Easter Sunday

Palm Sunday drew us into the ugly side of humanity where violence and scapegoats were the way of power controlling and suppressing opposition. Innocent people were punished for the sins of others and sacrificed publicly to deter other rebels. We are not strangers to controlling powers using scapegoats to avoid responsibility, accountability and punishment for their sins. 

“Jesus walked willingly into a human world defined — as it still is today — by violence and dependence on scapegoats… He was murdered not because God wanted or needed his sacrificial death but because as humans, when the stakes are high, we determine who is in and who is out through violence and death. But Jesus … broke the system because what was supposed to happen didn’t. The scapegoat didn’t stay dead. And the victors, in this case, didn’t get to write the only version of the story. The scapegoat came back to life and told a different story, a truer story, a story about life and love.”  

The Christian story was born out of multiple experiences with the Resurrected Christ, and changed how people saw God and life itself. The Resurrected Christ was no illusion or ghost, as he proved by eating and drinking with his disciples.He was who he said he was, which he proved by exposing his wounds to be seen and touched. Those who saw for themselves knew this was the same Jesus who was crucified, died and was buried. Jesus did not come back to blame or punish them. He immediately spoke peace into their fear, showed them forgiveness for betraying and abandoning and not believing him, and gave an unbeatable message of divine love, life, and hope.  

His resurrection proved there is no limit to God’s power to bring healing, hope, redemption and abundant, everlasting life, just as Jesus had been telling them and showing them all along. Indeed, “all through his story, Jesus revealed our ideas about God had been wrong all along. God and Jesus are nothing like the violent and vengeful world we live in. [3]” 

Jesus proved that God IS love, so big we cannot comprehend it; so generous we cannot understand it; so abundant we cannot contain it. There is nothing God cannot transform with love. No suffering, no death, and no evil can prevail over the love of God. Alleluia, Christ is Risen. The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia! 

Quotes from Therapist Matthias Roberts as found in Richard Rohr’s CAC message Palm Sunday, March 24, 2024.