KIM LAWTON, correspondent: During Holy Week, Christians remember the familiar story of Jesus’s death and resurrection. But exactly where does that story take place? The Bible offers only a few clues.

REV. MARK MOROZOWICH (Catholic University of America): The Gospels weren’t really written to record a history. They were written to provide a testimony of faith.

LAWTON: According to the New Testament, Jesus was crucified at a spot outside Jerusalem called Golgotha, which in Aramaic means “place of the skull.” The Latin word for skull is calvaria, and in English many Christians refer to the site of the crucifixion as Calvary. The Gospel of John says there was a garden at Golgotha, and a tomb which had never been used. Since the tomb was nearby, John says, that’s where Jesus’s body was placed. The Gospel writers say the tomb was owned by a prominent rich man, Joseph of Arimathea. They describe it as cut out of rock, with a large stone that could be rolled in front of the entrance.

Father Mark Morozowich is acting dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America.

MOROZOWICH: At the time of Jesus, when he was crucified, he was not really a significant feature in Israel. I mean, certainly there was jealousy, certainly he had his followers. But there was no church that was built immediately upon his death or to mark his resurrection.

LAWTON: In the fourth century, as Emperor Constantine was consolidating the Roman Empire under Christianity, his mother, St. Helena, traveled to Jerusalem. According to tradition, she discovered relics of the cross upon which Jesus had been crucified. The spot had been venerated by early Christians, and she concluded it was Golgotha. Constantine ordered the construction of a basilica, which became known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

MOROZOWICH: Now people throughout history have debated was it really there, or was it here? Traditionally in that fourth century time that was so amazing, they found this rock and this tomb not far from one another as we see even today in the church you know they’re just a short distance from one another.

LAWTON: Over the centuries, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed, rebuilt and renovated several times. There have been numerous power struggles over who should control it, and even today, sometimes violent squabbles can break out among the several Christian denominations that share jurisdiction. But it is considered one of the holiest sites in Christianity, a massive place of pilgrimage and intense spiritual devotion. At the entrance, visitors can kiss the Stone of Unction which, according to tradition, marks the place where Jesus’ body was washed for burial. The dark chapel commemorating the crucifixion is in one upper corner, and the place marking the tomb on the other side.

MOROZOWICH: What more of a moving place to walk in Jerusalem, the place of the crucifixion, to meditate at Golgotha where Jesus Christ died, the place where he rose from the tomb. So they are very beautiful and very moving moments when a person can have a very deep relationship with God.

LAWTON: During Holy Week in particular, the Holy Sepulchre is the center for special devotions, such as the Holy Fire ritual, where flames from inside the tomb area are passed among the candles of worshippers.

MOROZOWICH: The bishop brings out the light from the tomb and this illuminates and plays on this whole sense of the light of the world coming forth again.

LAWTON: But despite the history and devotion, some question whether that indeed is the true spot. Some Christians, including many Protestants, believe Jesus could have been crucified and buried at a different place in Jerusalem known as the Garden Tomb.

STEVE BRIDGE (Deputy Director, The Garden Tomb): The tomb was discovered in 1867. For hundreds of years before that it had lain buried under rock and rubble and earth and things had grown on top of it.

LAWTON: Steve Bridge is deputy director at the Garden Tomb, which is located just outside the Old City’s Damascus Gate. He says this site was promoted in the late nineteenth century by British General Charles Gordon, who argued that the hillside with the features of a human skull could be actual crucifixion site.

BRIDGE: When we’re looking, now we’re looking side on, and you can see maybe what looks like the two eye-sockets there on the rock face. The Bible tells us Jesus was crucified outside the city walls at a place called Golgotha, which simply means the skull, and so many people believe that Skull Hill is Golgotha, the place of the skull where Jesus died.

LAWTON: This Skull Hill looms over an ancient garden, with cisterns and a wine press, which could indicate that it was owned by a wealthy person. In the garden was a tomb, hewn from the rock.

BRIDGE: The tomb itself is at least two-thousand years old. Many date it as older than that. But it’s certainly not less than 2,000 years old. It’s a Jewish tomb, it’s definitely a rolling stone tomb. That means the entrance would be sealed by rolling a large stone across.

