Easter is more than a one-day celebration! Easter is a way of being in the world, an orientation toward life!

The challenge is living the resurrection in a world hellbent on crucifixion, addicted to evil, filled with suffering, and  threatened by death.

Believing in the resurrection is difficult for some. Stories of the empty tomb and a Risen Christ defy logic and rational explanation. Cognition is swallowed up mystery.

I am no longer interested in arguing the factuality and historicity of the empty tomb. I’m intellectually content to live with the mystery of the Easter declaration, “Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, indeed!”

I’m more interested in living Easter than “believing” it! In reality, only in living resurrection is it believed. Instead of “seeing is believing” it is “living is believing.”

I live daily with people whose capacity to cognitively believe Easter has been erased; yet, I see the truth of Easter in them every day. The Risen Christ shows up regularly in a fleeting smile, slight squeeze of the hand, momentary twinkle in the eye, and an unspoken invitation to enter their world and bear their burdens.

Here’s the bottom line for me: God acted decisively, convincingly, mysteriously, and timelessly in Jesus the Christ to conquer all forms of evil and death itself! In the death of Jesus, God took on the principalities and powers of this world AND GOD WON!

My primary concern is living the resurrection!

Here is what living resurrection means to me:

• Loving unconditionally amid hatred, bigotry, and exclusion
• Forgiving when the impulse for vengeance dominates
• Working for justice in a world of oppression and exploitation
• Entering solidarity with the vulnerable, powerless, and voiceless
• Building bridges of understanding and opportunity rather than walls of separation
• Practicing generosity amid economic uncertainty
• Living with integrity and honesty in the midst of corruption and dishonesty
• Putting the common good above personal advantage
• Treating everyone as a beloved child of God, made in the divine image
• Facing suffering and death with courage born of hope
• Living NOW in the light of God’s coming reign in Jesus Christ

Yes, living the resurrection is the great challenge of Easter. But the good news is this: The Resurrected One has already won the decisive victory!

The One whose resurrection Easter celebrates is with us as we live toward a resurrection future!

We rightly interpret Jesus’ death as God’s response to our personal suffering, sin, and death. We truly were “there when they crucified my Lord.” His messages from the cross speak powerfully and redemptively to our individual needs.

But the cross has implications far broader than the forgiveness of our personal sins and solidarity with our suffering and death.

The crucifixion of Jesus by government officials and religious establishment is clearly a political act! The coercive and destructive politics of Herod the Roman ruler and Caiaphas the high priest and the reconciling and redemptive politics of Jesus collided on that fateful day we call “Good Friday.”

It is the clash of two worlds, two kingdoms, two forms of power!

On the one hand is the world of political and religious corruption, deception, coercion, exploitation, and violence. It is the exercise of power for personal gain  at the expense of justice, compassion, integrity, and the common good.

It is the world of deception, manipulation, bigotry, us-against-them, fear mongering, exclusion, win-at-all-cost, betrayal, and death.

In the leadership forefront of that world are Herod, Pilate, Caiahpas, Judas, and the mob shouting “Crucify him crucify him.”

On the other hand, the world embodied by Jesus is one of resolute integrity in the pursuit of God’s reign. It is the world of unrelenting compassion, uncompromising justice,  untiring generosity ,  all-embracing love, and  boundless mercy.

It is the world of kindness, honesty, humility, hospitality, empowerment of the weak and vulnerable, faithfulness, and abundant life.

Those worlds clashed dramatically, cataclysmically, and cosmically on a hillside appropriately named Golgatha, “skull.” Here the empire’s politics of violence opposed God’s politics of peace! The power of cruelty and hatred contested with the power of love and forgiveness.

When Jesus mumbled, “It is finished,” and his bleeding head bowed in death, it appeared that the politics of hatred and violence had won! The world grew eerily dark! It was as though the light of God’s loving presence had been extinguished.

Evidence abounds which indicates the world of Herod, Pilate, Caiaphas, and Judas won! Political corruption and abuse of power at the highest  echelons of our government threaten the fabric of democracy and common life.

The earth is awash with instruments of violence and war. Bigotry, exclusion, exploitation, and division continue their stranglehold on nations and religions. Injustices of poverty and economic disparity go unabated.

Compassion, justice, generoisty, kindness, forgiveness, integrity, integrity–these seem hidden from much of public and private life, sealed in the tomb of despair.

