Foregiveness

They call this holy week.  The week when Jesus was very busy.  On Thursday they called it Holy Thursday because it was the day Jesus had his last supper and washed the feet of friends and strangers.  On Friday Jesus was crucified and died on the cross. On Saturday his followers mourned  his death.  And on Easter Sunday, he rose from the dead.  We have all heard   this story before and many of us have read the Bible.  It seems though that our children know more about wolves   and   demons   then they know   about saints and religious heroes.  But Jesus works in many ways and we need to thank God for all the   gifts he has given us and this  Easter season we need to reflect on our lives and what is important to life. All too often we refer to Jesus when we are in extreme despair   or even extreme happiness. We need a higher power to talk to besides those who care around us. Why?

Why seek someone or something we have never actually seen? Those who are most faithful are those who can forgive rather than seek revenge. Those who can live with themselves are at peace with themselves no matter what. We could use less anger on the streets of this country from assaults to random rapes to violence over political issues and now over weapons and gun violence. How can we learn tolerance to pain? We approach pain with tears and retribution. Can we approach life’s pains with peace? Nah! That is to hard a thing to do. Yet the stories of Jesus and his life here on earth was all about his tolerance to hate and pain in ways we all forget to do.

Ask any Rabbi who are experts in the Old Testament of the Bible that the Talmud says that if someone is sick or in need if somehow 60% of their physical or emotional pain can be taken away, well that is God. We are all dying from the day we are born in our journey in life no matter how many days or years we get to breathe we are going on our journey to eventual death. No matter how much money or science is out there, we all die eventually. We need religion to help us on our journey. We need a reason to live.

Even if we claim to be living a “good” life and treat others well, go to church and lead a normal life free of “evil” thoughts, is that a guarantee to life after death in heaven rather than in hell? No. In any religious book there is nothing written that if you do this or that everything is going to be all good. Our existence is not that simple. Moses presented people with the Ten Commandments of which one command was Thou Shalt Not Kill yet the Bible has stories where people were killed and offered as sacrifice to God. ISIS followers will kill themselves for their God. In America more people are owning weapons used only for death. Can we worship life for once?

We arm ourselves in the quest for a “fair” fight. Yet was it fair when Isaac went blind and then his child betrayed him   in the Bible? Where is it fair when Sara waited 99 years to bear a child and God said “sacrifice him!”?   Even Jesus, God’s only son got a raw deal this week. Jesus was the King of the Jews and they mocked and brutally killed him and hung him with nails to his body to a cross.  Is it fair that innocent children are being killed in schools because weapons are in the hands of crazy people? Nobody in the Bible lived a life free from suffering and injustice. Would the Bible without horrific events been a boring book?

If they lived lives full of pain why should our lives be any different? If people only believed in God when things were good, after the Holocaust there wouldn’t be a single Jewish believer in God.  After 911 there wouldn’t be a 19 year war and counting in the Middle East. Faith wouldn’t be real faith if we only believed in faith when things are good. So is our world just cruel and random that no one no world leader can do anything about it? Yes terrible and wonderful things happen to all of us but we don’t have the right to know why. Some people live and some people die. Children in schools who didn’t do anything wrong die. Families are running from their homelands and are now called refugees because of the fear of death in political wars. Fires, floods, earthquakes and hurricanes destroy our lives randomly. We don’t get to know why.

So either we can believe in God and goodness or you can be an atheist and believe that it is pointless, cruel and random; whatever makes you happier. It is all about how we deal with our pain emotional or physical. God is not indifferent to pain. The Bible is all about pain and how to deal with the heartache that pain provides. The Koran says that the world is full of brokenness and it is our job to put it back together again. The pharmaceutical companies give us lots of different kinds of pain killing drugs bot there is no pill or object that can give us the will to forgive and love. This Holy Week is all about the life and times in the last days of Jesus’s life on earth still the only place we know that life exists in the universe. We need to preserve our lives as we know it and force ourselves to forgive and not to seek revenge. It has been 2018 years since Jesus died and we still can’t forgive. Why?