LAWTON: Inside the tomb is a 1300-year-old marking of a cross with the Byzantine words “Jesus Christ, the Beginning and the End.”

BRIDGE: So there’s burial space for at least two bodies, probably more. That, again, matches the bible description. It was a family tomb that Joseph had built for himself and his family.

LAWTON: Bridge says Christians are deeply moved by this visual image of where Jesus may have been placed after he was taken down from the cross.

BRIDGE: On that day, as far as people were concerned, that was the end of the story, that was the end of one that they had hoped would be the Messiah, because a dead Messiah is no good. But three days later, we believe God raised Jesus to life and that was the start of what we now call Christianity of course.

LAWTON: According to Bridge, the Garden Tomb is not trying to set up a competition with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

BRIDGE: There’s no doubt that historically, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, has the evidence on its side, and we certainly wouldn’t want to do or say anything that would suggest that we think they’re wrong about the site or that we think that we’re right. What we say we have here is something that matches the Bible description.

LAWTON: And Bridge says, for him, it doesn’t ultimately matter where the actual place is.

BRIDGE: That’s very secondary to Jesus himself, who we believe he is, and why he died, and, you know, on that score us and the Holy Sepulchre would be exactly the same, telling the same story but on a different site.

LAWTON: Father Morozowich agrees that, especially at Easter time, Christians should focus more on what Jesus did, rather than on where he may have done it.

MOROZOWICH: Where he walked is very, very important. At the same time though, we know that Jesus is more than this historical figure that walked the earth, and in his resurrection, he transcends all of that. So he is as real and present in Mishawaka and in Washington, DC as he is in Jerusalem.

LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

Originally published April 7, 2006

From the fourth century until today, Christians have created things to do together, rituals, in order to experience for themselves the great simplicity of redemption. These rituals are meant to recur, they are the stones of an archway which, once built, is there to use, to go in and out by prayer and so to find pasture. We do not want to be rebuilding a different-shaped arch, however entrancing, but to use what we have, what we are used to, in order to enter into the real business of prayer. So the ceremonies of Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday, are there to be used, and this is a physical matter, a use of the body, so that all of ourselves will know. Intellectual apprehension of truth is all very well, and indeed for some it is enough; but for most of us, we live in a half-light, neither awake nor asleep, wanting to understand but not quite able to think it through; we need to be there to act it out, to participate. This is in no way an alternative or lesser kind of theologizing; by both ways we come to the central theme of redemption, the flesh-taking of Christ in which he returns to the Father and takes us unto the dynamic life of the Trinity which is the ultimate procession, and it is by physical processions that we can learn to become part of that reality.

The last days of Holy Week provide a simple way of allowing the body, the flesh, to learn theological truth by doing and being in earthly processions. Palm Sunday’s procession is about how to do the basic human thing — to walk, to take one step, just to be able to do the next step, and to remain with that doing, not seeing a much quicker way to get there by a bus, a train, a ship, a plane, which are quicker than our feet; we are always dashing through in order to be somewhere else, and when we are there then we think we will begin. But the procession is a slow, corporate event, the pace set by the weakest and slowest. Like growing, a procession is something done for its own sake, and in doing it we are becoming what we are not, going by a way we do not understand, for a purpose that is God’s, not ours, in ways that are too simple for our sight. We will never of course be ready on earth for the full “procession” which is the dynamism of the life of love which is the Trinity, since we are broken human beings, with limited sight; but given our consent, God can lead us by the flesh he created, to understand and apprehend the image of God which he placed within us. All that is needed is to give a minute assent, however impatient and grudging, and then just to do it. A procession can be seen as a sacrament, “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” In the same way that we read through the letter of the Scriptures to the inner truth, so we understand more by walking than we know; it is the work and gift of God.

