"Our Lord was never wroth nor never shall be" - Julian of Norwich

'I saw truthfully that our Lord was never wroth* nor never shall be. For he is God, he is good, he is truth, he is love, he is peace. And his might, his wisdom, his charity, and his unity do not permit him to be wroth. For I saw truly that it is against the property of his might to be wroth, and against the property of his wisdom, and against the property of his goodness. God is that goodness that may not be wroth, for God is nothing but goodness.'

~ Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

*Definition of wroth : archaic for intensely angry, highly incensed, wrathful.

Who Is It You Are Looking For? Greg Albrecht

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?" "They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, "Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"—John 20:11-15

The religious lynch-mob convened an illegal trial, declared an innocent man guilty and condemned him to death. Of course, it wasn't the first time nor was it the last time an innocent person has been found guilty, but this time was truly a unique, once-and-for-all occurrence. 

This man was absolutely innocent, in every way. Jesus had never committed any crime. He had never harmed anyone. He had never emotionally abused another. He had never cheated, nor had he ever gossiped. His entire life was devoted to serving others, yet he had just been found guilty and condemned to death. 

And to cement the assertion that this was a unique, once-and-for-all occurrence, the innocent man condemned to death was the Son of God, God in the flesh.

The death sentence was carried out immediately. There was no ten-year wait on death row while attorneys filed appeal after appeal. No defense attorney would take Jesus' case and hire private investigators to sift through all of the lies and misrepresentations and biases and prejudices of the religious establishment who wanted him dead. 

We know this story, don't we? We know how Jesus, the Lamb of God, allowed himself to be led away after he was betrayed by one of his own disciples. We know how he was falsely accused, and how he was beaten, scourged, tortured and finally nailed to a cross. When his body was finally dead it was surrendered by the authorities, and placed in a new tomb, not far away from the site of the crucifixion.

The traumatic and hope-destroying events of Good Friday took the wind out of the sails of Jesus' followers. All their hopes and dreams for a better life with Jesus as the King were dashed as he died in shame as a common criminal on his cross. Those who had changed their lives—following and listening to him, their Master and Teacher, putting their hope and faith in him—were now disillusioned and hiding in fear for their own lives. 

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Easter: The Game-Changer - Cindy Brandt

Something has gone awry in our culture when we begin to tell the Resurrection story from a narrative of “The Good Guy Wins”. We love seeing the good guys kick ass. We celebrate rugged heroes like Jack Bauer from the hit TV show 24 – even when they kill. There is that chuckle-inducing scene in the Avengers movie where Hulk (Good guy) flings Loki (Bad guy) back and forth like a toy with his brute strength. We laugh at violence, and because the good guy wins, it’s okay. So steeped in what Walter Wink calls, “the myth of redemptive violence”, we have subsumed the Easter Story into this framework.

In cultures where Christianity has become the dominant power, the resurrection of Jesus has been turned into the triumph of the victors. The way “Jesus is Risen” is proclaimed, it sounds like bragging – essentially one-upping those who disagree with us by saying smugly: we win. Easter is used as a trump card to threaten people into joining our side.  Again and again, the Church tries to grow by dominating: passing laws discriminating others, fighting legal battles in the courts, using money and clout to sway people into a certain ideology. Easter celebrations at mega-churches get bigger and jazzier every year. We are like the disciples who just don’t get it: we argue and argue over which among us is the greatest.

We need to figure out how to tell a different story. More importantly, we need to live a different story. The Resurrection is not one where the Good Guy wins; it’s a story where nobody wins and then everybody wins. When the world is organized around dominant systems preserving their power through oppression, like the Roman Empire, or structured by religious gatekeepers drawing lines in the sand between us vs them, like the Jewish authorities, the end result will always look like violence and death, like the cross. When Christ bore all of that violence and was raised from the dead, God snatched us out of the old story and put us in a new era.

The hope of the resurrection ushers us into a better way. A way of love and forgiveness, a way to serve, a way where everyone wins. The Resurrection is not a trump card in our game, it was a revision of the rulebook. It was the game changer to ensure everyone wins.

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The Gardener - Brian Zahnd

“Mary Magdalene turned around and saw Jesus standing there,

but she did not know it was Jesus…supposing him to be the gardener.”

–John 20:14, 15

The first person to see the risen Christ was Mary Magdalene. It happened in a garden. At first, Mary thought Jesus was the gardener. A logical mistake. Or a prophetic mistake. Or perhaps not a mistake at all.

On Good Friday, Jesus was buried in a garden. A garden is a place to cultivate and grow living things. An appropriate place for Jesus to be buried. A few days before his crucifixion Jesus had said, “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) On Holy Saturday, the Son of God was a holy seed sown in a peaceful garden. On Easter Sunday, the garden brought forth the first fruits of resurrection — “Jesus Christ declared to be the Son of God by resurrection from the dead.” (Romans 1:4)

The first seed raised by God in the garden of resurrection became the gardener. When Mary Magdalene “supposed him to be the gardener,” she was exactly right! Jesus is now the gardener of resurrection, cultivating new life in all who believe. The first Adam was a gardener who failed in his task and the world became a wasteland of war and sin. But the second Adam will succeed in his task — Christ will restore the ruined garden. With Christ as the gardener of new creation we have a hopeful eschatology.

