Good Friday .. just another day in Udvarhely

I went to church once when I first got here.  Really couldn't take it, too much pious rosary chanting and bad music.

I genuinely miss my sunday liturgies, however, and I am constantly reading postings about what is going on in the religious world, whether it is the pending canonizations in Rome or the latest litigation between the breakaway conservatives and the more liberal wing of whatever denomination one wishes to mention.

Recently a post appeared that prompted me to write a response. The author was making a claim that it was really, really important to believe that JC really really physically and all that re-emerged into the really real world.    The blog included a poem by John Updike, which is by the way a marvellous piece of literature, but not one for me to hang my faith hat upon.  I have updike's poem at the bottom, just for reference.  Anyway, here is the comment I posted to the blog


I long ago came to the conclusion that God does not do magic. Any god who does magic is just another capricious s.o.b. Furthermore, any supposed "miracle" for person X ( whose pocket bible stopped a sniper"s bullet) or person Y (who after getting hit by lightning got up and started to cook supper) is more than offset by any number of deadly events, be they avalanches, sinkings of ships, or pogroms. 

So if God doesn't do magic, then Updike's version (as well as that of the gospels outside of Mark) can only be understood as poetic vision. Which is fine. I like poetry, and I like especially Updike as an author. But, I am inclined to lean more towards the notion that Jesus was treated just like any other "criminal" of his day, which would have involved no special favors for the family., no special treatment of the body after he died. Quite possibly just dumped or thrown to the dogs.. Probably no "body" left to resuscitate. 

So what about the creeds? For me, they are hymns. We all know not to take hymns literally--they are poetry, they are songs, they are art. We can SING all sorts of stuff that we know we would never SAY. If I can chant the creeds, then I am fine. If I have to SAY them, it"s a different matter.


John Updike

SEVEN STANZAS AT EASTER

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.