No more of this!
One morning in the second full week of Lent, I woke up to the first sign of Easter. It had been a dreary season of violence. In the beginning of March, a shooter injured six people at a Chicago club. On March 15, in New Zealand, a gunman killed 50 worshippers in planned attacks at…
An ‘Easter Fools’ Day’ rant
When I first heard that Easter falls on April Fools’ Day this year, my mind immediately thought about how many people think I’m a fool for believing in the Easter story. I can hear them scoffing, “Do you believe in the Easter bunny too?” This brought to mind all the people I’ve known over the…
Is belief in Jesus’ resurrection necessary?
It’s a question I’ve heard many times over the years: “Do Christians really need to believe in Jesus’ resurrection?” It is, after all, a pretty difficult idea to accept. And this is not just a modern difficulty. It’s been obvious to humans for a very long time that dead people stay dead. It can also…
Rolled away
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. I always love this joyful affirmation of life and hope on Easter morning. When it is still grey and cold outside, when the world news is so overwhelmingly negative, when many are dealing with losses and heartache, it is so amazing to be able to say: “Christ is…
Holy Saturday
Holy Saturday, The place for bleakness, twisted mourning, black. I like this day, today, How it holds permission to wallow and be in the dark, To wander in the twisted depths. Today I am low, I am in the earth, I am unbreathing I have been buried alive by the blind of this world They…
Missing the Crucified Woman
The sculpture above stands on the grounds of my theological college, Emmanuel College in Toronto, of the United Church of Canada. I used to walk by her almost daily, on my way to class or the library. She has become more and more meaningful to me as I’ve learned more about her and as my…
Easter is past . . . where is Jesus now?
Excerpted and translated from a sermon preached at Niagara United Mennonite Church, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., on April 26, 2015. It is based on chapter 21 of the Gospel of John, the well-known story of the disciples back in Galilee shortly after Easter. The entire Easter story is full of tension and contradictions. And the disciples had…
Encountering the vulnerable Jesus
Lent is a 40-day season on the church calendar that brings the story of Jesus into the nitty-gritty of community life. It brings the story into everyone’s own particular time and place. Lent is a time that commemorates the 40 days Jesus spent in solitude, silence and fasting in the wilderness. During this time in…
The peace of resurrection
Here we are, a couple of weeks post-Easter, and I’m still thinking about the resurrection. Have you ever considered the resurrection as symbolic of peace and nonviolence? And don’t worry, I’m going somewhere with this—it’s not just another instance of the Mennonite tendency to reduce everything to either Jesus or peace! American Mennonite theologian J.…
Friday: A poem
Now that we’ve entered once again into the sombreness of Holy Week, I’d like to share a poem of mine which expresses some of my reflections on the cross, which I’ve shared on this blog before. You might notice a key question in these lines: do we try to skip too quickly over the cross…