Meditation upon the processions of Holy Week is rightly undertaken at its commencement. In the early church, for the first three days of Holy Week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the custom was to have only plain readings from Scripture; later, what was read each day were the separate accounts of the Passion. Then as now, these were days of stillness and silence when all were to be prepared, emptied, turned towards the Saviour’s great work. After the signs we gave ourselves during Lent of being ready to become empty by giving things up and therefore more free, now that desire will be put to the test. There is nothing now to be done or thought. It is the end of Lent, the pause before the great mystery of Redemption. In this pause, it is possible to reflect on these three processions, on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter night, as ways into the great procession which is the life of Trinity, and this is not just for ourselves here and now. First we walk with so many others from the past, joined with them by our present actions. We receive life from the hands of the dead to live it out ourselves and pass it on to others, and that is true tradition. We are walking with our friends. And second, we do not do this for ourselves only, but for the whole of creation; insofar as one small portion of humanity which is us assents to the love of God, so the whole of creation becomes part of redeeming work.

Originally broadcast March 14, 2008

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Easter or Pascha is this weekend (April 4) for both Western and Eastern Orthodox Christians. Because of differing church calendars, the two branches of Christianity often celebrate Easter on different dates. But as Kim Lawton reports, their celebrations reflect shared beliefs about the Christian faith.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: During Holy Week, churches around the world echo the familiar refrain that proclaims a central tenet of Christianity: Jesus Christ was crucified, died, and was buried, but three days later he rose from the dead. Eastern Orthodox and Western Christians alike say celebration of the Resurrection is the most important event on the church calendar.

MS. FREDERICA MATHEWES-GREEN (Holy Cross Antiochian Orthodox Church): This is the victory of Jesus Christ over sin, over death. It’s what sets us free. In comparison, Christmas is not that important. We like Christmas. Everybody does. But the whole point of our salvation is embodied on Pascha.

WALT WANGERIN JR (Author, “Paul: A Novel”): This is the very center of what we believe, of who we are, of what our identity is, of why we continue to return to the Lord in joy. Without Easter, there is no church.

LAWTON: More often than not, Eastern Orthodox and Western Christians celebrate the Resurrection on different days. But a growing number of American church leaders say this should change.

FATHER RON ROBERSON (National Conference of Catholic Bishops): The credibility of the Christian message really gets compromised when people on the outside see that we can’t even agree on when to celebrate the central mystery of our faith.

LAWTON: Conflicts over the celebration of the Resurrection stretch back to the beginning days of Christianity. Early church leaders wanted all Christians to celebrate the Resurrection on the same day, after the Jewish Passover. To that end, a council of bishops in the fourth century decreed that Easter would fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon, after the spring equinox. But as the Roman Empire divided between the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West, the church world also split. When Westerners adopted the new Gregorian calendar in the 16th century, the East kept the Julian calendar. Since the two calendars have differing dates for the equinox and full moon, in most years Easter falls on different Sundays.

LAWTON: During Holy Week, churches mark their beliefs with special services. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, these services are especially numerous and lengthy. One unique observance is the service of holy unction on Wednesday night.

MS. MATHEWES-GREEN: At the conclusion of this service, the members of the church line up and come forward for anointing, for healing. In the Orthodox Church, we still have a lively belief that Jesus heal, that we need healing of our souls and our bodies.

LAWTON: On Holy or Good Friday, Christians remember the Crucifixion. According to many theologians, of all the traditions Roman Catholics tend to give special emphasis on the suffering and death of Jesus. Through the Stations of the Cross, or in dramatic productions, Catholics often reenact the journey to the Crucifixion.

Some Protestants gather Friday evening in a solemn worship service that remembers the Crucifixion through the taking of Communion.

Catholics and many Protestants traditionally strip their altars bare. Statues and crosses are covered in purple or black cloths, the shrouds of death.

In Eastern Orthodox churches, a shroud showing Christ’s body is actually carried in a funeral procession around the church and then laid in a tomb adorned with flowers.

MR. WANGERIN: What should be experienced on that day by these very specific traditions is the sense that the Lord died. There is, and there ought to be, a sense of mourning at this point, the mourning that the disciples felt when Jesus gave up the ghost and breathed his last.

LAWTON: Eastern Orthodox and growing numbers of Catholics and Protestants begin celebrating the triumph of the Resurrection Saturday night, before midnight.

