Easter Day, 2014, Bridgewater, NJ

This morning in time zones throughout the globe, the sun rose over a planet in which there is no significant space that the name of Jesus has not been heard.

This man, born as a Jew, who lived and taught as a Jew, who died as a Jew, and who was crucified under the Roman Empire as a common criminal by a means so barbarous, that Roman law reserved that form of slow, gruesome death solely for non-citizens of the Empire.

By all accounts, by any manner of sociopolitical analysis, that should have been the end of it.  As the French say, C’èst fini:  It’s over.  Good riddance.

  

He was just another rabble-rouser from that unmanageable Roman colony – only one among hundreds of others who dared to cause turmoil in Palestine of the first century – nailed to a cross, now gone and forgotten.

At least, that’s how the story might have played out, but it did not.

Instead, this man called Jesus would come alive again to settle into the hearts and minds of billions who committed themselves to walk in his path, to be guided by his teachings, and to follow his example of how to lead one’s life.

Few of us among those billions have ever succeeded completely in getting that message straight.  We stumble; we fall; we get up; we try again. 

 

During the last two thousand years, countless detractors of Jesus have tried to silence him, his message and his followers, right up to the present time.

The threats are everywhere:  Within elite and prestigious educational institutions; in governmental bureaus and non-governmental agencies; and, insidiously, in the vicious, contemporary killing of Christians in present-day Egypt, parts of The Middle East, India, the African continent, and the Near and Far East.

More Christians have been brutally murdered and persecuted in modern times than in the years of the early Roman Empire.

Despite that, there are more of us now than ever before.  Yet some still argue that we are fools, that the man called Jesus is dead and gone, and that we are either merely babbling dupes or misguided, ignorant people of faith.

All that I can suggest in reply is this:  Look around.  Do some plain arithmetic.  See how the man called Jesus still lives in the hearts of the largest group of believers on earth, despite egregious failures and public embarrassments brought on by some of his most ersatz followers.

Think of the ridiculously simple, fundamental, yet radical message of hope emanating from Jesus:  It comes from a concept in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, one that eventually found its way into a contemporary song lyric from Les Misérables: “to love another person is to see the face of God.”

 

Not bad: very worthy of pursuit.  That is one of the core messages from Jesus.  Straightforward; pure; universal

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Thanks for reading, and have yourselves a meaningful day.