“Who Will Roll Away the Stone? A Meditation on Mark’s Easter Story”

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MyersTopBy Ched Myers

Note: This year Easter (Apr 5) falls close to the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination (Apr 4). This is an abridged excerpt from the conclusion of Who Will Roll Away the Stone? Discipleship Queries for First World Christians (Orbis, 1994); it appeared in Sojourners (April 1994, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 20-23; King pictures added).
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VERY early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, Mary, Mary, and Salome went to Jesus’ tomb (Mark 16:2).

Sooner or later, we who have tried to follow Jesus find ourselves weary and broken like the Galilean women, on our way to bury him. It is the morning we awake to that inconsolable, aching emptiness that comes only from hope crushed. This dawn does not bring a new day, only the numb duty of last respects. Continue reading ““Who Will Roll Away the Stone? A Meditation on Mark’s Easter Story”” →

The Crucified God

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Micah IconBy Tommy Airey

God will again have compassion upon us;
God will tread our iniquities under foot.
You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.
Micah 7:19

At the heart of the prophetic proclamation there stands the certainty that God is interested in the world to the point of suffering.
Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (1972)

*This is the final installment in our series on Micah posted every Wednesday during Lent.
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In the midst of Holy Week, we pause to remember our 6-week Journey through Lent thus far. Our daily trek towards the Divine starts with stripping down so that we can vulnerably and transparently take inventory of our weaknesses, copings and inconsistencies. We summon the strength and focus to study the ways social, political, economic and religious systems enslave and devour humanity and the land. We ask ourselves how we are complicit and benefit from these arrangements. Then we expose oppression, injustice and greed while casting a vision and creatively constructing another Way.
Continue reading “The Crucified God” →

The Palm Sunday Peace Parade: Pasadena, CA

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Palm Sunday PeaceTriumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey.
Zechariah 9:9

By Bert Newton

Below is a history of what is now the 13th Annual Palm Sunday Peace Parade, sponsored by a coalition of communities: Church for Others, Crescenta Valley Methodist Church, Knox Presbyterian Church, Montrose Peace Vigil, Orange Grove Friends Meeting, Pasadena Mennonite Church, Peace & Justice Academy, Progressive Christians Uniting, Jill Shook & Anthony Manousos, Urban Village of Pasadena.
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We now call it the Palm Sunday Peace Parade; this name not only has the advantage of alliteration, it also reflects the context in which the march actually began. We began the Palm Sunday Peace Parade in Pasadena in 2003 at the outbreak of the war with Iraq, so it was a peace march. Even though the context was war and the death that war brings, we made our event joyful and celebratory, much like the original Palm Sunday; the gospels tells that Jesus marched toward his death and yet entered Jerusalem in celebration of his victory over the forces of death. So we designed our event likewise to be festive and celebratory, a peace parade.
Continue reading “The Palm Sunday Peace Parade: Pasadena, CA” →

Bread

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ww2“I never expected much of the bishops, in all history, popes and bishops and abbots seem to have been blind and power-loving and greedy. I never expected leadership from them. It is the saints that keep appearing all through history who keep things going. What I do expect is the bread of life and down through the ages there is that continuity.”

– Dorothy Day

Two Weekend Reads

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res schoolsTo what extent might unresolved trauma be impacting our settler Mennonite capacity to feel empathy with other traumatized groups? If we, as a community, can recognize this impact and guard against the egoism of victimization, wouldn’t it stand to reason that our hearts would be more open to the pain being carried by our indigenous neighbours and our hands more ready to work at “restorative solidarity”?
Elaine Enns

We recommend a dark brew to accompany two challenging and inspirational readings coming from two Canadian women doing unique work with truth and reconciliation. First, Elaine Enns, working within the North American Mennonite tradition, prods white settlers towards a “restorative solidarity” with our indigenous neighbors. Writing in Canadian Mennonite Magazine, she zeroes in on empathy in an article entitled “Facing History With Courage:” Continue reading “Two Weekend Reads” →

The Prophetic Script

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Micah IconBy Tommy Airey

With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
with calves a year old?
…He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:6, 8

*This is the sixth installment in a series of seven pieces on Micah posted every Wednesday during Lent.
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Throughout the Hebrew Bible, there’s a contest over just how one might access the Creator and Redeemer God. Surely, there must be magic words to say or rituals to perform? Micah blows the roof off of priestly religion. Keep your sacrifices to yourself, thank you very much. All God really wants is a Life congruent with the Love that makes the world go ‘round: justice, mercy and humility. That’s all.
Continue reading “The Prophetic Script” →

Learning from Laughter: Blessed by Sand

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology2 Comments

sandboxBy Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

I was pruning these same apple trees and grape vines when I first felt the pull of contractions. Today, it is a two year old that calls me down. “Mooommy,” he calls. He’s standing in the green turtle box filled with sand he collected with his grandpa from the shores of Lake Huron last summer. He stands there barefoot having demanded to take his shoes off even though it’s the middle of March and the snow has not yet fully melted. Continue reading “Learning from Laughter: Blessed by Sand” →

For Botero, Who Looked at What I Could Not

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boteroA poem by Rose Marie Berger, a peace activist, poet and the Senior Associate Editor of Sojourners Magazine. This piece was first published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly (Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2006).
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The bodies are fat
corpulent, like the seven-hundred-
pound man in Maryland
who hasn’t stood since 1998
and must lie on his stomach
or his weight will crush
his windpipe. They hang
upside down by a toe or ankle
these bodies,
faces wrapped in a red silk scarf—
Continue reading “For Botero, Who Looked at What I Could Not” →