FATHER ROBERSON: It is the celebration of darkness and light. The church starts in the darkness, and there is that light of a single candle, which then is spread out all through the congregation. It is a real celebration of the hope and the meaning that the Resurrection of Christ brings to our lives.

LAWTON: In many Orthodox traditions, the service spills out into the street, processing outside the church.

MS. MATHEWES-GREEN: We sing over and over “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling death by death, and upon those in the tomb, bestowing life.” We’ll say it over and over, shouting it out, rejoicing at what Christ has freed us from, and what he’s freed us to.

LAWTON: Some Protestants also gather in darkness, in a pre-dawn Easter sunrise service. Others gather later Sunday morning, with joyous pageantry and celebration.

MR. WANGERIN: Easter should be for us a genuine joy, not just in our minds, but also in our physical experience — that for awhile, death was all that existed, but coming with Easter is the remarkable, surprising grace that death is overcome. Christians say to one another, “He is risen,” and the answer is, “He is risen indeed.”

LAWTON: And despite differing traditions and rituals and even days of celebration, church leaders say that is the ultimate — and unifying — Easter message.

FATHER ROBERSON: We celebrate a single reality of Jesus coming into the world, the son of God becoming incarnate and entering into our lives. And we celebrate the central reality of his death for our sins — that he suffered and died for us, and on the third day, he rose from the dead.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, as we mentioned earlier, Western Christians are celebrating Holy Week and Easter, their most sacred time of the year. In the many special services and observances that take place during Holy Week, music plays a crucial role in setting the mood of the worship and in helping to convey the Easter message. Kim Lawton has our report.

CHOIR #1 (singing): Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.

KIM LAWTON: Easter is the most important day on the church calendar, and for Christians, the music of the season is central to the celebration.

Canon VICTORIA SIROTA (Author, “Preaching to the Choir” and Pastor, The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York): The awesome thing about Easter is the way in which it takes what would have been a tremendous tragedy — the death of Jesus on Good Friday — and turns it into the great triumph of God over death.

CHOIR #1 (singing): And He shall reign forever and ever.

Canon SIROTA: The message is encoded in the music.

CHOIR #1 (singing): And He shall reign forever and ever.

THOMAS TYLER (Special Assistant to the Pastor for Worship, Shiloh Baptist Church): If there’s anything that’s going to connect to people across any line, any sector, it will be its music.

LAWTON: The importance of music stretches back to the first Holy Week, on Thursday, when Jesus celebrated Passover with his disciples at the Last Supper. According to the Gospel story, they sang a hymn together before they parted.

Canon SIROTA: We don’t know what hymn it was, but it would have been a Hebrew chant that would have been sung at the Passover table. Knowing that Jesus was a singer and that he sang with his disciples makes you realize how ancient this form is.

LAWTON: At Maundy Thursday services, music helps set the mood as Christians begin their annual time of mourning the arrest, prosecution and crucifixion of Jesus.

Thomas Tyler is in charge of worship and music at Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. He says it’s spiritually important to sing the songs of grief before celebrating Christ’s resurrection.

Mr. TYLER: We want to skip over the sorrow. We want to skip over the abandonment and go get our praise on. But, if you don’t remember what he went through, then I feel your appreciation for the significance of that resurrection is marginalized.

LAWTON: The most somber practices take place on Good Friday, and the music reflects this.

Canon SIROTA: In general, the songs that we sing on Good Friday are longer. They’re slow. They may be in a minor key. They have a sense of suffering, of sorrow, of mourning.

LAWTON: At the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, Canon Sirota works with organist Tim Brumfield. They say one of the most common Good Friday hymns, “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” holds complex theological truths.

Canon SIROTA: What’s amazing about it is the way the music goes between major and minor, uses dissonance notes, resolves them, there’s this underlying sense of conflict that still needs to be resolved. We Christians are thankful to God for the crucifixion. but on Good Friday we spend the time lamenting the fact that Jesus had to die on our behalf.

LAWTON: Another widely sung hymn is “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” — an old African-American spiritual.

FEMALE PERFORMER (on stage singing): Sometimes it causes me to tremble.

