Easter Sunday and What Matters

I teach this Sunday School class for people who have not been able to find a Sunday School class that suits them. Many are too liberal for the average curriculum-driven Sunday School class. Some are new to their faith and confused. Some are divorced and don't fit in the Singles class or back in their old class. It makes for an interesting mix. The rules in the class basically are: all questions are acceptable, all thoughts are respected, there is no pressure to make it to the class every Sunday, and silence is cool, too. So, on Easter Sunday we discussed as you might imagine, Christ's Resurrection. We discussed the recent news of Jesus' bones possibly being found, how all the Gospels, even the synoptic Gospels all tell the story differently. Were there two women or three women at the tomb, the stone rolled away before they got there or afterward, physical resurrection of spiritual? There seemed to be a consensus that all these debates were a little silly. Easter is a matter of the heart and not the head. You try to wrap your head around it, you lose. The Easter story is way out there relatively speaking. The class confessed or admitted their many doubts about how it all shook out that day. They also talked about how this story is embedded within them not just as a memory of a story taught to them when they were young, but how it is a part of them like the nose on their face, part of their disposition you could say. They have a Christian ethic that even if they don't live it out everyday, is a part of their daily decision making. More importantly the resurrection story gives them hope when they feel so overcome by the violence and the suffering within an without them and keeps them looking forward to a day when hate's stronghold is broken and people live in a peaceable kingdom. How did Jesus arise from the dead? Who experienced it? I'm not sure I care, really. Can't anyone even prove it happened. The answer wouldn't change a thing in the way I lived or how I loved. Peace to you. May Love be resurrected in you daily.

Oh, and I've got some wild Easter news to share, but that's for another day.