Post Holy Week and Easter Reflection
Wow! That was an experience this year. To walk the Way of the Cross and blog about it for each day opened my eyes in new ways. There was nothing deep or profound, but there was that sense of being in a special place in a special way. Easter has renewed meaning.

Which is what it should have. Each year is different. I can point to different Easter Sundays when the events around me or within me brought a depth that cannot be expressed.

• The Sunday we all cried and rejoiced at church after my best friend died of AIDS and the son of one of the leaders of the church died in a plane crash- both on Good Friday- two days before.
• My first Easter clean and sober. I knew what resurrection meant THAT day. I haven't forgotten!
  
• The first Easter after my nephew died, sitting in church singing while looking at the Easter Lily we gave in his memory.
• Even the Easter the year after visiting Israel and having walked the Via Dolorosa in person when it was no longer words, but images of a real place in a real city.

It has a lot to do with how you spend Holy Week.

The other thing I did last week was read the new book by Marcus Borg and John Dominick Crossan, The Last Week. It was a day-by-day reading, review, and explanation of the events of Holy Week based on the chronology in the Gospel of Mark. These two writers are amazing. They can dig and tunnel through the Word in ways that I think make even many fundamentalists look bad. Then they come out with brilliant, yet well-written conclusions. You don't always agree with those conclusions, but the information and understanding you get from the ride with them is truly marvelous.

I would highly recommend the book unless you are a died-in-the-wool Biblical literalist. Maybe, even if you are, you will discover some new insights that could give some different thoughts to the discussion. For me the power of the book came in reliving the week, day-by-day as Mark recounts it. In the end the truth will set you free, no matter which Way of the Cross you take to get there. That truth, Truth, is simply and poerfully:

Jesus is the resurrected Lord!

All else, as I have said before, is commentary.