Canon SIROTA: It’s a very personal piety: “Sometimes it causes me to tremble.” Well, if you’ve been in profound grief, you know what that is.

LAWTON: Although some Easter season music has become universal among Christians, many traditions put the basic theological concepts into their own cultural settings as well.

Mr. TYLER: That culture helps to shape who you are and it’s reflected through how you do what you do, how you go through your — in this case — your spiritual practices.

LAWTON: Many of the crucifixion songs focus on the blood of Christ, which Christians believe atoned for the sins of the world.

Canon SIROTA: The truth of the reality that we are dealing with life and death issues; the idea of blood, which is so horrifying. And when you bleed you are terrified that you are going to die. But to use that as a symbol then of new life, it reminds us that the story doesn’t end there, that we end in resurrection.

LAWTON: And so comes the great transition to Easter Sunday, from mourning to resurrection.

Canon SIROTA: We hear the joy, we hear the triumph. We sing fast music. We sing it joyously. It’s in a major key and it helps us to feel that this is “the day the Lord has made.”

LAWTON: Many Easter songs incorporate the words, “Alleluia” or “Hallelujah.”

CHOIR #2 (singing): Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.

Canon SIROTA: Alleluia is the Latin form of “praise to God.” Hallelujah is the Hebrew form of “praise to God.” So they’re both ecstatic. And I think the sound of it is why we haven’t translated them. Hallelujah — just that sense of almost moving into the non-verbal. Not a translation of praise to God, but “Hallelujah” — that sheer joy, sheer ecstasy. Not only do we use them especially at Easter, but we don’t say them in the Christian Church during Lent. We bury the Alleluias and return them on Easter Sunday.

Mr. TYLER: Because it’s the highest praise. It’s the highest praise. And on this day, of all days, he deserves what: the highest praise.

LAWTON: There are Easter old standards that are sung with great meaning. One of them is, “Because He Lives.”

CHOIR #3 (singing): Because He lives I can face tomorrow.

Canon SIROTA: Because He lives, I can face tomorrow”. And that is a profound theology.

LAWTON: But there are often new Easter songs too.

YOUTH CHOIR (on stage singing): Our Redeemer lives…

Canon SIROTA: If we stick with all the old music, then somehow there lingers this idea that God is dead. The Holy Spirit in my theology is still moving in the world and is still encouraging us to write new songs.

LAWTON: Perhaps the single most popular Easter song across the Christian spectrum is “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” also called, “Jesus Christ is Risen Today.”

Canon SIROTA: “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” is one of the great Easter hymns. And one of the wonderful features of it is this Alleluia that comes as the refrain of every single line so it has this ecstatic quality of singing with great joy all these notes.

Mr. TYLER: We celebrate the “now”-ness of the event, even though the event happened over 2,000 years ago. Each time it occurs it’s a fresh experience — a fresh observation.

Canon SIROTA: The core message, which is: “Jesus lives. Jesus was resurrected. Therefore my life has a new meaning. Death is not the end of me.”

CHOIR #4 (singing): Alleluia. Alleluia.

LAWTON: And the music, they say, is key to conveying that message. I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

KIM LAWTON, guest anchor: For Western Christians, Sunday (March 16) is Palm Sunday, which begins Holy Week, leading up to Easter (March 23). But Eastern Orthodox Christians have just begun observing their time of Lent. Because of differing church calendars, Western and Eastern Christians usually celebrate the resurrection of Jesus on different dates. This year, the celebrations are especially far apart — five weeks. Over the centuries, distinct Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Holy Week practices have developed, but theologians say those different practices all reflect shared beliefs about the Christian faith.

During Holy Week, churches around the world echo the familiar refrain that proclaims a central tenet of Christianity: Jesus Christ was crucified, died, and was buried, but three days later he rose from the dead. Eastern Orthodox and Western Christians alike say celebration of the Resurrection is the most important event on the church calendar.

MS. FREDERICA MATHEWES-GREEN (Holy Cross Antiochian Orthodox Church): This is the victory of Jesus Christ over sin, over death. It’s what sets us free. In comparison, Christmas is not that important. We like Christmas. Everybody does. But the whole point of our salvation is embodied on Pascha.

