2009 Holy Week Devotion

A few tidbits from this week:

I saw both The Passion of the Christ ["http://www.thepassionofthechrist.com/splash.htm"] and The Passion of Joshua the Jew ["http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809423854/info"] this week. I'd been meaning to see ["http://n8daoggblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/another-year-of-good-friday-ponderings.html"] the former for a few years now, and my expectations were well-met. I'd heard that the movie was extremely graphic from several of my friends who saw it when it came out, and found a need for the immense gore and pain during my few years' separation from the drama that my churches provided while I was growing up. What's more, the film helped fill in quite a few logistic blanks that the Passions as outlined in the Gospels couldn't quite cover.

Speaking of Good Friday, I finally went to a service for the first time ["http://n8daoggblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/more-good-friday-ponderings.html"] in three years. Even more so, I hadn't been to an Episcopal church since last summer, so I knew my reactions to my first return since then would be interesting. I elected to go to Ascension ["http://www.ascensionchicago.org/"], one of my favorite churches I've been to since the beginning of my first exile a little over five years ago. The music met my expectations, as I was sure it would, but what caught me by surprise was the reflections that came to me during the plentiful kneeling sessions before, during, and after the service.

In a word, said reflections had me realize a particular action that was taken on me back when I was six years old and how it would thereby affect my spiritual existence as of now. Given two things, 1.) I repeated kindergarten, and 2.) the stuff ["http://n8daoggblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/finally-truth-or-part-of-it-as-to-how-i.html"] that happened at the church in which I grew up took place during my final year of high school; the following question came to mind: had I graduated from high school one year earlier, where would my journey have taken me? Would I have stayed within the denomination, within the religion itself in which I grew up? In the short term, I'm sure I would have said that this option would have done me much better (because I would have gone to St. Olaf, found an Episcopal church, and called it good). But in the longer term, it seems the path I am currently on is the only option.

It's kind of funny; yesterday marked the most holy day in the Christian calendar, and yet I am still surrounded by some doubts about who Jesus really was (or even, if he was). Some say he was a prophet, some say he was the Son of God, and some say he was God himself but also in human flesh (the whole "fully God and fully human" thing). I don't know how worthwhile it is to argue over these things, because it would seem much more efficient to just have God remind us again.