Choose Life
As we prepare to enter Holy Week there are so many themes to explore, I find it almost impossible to know where to focus my mind and spirit. Death and resurrection are certainly obvious. There are other themes. Darkness and light. Slavery and freedom. Sin and forgiveness. Doubt and belief. Despair and hope. Sorrow and joy. Loss and victory. The list goes on and on.
Bear with me while I explore one other option. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection God invites us to choose life.
The stories we will hear and experience in worship during Holy Week can seem to be fairy tales stuck in “once upon a time.” We could easily read them as good stories that contain nuggets of truth meant to enlighten us. As with fairy tales we can read them as lessons for living a good life. The moral of the story becomes more important than the story itself.
But the stories we will read this coming week are not accounts of Greek gods and fictional characters. They are stories of very real people living through very real events. Let me note here that the gospels are not historical accounts in the way we understand history today. They aren’t based on written records but on oral tradition. No one was writing down Jesus’ words verbatim as he spoke. Over the two to three generations before the gospels were written details were lost and the chronology of events became confused. For example, John tells us Jesus’ ministry lasted three years while the synoptics —Matthew, Mark, and Luke — all seem to agree on one year.
But this does not mean the gospel writers were making it all up. Jesus was not a mythical god on Mt. Olympus but the human embodiment of God who walked and ate and healed and debated and taught and slept, all within the chronology of human history.
Why does this matter? Because Christianity is not a religion that teaches us about God. Ours is a religion that invites us to live in relationship with the living Christ. Christianity is less focused on giving assent to particular principles than to walking in the footsteps of Jesus. Take up the cross, eat bread and wine, heal the wounded, proclaim justice alongside the oppressed, trust in God’s abundance, make peace with your enemies, love your neighbors.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the early 19th century English poet and theologian, wrote, “Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.”
“Choose life,” Moses tells the people of Israel in the 30th chapter of Deuteronomy (v. 19). From the cross and the empty tomb Jesus invites us to do the same.
Whether in person or via our livestream, come hear the stories this Holy Week. Come participate in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Come and choose life.