Today is Holy Saturday, that period of mourning, disillusionment, anger, fear, and other heart-wrenching emotions that occurs between our recognizing the realities of injustices and tragedies of the past and present, and our harboring the hopes for life and resurrection that hang on tenuously, if at all, for a better future.

Most years, sometime during the season of Lent, Jewish people observe Passover. I knew a little bit about it, but I learned a lot more at a friend’s son’s Bar Mitzva last week. The weekend of this Bar Mitzva included the Sabbath of the red heifer. I listened transfixed as the Rabbi spoke about it.

The practice of contemplating the Stations of the Cross, depicting the final hours of Jesus’ life, is a very old one. Many Catholic churches have gardens or sanctuaries in which the stations are situated.  Each of the 14 stations marks a point along the way to Jesus’ death.

Have you ever wondered what Jesus did to deserve being tortured and crucified to death? How could someone so good be treated so inhumanely?

Now, I know Jesus taught his disciples to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. And following Jesus is something I take super-seriously. But I’m angry and worried, and pretty much everyone in the United States is. It isn’t easy to follow those particular instructions.

40 days & 40 nights:
A Journey of Prayer and Contemplation

Jesus is not my scapegoat / for any wrong I’ve done
It isn’t fair to place on him / what he had never done

If we all have a soul, and that soul contains the image of God or God’s virtues and values, then our individual deaths are not the end of what is most important about us. It is shared by all.

The pre-Easter Jesus is the historical Jesus, the Jesus before his crucifixion and the experience of Easter Sunday.  He is the Jesus of history, the Jesus who grew up in the peasant village of Nazareth and who, around the age of thirty, launched a public ministry that changed the world.  However, trying to unpack who this Jesus was as an historical person is a daunting task. 

O God, let us take in the moment of this day of crucifixion, not remembering it in the context of what came after it, but how it left Jesus’ disciples and followers in tragic sadness and heart-wrenched disillusionment.

Death does not speak the final word. Resurrection does. Christianity stands or falls with this central confession: God raised Jesus from the dead.

Sugar Maples remind us to tap into our core in transitional seasons when life itself sometimes hangs in the balance, tossed to-and-fro between the fluctuating extremes of faith and doubt, sickness and health, or fear and courage. Crises tend to dim and blind our exterior self as we awaken to and free fall toward our inner self, and with it the few things that matter.

Even as we consider all the facts, the basic story that emerges is quite simple. The disciples were re-born while they lived with Jesus, and his death neither deterred nor discouraged them.  Instead, they turned to one another and embraced, fully aware in their hearts that he was not only still with them, but also that the newness he embodied embraced the universe. This was the bedrock of their faith and forms the foundation for the day we call Easter.

A progressive Christian encounter with the Easter story that situates it within the longer story of sacred love and within our lives today.

“What does it mean to be a Progressive Christian? Listen to ProgressiveChristianity.org Co-Executive Director Rev. Dr. Caleb J. Lines examine the 8 Points of Progressive Christianity throughout Lent, continuing with Points 3 & 4.”

On a Friday a little over 2000 years ago Love was hung from a tree, nailed to a cross because of sin, and God I am not sure how the whole world didn’t come apart that day, I don’t know how the whole cosmo’s didn’t collapse.

Rev. Lori Sawdon Easter Service from First United Methodist Church of Santa Rosa
on behalf of Rev. Lindsey Bell-Kerr, Christ Church Methodist of Santa Rosa

Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion – which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God’s will – from their own