[Day 11] The great reversal

Liminal dispatch + revisiting the Beatitudes + customizable tool for discernment and daily practice, 04.13.20

When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. (Mt. 5:1–2, MSG)

The Christian church marks Easter as its turning point — and for good reason, of course. It is this enormous record scratch, the moment everything stilled and then became something else entirely, something completely unexpected.

Utter humiliation and decisive defeat became victory; death became life; the old decaying powers that be didn’t get the last say, after all.

But Jesus was talking about Easter life long before he did the Easter thing. His entire incarnation and message was all about telling the truth about The Great Reversal: that the old systems, the oppressive Law, the suffocating burden of life under the thumb of the powerful and corrupt — all of this was, in fact, optional. We do not have to agree to it. There is a life, he kept saying, a free life, a defiant resurrection life, that can be embraced right now, at any time.

Everything about Easter living is backwards. This is why I think it continues to confound and trouble and disrupt. This is why…