WALT WANGERIN, JR. (author, “Paul: A Novel”): This is the very center of what we believe, of who we are, of what our identity is, of why we continue to return to the Lord in joy. Without Easter, there is no church.

LAWTON: More often than not, Eastern Orthodox and Western Christians celebrate the Resurrection on different days. But a growing number of American church leaders say this should change.

FATHER RON ROBERSON (National Conference of Catholic Bishops): The credibility of the Christian message really gets compromised when people on the outside see that we can’t even agree on when to celebrate the central mystery of our faith.

LAWTON: Conflicts over the celebration of the Resurrection stretch back to the beginning days of Christianity. Early church leaders wanted all Christians to celebrate the Resurrection on the same day, after the Jewish Passover. To that end, a council of bishops in the fourth century decreed that Easter would fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon, after the spring equinox. But as the Roman Empire divided between the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West, the church world also split. When Westerners adopted the new Gregorian calendar in the 16th century, the East kept the Julian calendar. Since the two calendars have differing dates for the equinox and full moon, in most years Easter falls on different Sundays.

LAWTON: During Holy Week, churches mark their beliefs with special services. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, these services are especially numerous and lengthy. One unique observance is the service of holy unction on Wednesday night.

MS. MATHEWES-GREEN: At the conclusion of this service, the members of the church line up and come forward for anointing, for healing. In the Orthodox Church, we still have a lively belief that Jesus heal, that we need healing of our souls and our bodies.

LAWTON: On Holy or Good Friday, Christians remember the Crucifixion. According to many theologians, of all the traditions Roman Catholics tend to give special emphasis on the suffering and death of Jesus. Through the Stations of the Cross, or in dramatic productions, Catholics often reenact the journey to the Crucifixion.

Some Protestants gather Friday evening in a solemn worship service that remembers the Crucifixion through the taking of Communion.

Catholics and many Protestants traditionally strip their altars bare. Statues and crosses are covered in purple or black cloths, the shrouds of death.

In Eastern Orthodox churches, a shroud showing Christ’s body is actually carried in a funeral procession around the church and then laid in a tomb adorned with flowers.

MR. WANGERIN: What should be experienced on that day by these very specific traditions is the sense that the Lord died. There is, and there ought to be, a sense of mourning at this point, the mourning that the disciples felt when Jesus gave up the ghost and breathed his last.

LAWTON: Eastern Orthodox and growing numbers of Catholics and Protestants begin celebrating the triumph of the Resurrection Saturday night, before midnight.

FATHER ROBERSON: It is the celebration of darkness and light. The church starts in the darkness, and there is that light of a single candle, which then is spread out all through the congregation. It is a real celebration of the hope and the meaning that the Resurrection of Christ brings to our lives.

LAWTON: In many Orthodox traditions, the service spills out into the street, processing outside the church.

MS. MATHEWES-GREEN: We sing over and over “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling death by death, and upon those in the tomb, bestowing life.” We’ll say it over and over, shouting it out, rejoicing at what Christ has freed us from, and what he’s freed us to.

LAWTON: Some Protestants also gather in darkness, in a pre-dawn Easter sunrise service. Others gather later Sunday morning, with joyous pageantry and celebration.

MR. WANGERIN: Easter should be for us a genuine joy, not just in our minds, but also in our physical experience — that for awhile, death was all that existed, but coming with Easter is the remarkable, surprising grace that death is overcome. Christians say to one another, “He is risen,” and the answer is, “He is risen indeed.”

LAWTON: And despite differing traditions and rituals and even days of celebration, church leaders say that is the ultimate — and unifying — Easter message.

FATHER ROBERSON: We celebrate a single reality of Jesus coming into the world, the son of God becoming incarnate and entering into our lives. And we celebrate the central reality of his death for our sins — that he suffered and died for us, and on the third day, he rose from the dead.

