One of the striking things about the Christian Palm Sunday narrative is the stunning reversal in Christ's fortunes over the course of the week between what is now known as "Palm Sunday" and the Friday that follows.
According to the New Testament, Jesus makes a triumphant entry into Jerusalem on the back of a never-before-ridden stallion on Wednesday. People line the streets and lay their cloaks and palm fronds on the ground to protect the stallion's hooves from being soiled.
He dines with his closest associates on Thursday and is betrayed by the man who he trusts to keep the financial assets.
He is deserted by his most ardent supporters, flogged, tried and then executed in the company of revolutionaries on Friday.
His body is removed from the cross late Friday afternoon and he is buried without ceremony or witnesses in a virgin tomb.
The knife cuts both ways
We live in a blessed time. I can blog and share virtually anything that is on my mind, seemingly with no repercussions. I can write, and have written things that would have me sent to the Gulag in the USSR. Seemingly innocuous combinations of words like "Mr. Biden".
That apparent immunity could change in less than a day. Really, it could.
And the flip-side is that Mr. Biden could find himself having to answer for his apparently profiting from his son's illegal actions as an unregistered agent for foreign powers and his own misuse of his authority when he was Vice-president.
And, for that matter, Pelosi who is the Speaker of the House could be kicked to the curb based on the rate-of-return her stock portfolio returned. No thinking person can believe that she was not taking gross advantage of insider information.
That too could transpire with breathtaking speed.
Was it all made up?
A young person pointed out to me that many people in their generation think that all of the Jewish and Christian Testaments were "made up" and pure fiction.
This kind of question does not merit a sarcastic or snide response.
My best case against the "Somebody made it all up" viewpoint is that "Somebody made up the psychology and Newtonian physics you were taught in the University. If you look at the half-life of (say) Freudian psychology and compare it to the half-life of what is in the Bible, whoever wrote the Bible was at least 100 times smarter than Freud." Maybe God helped them?
Eventually we have to pick a set of rails and lock onto them and start living our lives. The perpetual cynic is a miserable person. You could do far, far worse than to pick Judaism or Christianity. I am not sure that any of the other options offers a better long-term track-record. Nor, for that matter, a better pre-death set of rules.
I believe that if we start walking the path and living the Word then the Holy Spirit will take care of the rest. He will give the sojourner the Faith they need.
Amen ! Faith is flowing this morning . I can't but help feeling jubilant this Palm Sunday remembering those childhood glories as us kids lined the aisles waving the palm fronds in the old country E.U.B. church as the Joy of The Holy Spirit was poured out upon us . The elderly women of the church used every opportunity to fill us kids with The Word of Gawd . Unfortunately the Evangelical United Brethren was to soon go woke and is no more . They were transferred over into the even more liberal Methodist church . In 1998 a fire consumed what was left of a once moving and pure country church .
ReplyDeleteWhat can you really know, Joe? It’s called Biblical Archeology. Biblical characters turn up in independent Roman transcripts of the period. Biblical Christian characters were as much a pain in the Roman backside as the Jews were. Ancient Assyrian and Sumerian tablets chronicle the same battles the the Old Testament did. Today’s Bible has survived virtually unchanged for over two thousand years with virtually no mnemonic drift. The faith has survived Romans, barbarians, moslems, dark age collapse, fascists, socialists, and countless others. There IS more to this than a collection of fairytales.
ReplyDeleteExcept that in the 1500's the pope convened a council and they removed 7 books from the old testament.
DeleteI believe that if we start walking the path and living the Word then the Holy Spirit will take care of the rest. He will give the sojourner the Faith they need.
ReplyDeleteOh that the truth of this statement was embraced by more and more individuals.
"Somebody made up the psychology and Newtonian physics"
ReplyDeleteExcept physics is based on repeatable experiments and evidence. The model of the hydrogen atom is one of the most successful theories of reality ever found. Christainity on the other hand is a tautology filled with historical flaws and inaccuracies modulated other time to
fit current narratives. That is not to say that there is not a great deal of wisdom in it by multiple different voices vs "whoever wrote it" but we are not talking about religion here. It has more to do with culture and tribalism based on cradle to the grave conditioning, indoctrination, and propaganda.
"You could do far, far worse than to pick Judaism or Christianity."
That sums up a lot because you pick it. You chose it. That doesn't make it a reality, or truth, especially historical truth, but just a choice. The totality of the human experience should not be limited by a dogma that starts with a talking snake and ends with a zombie.
The blind seem so proud of their blindness.
Delete