Jesus is Just Alright

It's Easter morning. Props to my buddy Jesus. Party on. I went old school today and decided to go to the little country church down the road where I was a member until my theological meltdown a few years back. I still like to sneak in from time to time to a place where I can do the liturgy rote and let my mind focus on the real part of worship without worrying about keeping up with the words on the page. I also miss the people. God love 'em and their "we've always done it this way" ways. Not all of them, to be sure, but enough that more times than not I wanted to bonk my head repeatedly on the external brick wall. A wailing wall of a totally different variety.

Anyway, it was a real nice service. Nice. It's always hard to come up with the appropriate adjectives for worship services, especially the biggies like Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It's even harder when you hear the poor preachers trying to make relevant the events of Easter Sunday to a contemporary audience. You've got a guy who caused a lot of trouble to the establishment and was beginning to be a nuisance to the Roman Empire (threat might be pushing it). Dude was executed on a Friday and something happened on Sunday morning. Something. This is where I have to lean on the gospel attributed to Mark. That's the one where the chicks to to the tomb, the rock is rolled away and a dude in white says he's gone. The women make a hasty exit. End of story.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. When it comes to the gospels, Mark is the one that makes the most sense to me. Less editorializing, more letting the reader figure it out. Way less exposition. Considering the end times weren't as immanent as the first and second century followers of Christ would have liked, I prefer the ambiguity of Mark to have us work out what Jesus absence that Sunday morning means to us today.

Honestly, I don't care whether Jesus physically came back to life and physically hung out making cameo appearances to upwards of 500 people for 40 days before being whisked up into the sky to return another day. What does that story have to do with any of us today? What's remarkable to me is the story that from its early beginnings was only a generation away from extinction, yet it carried enough weight to make it to the next generation and the next. And the next. The core teachings, as Bill and Ted would say, being "excellent to each other" is pretty groovy on its own.

Party on, dudes!