From the fourth century until today, Christians have created things to do together, rituals, in order to experience for themselves the great simplicity of redemption. These rituals are meant to recur, they are the stones of an archway which, once built, is there to use, to go in and out by prayer and so to find pasture. We do not want to be rebuilding a different-shaped arch, however entrancing, but to use what we have, what we are used to, in order to enter into the real business of prayer. So the ceremonies of Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday, are there to be used, and this is a physical matter, a use of the body, so that all of ourselves will know. Intellectual apprehension of truth is all very well, and indeed for some it is enough; but for most of us, we live in a half-light, neither awake nor asleep, wanting to understand but not quite able to think it through; we need to be there to act it out, to participate. This is in no way an alternative or lesser kind of theologizing; by both ways we come to the central theme of redemption, the flesh-taking of Christ in which he returns to the Father and takes us unto the dynamic life of the Trinity which is the ultimate procession, and it is by physical processions that we can learn to become part of that reality.

The last days of Holy Week provide a simple way of allowing the body, the flesh, to learn theological truth by doing and being in earthly processions. Palm Sunday’s procession is about how to do the basic human thing — to walk, to take one step, just to be able to do the next step, and to remain with that doing, not seeing a much quicker way to get there by a bus, a train, a ship, a plane, which are quicker than our feet; we are always dashing through in order to be somewhere else, and when we are there then we think we will begin. But the procession is a slow, corporate event, the pace set by the weakest and slowest. Like growing, a procession is something done for its own sake, and in doing it we are becoming what we are not, going by a way we do not understand, for a purpose that is God’s, not ours, in ways that are too simple for our sight. We will never of course be ready on earth for the full “procession” which is the dynamism of the life of love which is the Trinity, since we are broken human beings, with limited sight; but given our consent, God can lead us by the flesh he created, to understand and apprehend the image of God which he placed within us. All that is needed is to give a minute assent, however impatient and grudging, and then just to do it. A procession can be seen as a sacrament, “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.” In the same way that we read through the letter of the Scriptures to the inner truth, so we understand more by walking than we know; it is the work and gift of God.

Meditation upon the processions of Holy Week is rightly undertaken at its commencement. In the early church, for the first three days of Holy Week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the custom was to have only plain readings from Scripture; later, what was read each day were the separate accounts of the Passion. Then as now, these were days of stillness and silence when all were to be prepared, emptied, turned towards the Saviour’s great work. After the signs we gave ourselves during Lent of being ready to become empty by giving things up and therefore more free, now that desire will be put to the test. There is nothing now to be done or thought. It is the end of Lent, the pause before the great mystery of Redemption. In this pause, it is possible to reflect on these three processions, on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter night, as ways into the great procession which is the life of Trinity, and this is not just for ourselves here and now. First we walk with so many others from the past, joined with them by our present actions. We receive life from the hands of the dead to live it out ourselves and pass it on to others, and that is true tradition. We are walking with our friends. And second, we do not do this for ourselves only, but for the whole of creation; insofar as one small portion of humanity which is us assents to the love of God, so the whole of creation becomes part of redeeming work.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Holy Week and Easter have special significance in Northern Ireland, a land torn by decades of religious conflict. It was on Good Friday in 1998 that Catholics and Protestants negotiated a power-sharing agreement designed to end hostilities. Seven years after the Good Friday accords, violence has decreased substantially, but lasting peace still has not come. Amid the ongoing tensions, a Benedictine monastery is working for reconciliation and unity. Kim Lawton has our profile of the monks and their work.

KIM LAWTON: Early spring in the foothills of the Mourne Mountains south of Belfast. Signs of new life are at every turn. This tranquil setting seems far removed from the Troubles, as people here call the hatred and killing that have wracked Northern Ireland for decades.

But Father Mark-Ephrem Nolan, abbot of Holy Cross Benedictine Monastery in Rostrevor, says bitterness here still runs deep.

Father MARK-EPHREM NOLAN (Abbot, Holy Cross Benedictine Monastery, Rostrevor, Ireland): There has been so much pain and suffering. I think it is sometimes very hard for people from outside this country to measure to what extent people’s lives have been deeply, deeply affected by the Troubles.

