There have been so many versions of the redemption story. It is perhaps the classic Holywood story arc on one form or another. The underdog who transcends low expectations to achieve greatness. The jock who realises that the course of true love is with the mousy (yet classically beautiful) bookish outsider. Even the antihero criminal who dies a bloody death because of a persistent honour code…
Perhaps this narrative trick is older than Jesus. Just a variation of the Hero Journey.
It seems to me that, as this Easter journey unfolds, the story-tellers and poets will be looking at the familiar narrative once more for cracks, for new angles. For a story to retain power, it needs to be encountered afresh.
Part of the problem many of us have is that religious stories – even religious hero stories – have a different life, in that one understanding of them tends to be adopted as sacred. The meaning it contains is then concreted in place and there is little room left for interpretation. Fact and myth intermingle to become scripture. Our one job is to believe it, so that redemption can happen in us as if by some heavenly magic trick.
But this is not the way of the pilgrim who is seeking after truth. Nor is this the way of the artist. For us, the path of redemption is not by settling on a textual certainty, it is more about walking a journey into the wild country that we are surrounded by.
Redemption is not the destination, it is something being worked out as we walk…
There are glimpses too of the possibility that redemption was always within us – it might be discovered on the journey, but more because it was already in us, waiting to be released. After all, we carry within us the same am-ness as all things that are or ever will be. We carry that connection to what Richard Rohr calls the Universal Christ, the god who loves things be becoming them. The Christ who is ‘another name for everything’.
In this version of the redemption story, the death of Jesus is our death.
The resurrection to come is our resurrection.
May you find glimpse of god within you on these darkened days my friend. May you find redemption.
Before we invented kings
Before we invented kings
God was not our king
Before we invented wars
God was not our victor
Before we invented empire
Ours could not be holy
Before we invented temples
God was not confined
Before we invented wealth
There were no golden fleeces
Before we invented priests
We had no intermediary
Before we invented scripture
We owned our sacred stories
Before we invented heaven
The earth was holy ground
Before we invented God
We needed no religion
CG