"Instead of the thorn bush shall come up the juniper;

Instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle."

–Isaiah 55:13

“On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be there anymore.” –Revelation 22:2, 3

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God is not the Witch! C.S. Lewis on the Atonement - Brad Jersak

No Christian thinker has synthesized the rich and varied imagery of the gospel into a single beautiful picture as did C.S. Lewis in his classic novella, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Through Lewis’ children’s fantasy, the New Testament themes— redemption and reconciliation, substitution and sacrifice, ransom and victory—coalesce into one of literature’s greatest plotlines. After all, it is a retelling of the greatest story ever told! 

Spoiler alert: I’ll summarize the epic climax shortly! 

Plot: Four English adolescents pass through a magical wardrobe into the strange world of Narnia, which has fallen into a deathly winter through the dark magic of the witch, Jadis. The witch succeeds in luring one of the boys, Edmund, into her evil clutches and deceives him into betraying his siblings. 

The great lion Aslan—Lewis’ Christ-figure— conceives a plan to rescue Edmund, but Jadis claims eye-for-an-eye justice to demand Edmund’s execution. Aslan secretly bargains for Edmund’s life by offering his own in exchange. Jadis is delighted; Aslan’s death will be her final victory. She and her minions tie Aslan to ‘the Stone Table’ (representing the law of condemnation). They shave his mane, mock and beat him, and finally, Jadis delivers the fatal wound with a stone knife. Wondrously, though the Witch can kill Aslan, she cannot take his life! Aslan is resurrected, the stone table is broken, Edmund is redeemed and the witch is destroyed! 

This is the Beautiful Gospel as C.S. Lewis imagined it. This famous fiction captures essential truths of Christ’s saving work as understood by the first apostles, evangelists and theologians. But the tale also underscores Lewis’s corrections to the most popular ‘atonement theory’ of his time (or ours). In his letters (to Bede Griffith), Lewis refers to the Anselmic theory (after Anselm of Canterbury) and says it “was not to be found either in the N.T. or most of the fathers.” In Mere Christianity he describes it:

“According to that theory God wanted to punish men for having deserted and joined the Great Rebel, but Christ volunteered to be punished instead, and so God let us off. Now I admit that even this theory does not seem quite so immoral and silly as it used to; but that is not the point I want to make. What I came to see later on was that neither this theory nor any other is Christianity. The central belief is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start.”

Yet neither Lewis’ letters nor his non-fiction compare to the beauty and clarity of the gospel preached in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

To summarize: 

1. In the story, God appears only as Aslan—the Incarnation of God in Narnia. 

2. In the story, God never demands the death of Edmund or of Aslan. The witch does. God is not the witch. God is Aslan. 

3. In the story, the witch thinks she has cornered Aslan into satisfying the wrath of the Stone Table. But she has not and he does not. There is no law higher than Aslan. He willingly gives himself to save the victim, he breaks the Table and conquers both death and the witch. 

4. The Table is not God’s intractable wrath. It is the law of retribution and condemnation, broken by the deeper “magic” of sacrificial love. If the Stone Table can be broken, then it is not one of God’s eternal attributes. 

5. The witch could and surely did execute Aslan—but she was wrong to believe she could take his life. Like Christ, Aslan alone has the power to lay down his life, and therefore, the power to take it up again. She never took his life. He gave it, but not to her and not to death. He gave it for love to ransom everyone. The witch (like Satan and death) fell into her own trap and found Aslan to be very much alive. 

C.S. Lewis provides an important corrective to ideas of the Cross that mistakenly cast God into the witch’s role. But more importantly, he expresses the Beautiful Gospel in a way that even children can see it, even if some theologians cannot. 

Brad Jersak

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Between Religious Rocks and Life's Hard Places - Greg Albrecht

Don’t you just hate it when you are in church, and the preacher finally utters those sweet words of promise—“and in conclusion” —but your idea of a conclusion and his are like ships passing in the night? When you hear the words “and in conclusion,” you heave a sigh of relief and start dreaming about beating the lunch crowd at your favorite restaurant, but the preacher keeps going on and on and on. 

Okay, I’ll make this brief (that’s another thing that preachers like me say that drives me crazy because when they do I know it will be anything but brief ).

In the “Introduction” to my book, BETWEEN RELIGIOUS ROCKS AND LIFE’S HARD PLACES I invited readers, in case they didn’t like my answers, to improvise their own Christ-centered solutions.

Love Thy Neighbor: Enemy Love with Jarrod McKenna