Our instructional Christian narrative is rooted in all that came to us through past cultures, traditions, and the way in which society has elevated religious structures. Our personal Christian narrative includes all of this and, of course, is formed by the way we have interpreted and incorporated our life experiences through our fears of God, of death, our joys, thankfulness, superstitions, and selfishness—through that which settles us and gives us comfort.
Every Lent and Easter, I do that which I know I should do weekly: self-examination and honesty. I always encourage fellow pilgrims to do something similar. Not all pilgrims are disciples, are they?
Part of being honest is to consider how my opinions and understandings don’t mean that I have proven anything to be true. The story of Jesus, for example, is embedded in a place and time that we all see and understand differently. Look at your understandings of ancient history, the time of Jesus, how Roman society moved from persecuting Christians to incorporating Christian ideas, and giving the humble Church a power that it could not imagine having. Is your Jesus young? Middle-aged? Old? Are his eyes blue, green, or brown? What is he passionate about? Why do you think that is so?
This Easter, I met Jesus through Hosamm al-Madhoum, who is a Palestinian child protection officer in Gaza. He was working with children at the Anglican al-Asqua Hospital shortly after it was bombed. He found a child whom he “deeply loved” and tried to speak with him. Children at the hospital usually came running with open arms when he would visit. He found Hisham, who had stopped responding to him. What happened? What is happening? This day, after about fifteen minutes of staring blankly at him, the boy fell into his arms and cried and wept and wailed like he never had before.
Hosamm wrote: “Cry, child, cry as much as you want. Cry until your cries reach the sky or touch a moving heart somewhere in this mad world.”
When I read this, I cried.
When I wrote this for you, I cried again.
When I wrote this, I stopped to pray that your Easter vision would be free to discover the pure essence of the love Jesus has for you, that you would encounter a Creator who sees us in our world as children who need to honestly cry because of what has happened and what will happen to us—a Creator who sent a child protector to hold out his arms to us and hold us while we cry as we never had before.
May his love find you, and may you live forever in him.
Happy Easter to all.
+John, Central Newfoundland
