young people and teachers lost their lives.
It’s hard to know sometimes how much news from the US affects us here in Canada, and given the fact that I was born in the US, I don’t always trust my instincts on such things. But as the news about the shootings in Florida spread, once again, Canadian after Canadian wanted to talk with me about it, about their perplexity at a society where access to guns, especially assault weapons, is so easy. And they wanted to talk to me about their amazement and awe at the young survivors of the shooting who overnight began speaking up and demanding stricter gun laws.

I don’t pretend to know much about guns nor am I particularly interested in them, but I am reasonably certain that “assault weapon” is a slippery term whose definition varies depending on who is using it: after all, a kitchen knife is an “assault weapon” if it is used to stab someone. Still, we mustn’t be too hard on Skelton because she is an Anglican bishop with years of seminary training in Biblical slipperiness to confuse her thinking.

Here is a list of assault rifles – a more precise term –  and they are not easy to obtain:

The US Army defines an assault rifle as follows:

“Assault rifles are short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a cartridge intermediate in power between submachinegun and rifle cartridges. Assault rifles have mild recoil characteristics and, because of this, are capable of delivering effective full-automatic fire at ranges up to 300 meters.”

Small Arms Identification and Operations Guide – Eurasian Communist Countries, pg 100 para 90

Real assault rifles are capable of automatic firing. Therefore, they are regulated by the federal government as machine guns under the Federal Firearms Act of 1934 and the completely misnamed Firearm Owners’ Protection Act of 1986. The Firearm Owners’ Protection Act entirely banned the new manufacture or importation of automatic weapons for civilian use. That left roughly 150,000 registered automatic weapons in private ownership and eligible for transfer between individuals. The transfer of such weapons is handled by the ATF’s NFA branch. Basically, anyone wanting to legally own a fully automatic weapon needs $15,000 to over $40,000 to buy a weapon from an already licensed owner willing to sell one of theirs, plus pay a $200 federal transfer tax, plus pass a background investigation of National Agency Check with 10-point fingerprinting.

A Green Easter in TEC

Posted on by
6

In Katharine Jefferts Schori’s Easter missive, the message of Jesus’ Resurrection is like the seed scattered among the thorns: it is choked by weeds – green weeds.

In reading her Easter guide to spring planting, I remain uncertain as to whether or not the gardener is Jesus. I note the lack of a capital “G”. He himself is planted and then spring[s] up green, so my abiding suspicion is that this is nothing other than a roundabout way of encouraging churches to enhance their electrical plant by installing more rooftop solar panels.

Meaning does occasionally struggle defiantly to raise its head in this epistle, but it is ruthlessly suppressed by the keen mind of the Presiding Bishop.

You can read the whole panegyric to Easter shrubbery here:

She peers in once more – who are these, so bold appearing? “Fear not, woman… why do you weep?” She turns away and meets another, who says the same – why do you weep, who are you looking for? This gardener has himself been planted and now springs up green and vibrant, still rising into greater life. He challenges her to go and share that rising, great news of green and life, with those who have fled.

Still rising, still seeking union with Creator, making tender offering to beloved friends – briefly I am with you, I am on my way. Go and you will find me if you look.

The risen one still offers life to those who will look for evidence of his gardening – hope, friendship, healing, reunion, restoration – to all who have been uprooted, cut off, to those who are parched and withered, to those who lie wasting in the desert. Why do we weep or run away when that promise abides?

We can find that green one, still rising, if we will go stand with the grieving Marys of this world, if we will draw out the terrified who have retreated to their holes, if we will walk the Emmaus road with the lost and confused, if we will search out the hungry in the neighborhood called Galilee. We will find him already there before us, bringing new and verdant life. The only place we will not find him is in the tomb.