As you know, I am an existentialist and a pragmatist and I have little use for theoretical Christianity or pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die. But I'm also an Easter utopian. I think realism, especially political realism, is demonstrably unrealistic. Humans strike me as being like hamsters on a wheel, endlessly repeating the same greed-induced fatal errors over and over and over again. The Sermon on the Mount, in its broad outlines (golden rule--love ethic--forgiveness as the ground), is really the only true realism. The Sermon on the mount is resurrection ethics.

But even in the Church we forget this and go back to greed (there is such a thing as spiritual greed--all exclusivist religion is a species of it) and power addiction. Fred B. Craddock once said, "Plant the cross in a room and the upwardly mobile convert it into a ladder." The whole Prayer of Jabin, mega-church, consumer religion phenomenon is really pure subversion of the Gospel realism of Jesus for the sake of religious business as usual.

But if Christianity is subverted, it cannot offer the world real hope. And our world needs hope, it needs resurrection, for in many ways it is on a fatal course politically, socially, morally, environmentally, economically. The irony of economics is particularly striking. We have made economic law so important, so religiously absolute, that economics threatens all of human well-being. Here we need to go back to St. Thomas Aquinas. His Summas are quite wholistic. He understands that economics is instrumental; it cannot be a God. When we isolate (by elevating) economics from all other concerns, we condemn ourselves. The profit motive becomes the love ofmoney that is the very root of evil. Or as the Cree Indians warn: "After the last tree has been cut down, after the last river has been poisoned, after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find thatmoney cannot be eaten."

Christianity as a social movement understands that Spirit is not a category or an idea. Spirit is resurrection, it is Love's wholeness teaching our politics, our economics, our ethics, and yes, our religion, how to integrate all the parts of life into Shalom, into human health and well-being. Lewis Mumford wrote books about the Mega-Machine--a world that had lost its mooring in human scale and human need. I saw his writings as a form of deeply Christian humanism. We need a Church that shares such a vision. It depresses me that the exposure the Church regularly gets in the media portrays a harsh religiosity. Angry faces denouncing gay people or abortion providers or the theory of evolution. Most non-Christian Americans could be excused for coming to the conclusion that Christianity is all fundamentalist rejection of modern life. But there is no resurrection here.

Christianity is a minority movement. Even during Christendom, according to Martin Luther, Christianity was a dissenting movement from a nominally Christian, but actually just another power- and money-driven social world. But the world needs this dissenting minority desperately. The world needs real hope--even more than it needs economic prosperity, which without hope is just ashes The world needs a positive religion that brings the human race together in the hope that only love, mutual respect, forgiveness, and justice constitute.There is false hope--fundamentalism peddles this endlessly (just turn on religious programming on cable). Real hope is hope for real humans--that is why it starts with grace and never leaves grace. All the puritan ethics crash on the rocks of our human limitations. We need love and forgiveness so that limited humans can rise again (and again).

Easter is for dead people. People dead in the entrapments of greed, ignorance, hatred, prejudice, privilege, power. Only Agape, the love revealed in Jesus, can raise us up for a new life--but he can do it! "Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is as strong as death, passion fierce as the grave"

                                                                             Yours in Christ,

                                                                             --Pastor Bastien