Today is
Easter Sunday. Jesus is risen.
He appears
to some of his followers; women, to be exact. The women, astonished, tell the
men. The men don’t believe them.
Then Jesus
appears to the men. Then they believe.
Eventually,
the men will make themselves the rulers of the Church and make sure that women
never tell them anything ever again…
But Easter
will not be contained. It can’t possibly ever be tamed.
Easter is
the revolution- social, political, spiritual transformation.
If Christ
is raised, then nothing is impossible. How can we ever say, ‘that could never
happen’ ever again?
Nothing can
ever be the same. Anyone who thought the status quo could just go on as normal
was deluding themselves;
Even those
who eventually co-opted Christianity into their imperial structures could never
truly diffuse its incendiary message.
They could
cloak it, confuse it, obfuscate it, entangle it, bend it, twist it…
But in the
end, this was a fire that had only one purpose:
Burn the
empire to the ground.
Jesus said, ‘I have come to set fire to the earth; how I wish it were already burning!’ (Luke 12:49)
Jesus said, ‘I have come to set fire to the earth; how I wish it were already burning!’ (Luke 12:49)
At the
Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday, we lit the Paschal fire;
From it, we
lit the Paschal Candle;
And from
it, we passed the fire into the church and passed it to each other, lighting
the candles each of us held…
This is a
fire that will never go out.
This is a
fire which exposes all the structures of power, empire, violence, and greed for
the pile of kindling it is.
This is a fire
that exposes all the wealth, stocks, shares, bonds, and accounts of the
world as mere paper and plastic…
The radical
Good News- food for the poor, sight to the blind, release to the prisoners,
freedom for the captives, life for the lifeless, a voice for the voiceless-
burns every oppressive structure to ash…
Bakunin
said that the urge to destroy is also a creative urge;
Jesus told
us that the urge to set fire to the empire is a spiritual one.
So have a Holy
and Blessed Easter.
Keep your
matches dry…
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