The walking trails of Waiheke Island are generally well marked, skirting vineyards, utilising berms and ducking into patches of native bush. However, sometimes you need a measure of alertness to stay on track.
So it is with Easter. Why do we repeat the journey towards the cross of Jesus every year? Human nature demands it. Stay alert to the power of Easter and the cross.
The Western world said “Never again” after the gas chambers of the Third Reich—and yet here we are.
Russian troops deployed by war criminal Vladimir Putin are committing atrocities across Ukraine, murdering innocent civilians in cold blood as they move from invasion to occupation to attempted genocide. One of the reasons it’s difficult to see the images of these slaughtered innocents is because most people wonder, “What can we do to stop it?”
The Ukraine situation looms in our news feed. Yet, there are numerous other atrocities around the world given less priority, and recent history documents other situations where political actors and powerful nations have visited horror on cities and villages peacefully minding their own business. The democratic, Western nations are not exempt or excluded from this repetitive human activity.
New Zealand theologian Lloyd Geering wrote that 'the global world is already coming to birth in the collective consciousness of humankind.' (Tomorrow's God, 189) My observation is that his dream of a cooperative, peaceful future was simply that, a dream. Nations continue the human tendency to seek power and domination at the expense of the weak, to assert that their version of being human is better, using the coercive power of violence. This has long been the way but technology has amplified the efficiency.
So we still need the Easter God who comes and enters into our human pain with us through the cross. It is a spiritual narrative often rejected by our society, but we need it as much as ever. The cross is a call to arms, but not for the vain ambitions of nations and dictators, rather for the battleground of the human heart, and the journey to God's kingdom of love for each person and human community.