Indeed, the gloomy world of  Good Friday’s evil surrounds us! We are tempted to hide behind our closed doors, or acquiesce to the prevailing corruption and cruelty, or retaliate with our own vengeance and hatred, or give up in despair.

But hold on! Keep vigilant!  Sunday is coming! Easter is on the way! God’s final word is yet to be spoken!  A new world is about to dawn!

The question of collusion as a means of gaining and exercising political power has figured prominently in public discourse for the last two years. Ironically, interest is at a flash point during our Holy Week.

Maybe that is appropriate! After all, the execution of Jesus resulted from deliberate collusion between the Roman empire and organized religion.

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and his cleansing of the Temple threatened the prevailing governmental and religious powers epitomized by Caiaphas the high priest and Herod the Roman ruler of the region.

Throughout that fateful week the conflicts multiplied and plots to silence Jesus intensified. Controversies over authority, paying taxes, what laws have priority, the future of the temple, and reading the signs of the times dominated the interactions between Jesus his opponents.

It was the religious leaders who led the opposition to Jesus and conspired with Herod and his loyalists to silence him.

Gaining and protecting privilege often results in corrosive compromise, devious conspiracies, and deadly collusions.

Since at least as early as Constantine (272 – 337 AD), the rulers of the church and the state have colluded to gain and protect their privilege at the expense of justice and the common good.

Herod and Caiaphas have descendants in every generation, including our own. Proximity to power is addictive! It has been the downfall of many!

Some of history’s most dastardly events have resulted from the collusion and compromise between religious and imperial power. The Crusades, the holocaust, slavery, genocide in Rwanda come immediately to mind.

More subtle forms of collusion  between religion and empire are taking place before our eyes. We may even be participants either by our silence or outright support. I name a few:

• Subordinating the Sermon on the Mount to the  platform of a political party
• Prioritizing political partisanship over justice and the common good
• Protecting the privileges of the already privileged at the expense of the poor
• Accepting  as normative dishonesty, crudeness, and corruption by elected officials
• Using legislation to enforce discrimination against people of a different race, ethinicity, sexual identity, religion, or economic status
• Acquiescing to governmental policies that clearly fail to “defend the orphans, widows, and sojourners”

Jesus confronted the collusive forces of religion and empire with a different motivation than self-protective privilege and personal gain. His vision stretched beyond the confines of institutional religion and national dominance.

Jesus’ eyes were firmly fixed on God’s reign of boundless compassion, relentless justice, uncompromising integrity, and resolute hope.

With humble courage,steadfast devotion, impeccable integrity, and self-emptying love Jesus counters the corrosive powers conspiring against him.

It cost him his life! But we know the rest of the story!

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday set the stage for a showdown between God’s reign and the prevailing  principalities and powers. His subsequent acts and teachings challenged the dominant politics of the first as well as the twenty-first century.

According to the synoptic Gospels, Jesus made his way to the temple on the day after he entered Jerusalem. If his first day in the Holy City contrasted with popular images of imperial power, his visit to the temple challenged religion’s definition and exercise of power.

The temple was more than an impressive building. It was sacred space, set apart as a place to meet God, offer sacrifices to the Holy One, and share in God’s presence and promises.

It was also a center of commercial activity as foreign money was exchanged and animals were sold for sacrificing.

There were clearly defined boundaries and controlled access to the holy of holies. Gentiles were welcome, but they were relegated to the outer courts. And, they were dependent upon the merchants and those who ran the currency exchange for their participation in the temple.

In other words, the temple operated on the market logic of economic exchange at least as it pertained to the Gentiles. Access to full participation in the temple’s holy space and ritual practices was significantly limited by ethnicity, economics, and the discretion of the leaders of the temple.

Jesus angrily and forcefully challenged the prevailing temple politics of exclusion and exploitation.  He overturned the instruments of commerce and with whips of cord cleared the temple of the enforcers and exploiters.

Quoting from the prophet Isaiah, Jesus declared: ” Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17).

Temple leaders were robbing people of more than money. They were robbing ‘the other’ of full participation in God’s holy space and presence.

The place of prayer, means of connecting people to God, was being dominated by the politics of exploitation and exclusion.

Any relevance for the church in today’s world? How much do our congregations reflect the politics of exclusion, exploitation, and the market logic of exchange?

