Jesus is Dead. (An Easter Eulogy for American Evangelicalism)
I haven’t been myself lately.
Hell, I haven’t been myself for a while now.
I’ve felt… lost… listless.
Mourning will do that to you.
It’s taken me a long time to name that this is what it is: this ever-present knot in the pit of my stomach, this lingering shadow over days that struggle to let the light in, this shallow breathing that never fully exhales.
Yes, it’s the tangible attrition here: the erosion of liberties, the collapsing of safeguards, the relational fractures, the legislated malice, but it’s more than that.
As someone raised within the teachings of Jesus, living here lately has felt like attending the funeral for a friend.
I, and so many others like me here, are grieving.
We are Christians in America coming to terms with the reality that Jesus is dead.
He is dead within a religion that is content to call itself Christianity, without mercy or kindness, or anything resembling Christlikeness.
He is dead inside thousands of churches across this nation that preach an exclusionary white American gospel of cruelty for the weary, contempt for the poor, and hatred for their neighbor.
He’s dead to a tradition that has, practically speaking, discarded him, needing nothing but his name to fleece the faithful and sow divisions and pile burdens on already burdened people.
He is dead inside the hearts of tens of millions of self-identified disciples whose lives are bereft of his compassion for the hurting, his embrace of the outcast, and his generosity toward the hungry.
When we who have called this faith home look around at the religion proposing to be Christianity right now, that Jesus is gone, replaced by crusading culture warriors, pearl-clutching martyrs, and posturing warmongers.
In their jagged orbit, there is no trace of the gentle Nazarene who arrived without mandated obedience or brute force compliance; only the greatest of good news on the planet, and an extravagant heart bursting open for every weary soul that crossed his path.
Jesus isn’t just dead, but he’s had his identity stolen posthumously, too.
And yes, it makes us angry, not because we want to be angry, but for the same reason death always brings anger: we want back the loved one that we’ve lost.
We grieve for what once was.
We grieve for what could be but what we fear never will be again.
So yes, for far too many of his people, this is a eulogy for Jesus within American Christianity.
It is a time for the shedding of tears and the tearing of robes.
It’s a day for sadness and lamentation.
It is the frantic, urgent pleading for what seems like a hopeless lost cause: life from a tomb.
And it might all be quite hopeless, except for one thing: we are a resurrection people.
Our very story is one of a wailing wake for a dead friend, a dark and desperate in-between, and then a wild, joyful dance in front of a rolled-away stone.
We, too, pray that this is where we are right now: in the wailing and waiting before the dancing.
We still strain to believe that we who seek and follow Jesus are stuck temporarily in the predawn hours; overwhelmed with darkness now, but about to be blinded with a radiant light that will leave us speechless and in awe, and once again turn the world upside down.
We, too, pray for our coming Easter.
We pray for the rebirth of a religion marked by love.
We pray for a Jesus resurrected here in the very faith that bears His name.
When Jesus is fully resurrected in Christianity, he will give the good news back to the poor and the hungry and the hurting, and remind the first and the elevated and the privileged, that they may miss out when the afterparty begins.
When the Evangelical Church is fully alive with Christ once again, it will divorce from political bedfellows, cut ties with despots, and reject power and position.
It will refuse to conflate God and nation.
It will gladly throw open its doors, willfully allowing itself to be looted by the starving, broken, discarded people who have been on the outside for far too long.
When Easter comes to the American Conservative Church, its people will leave the world better than when they found it.
It will leave more professed Christians who resemble Christ.
But what might be is not what is, and so that is why we grieve.
We grieve.
We wait.
And we pray for a someday Sunday: when joy will prevail, when love will win out, when dancing will return, when Jesus will live in his people.
John, what a beautiful message, here at this hour of Good Friday, when they say the world turned dark as Jesus was crucified, when grief overwhelmed the very light of day. Thank you for holding up an image of the divine in all its challenge and glory. This will live in my agnostic heart.
A completely different thought: on the news last night it said the approval rating for Trump was now as low as it was for Jimmy Carter. I did not know whether to laugh or cry. The worst person in the world is now as unpopular as the best person in the world?
I’m not a Christian, not a practitioner of any organized religion or member of a faith community—I’m a secular humanist, I suppose, and maybe a pantheist—but I read avidly (religiously?) every one of your posts/essays (homilies? Sermons?), and I’m deeply moved by your reflections on the life and good works, meaning, death, and resurrection of the man at the center of your faith. I’m not an atheist—I remain open to and often fascinated by the magic and sacred mysteries, the mythology, the ritual, the poetry and symbolism, and the art and music, of the many global religions—Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, etc…. And like all decent human beings, I deplore everything MAGA, and I often turn to you for the words to express my profound dismay. This is all just my way of saying thank you—for your eloquent messages of comfort and rage, despair and hope. Stay strong, keep preaching your message of love in this dark world.