Who are “the others” who are relegated to the periphery of participation in God’s presence and promise? Is the church really open to ALL nations?

How much of the contemporary church’s life reflects the market values of statistical growth and “what’s in it for me”?

What about those of us in leadership?  Do we engage in the politics of exclusion or the politics of hospitality, the politics of control or the politics of the compassion, the politics of personal career advancement or the politics of the common good?

The plot to kill Jesus grew after he chased the exploiters and enforcers from the temple. Religious operatives and political leaders began their collusion to be rid of the one who practiced a different politics–the politics of compassion, justice, and hospitality.

Yes, Jesus enters church politics! He challenges our politics of exclusion, exploitation, and reducing God to a commodity available for a price.

Make no mistake about it: Every act of Jesus during what we call Holy Week was political!

Failure to admit that is to reduce Jesus to a meager promoter of an other-worldly personal piety with little relevance to the real world.

The week began with a carefully planned protest march into Jerusalem,  the center of political, economic, and religious power.

It is as though Jesus is throwing down the gauntlet in Washington, D.C., Wall Street, and the Vatican (or the location of our denominational headquarters).

Politics is about power, its definition and use, who wields it and toward what ends. Politics has to do with who has access to resources, what serves the common good, and how change is effected.

Jesus challenges all prevailing images of power of his time and ours. The images of Holy Week, therefore, call us to evaluate our own politics. The challenge crosses partisan political and religious loyalties, just as it did in Jesus’ time–Herodians, Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes.

The contrasting images are dramatically presented in Jesus’ march into Jerusalem. He is riding on a humble beast of burden, not a prancing war stallion. No tanks or missiles and parading armed soldiers!

His entourage consists of the poor, women and children, the outcastes, the working people waving palm branches, not the prominent and prestigious flaunting their privilege.

We would do well to put aside our defensiveness, partisanship, and privilege and honestly evaluate our politics, our understanding of power and the common good, in the light of Jesus’ actions during this fateful week.

I’ll offer my own observations and confessions and invite you to do the same.

“What is something you wish you had known about pastoral care and sex/sexuality/gender identity when you were in seminary or before ministry began?“

That was a question the panel moderator raised at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Wednesday, March 27. I continue to ponder my response.

I attended seminary 1962 to 1965.  I don’t recall a single discussion about sexual identity and orientation during those three years. The “sexual revolution” had not reached our campus.

The hot button issues were racial integration, poverty, and the Vietnam war. Those were on the cutting edge of Biblical/theological/ethical inquiry and at the top of the justice agenda.

We grappled with what the Bible says about race, slavery, economics, and war; but the passages referring to “homosexuality” received no exegetical analysis.

Matters of sexual identity, orientation, and expression were physically, emotionally, and morally settled and unambiguous.

There were only two prevailing truths about sexual identity: (1) There are males and females! (2) You don’t “do it” until you’re married! It’s that simple!

Any deviation from that binary description was considered “abnormal.” The American Psychiatric Association still listed homosexuality as a “disorder,” not removing it from the list until 1973.

During my thirty-two years as a local church pastor, people who didn’t fit into that dualistic, simplistic mold of sexuality largely remained hidden; or we operated by the principle of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

So I answered the moderator’s question this way: “I wish I had known the complexities involved in sexual identity and orientation. Since I didn’t, I have been complicit in hurting people who don’t fit into the binary description.”

I failed as a pastor to provide safe spaces for LGBTQ+ sisters and brothers to openly accept their full identity as beloved children of God, made in the divine image. And, I failed to challenge the prejudices and injustices directed toward them under the guise of being faithful to the Bible.

Scientific understanding and biblical interpretation regarding sexuality have greatly advanced over the last half century. We are learning that the binary understanding of sexuality is as antiquated as the notion of a flat earth.

And, using the Bible to justify discrimination against LGBTQIA people is as flawed as using Scripture to exclude women or divorced people from church leadership.

I have much to yet to learn about the complexities of sexual identity and orientation! I’m still having trouble fully comprehending the realities behind the letters L G B T Q I A.

Thankfully, people who live the complexities of sexual identity are opening my eyes and helping me receive their marvelous gifts.

I am convinced that God is working in, among, and through LGBTQIA colleagues to bring to reality God’s dream of a redeemed and reconciled humanity.

I regret that it has taken me so long to welcome, affirm, and support their gifts.