LAWTON: The very modern Holy Cross Monastery was dedicated just over a year ago, the first Benedictine monastery in Northern Ireland since the year 1183. It was established to work for peace and reconciliation.

Father NOLAN: Quite often, we talk of the two communities in Northern Ireland. I don’t think we can think of two communities in Christian terms. Perhaps you have got two political communities. There is one Christian community, which is divided within itself, and our call is to be reconciled in Christ Jesus.

LAWTON: The monastery is run by Nolan and four other monks who came with him from France in 1998. They were inspired by a Vatican document that urged monks and nuns to take their contemplative lives of prayer out into corners of the globe where people are divided. Nolan was born in Belfast and felt a call to minister in his conflict-ridden homeland. His French brother-monks shared his vision.

Father NOLAN: We hope to live here, and I think that’s at the heart of the monastic vocation — a ministry of compassion, to be with people who have suffered, who are suffering, to be a sign of the presence of Christ.

LAWTON: They live by the Rule of Saint Benedict, the set of instructions written in the sixth century by the founder of Western monasticism. It’s a simple life, marked by manual work, Bible study, regular intervals of prayer, and long periods of silence. The monks at Holy Cross support themselves by making candles, which are sold around the world. They also practice hospitality, with a guesthouse where people can come for spiritual retreat.

The monks gather five times daily to pray. People from all denominations in the community are invited to join them. Every day they pray for national healing, for peace and unity, and every day they pray for Catholic and Protestant church leaders by name.

Father NOLAN: A psychiatrist came one morning, a Catholic layman. He said to me, “You have no idea the bombshell you drop when you name the Presbyterian minister and the elders in the congregation.” He said, “People just have never heard that before.”

LAWTON: The monastery sponsors public healing services, where Catholics and Protestants alike talk openly about their stories of pain and loss. Holy Cross also hosts regular dialogue sessions for local Catholic and Protestant clergy.

Participants, including this Protestant pastor, say they’ve been touched.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTANT CLERGYMAN (At Service): I have experienced this community to be a community that holds a safe space, where the grace of God’s forgiveness and God’s work of reconciliation can flow.

LAWTON: The monks’ impact is being felt well beyond the community. One big supporter is the former Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican George Carey, who spoke at the monastery’s ecumenical dedication ceremony in January 2004.

Lord GEORGE CAREY (Former Archbishop of Canterbury): This monastery is a sign of hope that together we can do something, and we can do far more.

LAWTON: The monks have also gained an international following thanks to brisk sales of their CD of Gregorian and Taize chants.

But Father Nolan believes their biggest impact is in simply trying to live what they preach. He calls it “truthful living.”

Father NOLAN: The fact that we are trying to live reconciliation with our brothers day after day, brothers whom we didn’t choose, brothers whose legitimate differences we have to recognize and accept and rejoice in — then that speaks to the churches.

LAWTON: Here at Holy Cross, Nolan says the themes of Holy Week and Easter resonate deeply. Above their altar is an icon of Jesus on the cross. The inscription at the top reads, “May All Be One,” taken from Jesus’ prayer on the eve of his crucifixion — a constant reminder, Nolan says, that hope can come out of death.

Father NOLAN: We are, there’s no doubt, a marked people, a scarred people, a wounded people. But I think, by the power of God’s grace, those wounds can, in fact, become signs of resurrection and new life.

LAWTON: At the entrance of the monastery stands a giant version of the traditional resurrection icon. They have a smaller version inside, as well. Nolan says he loves the symbolism, which conveys the very core of his faith.

Father NOLAN: Christ, who is depicted here as trampling underfoot death and the powers of the underworld, pulling Adam and Eve, man and woman, forth from the regions of darkness, the regions of death — forth from the tomb, literally. Christ has a strong grasp there on Adam, pulling him forth, and there’s a gentle bidding of Eve.

LAWTON: They placed the icon at the entrance in order to proclaim their belief that the risen Jesus is in their midst.

Father NOLAN: That’s what we want to share with those who come to the monastery — that life of the risen Lord who is the one who brings us forth from darkness and brings us forth from the shadow of death, who gives new hope to people who have suffered and who is there with his message of peace.

LAWTON: It’s an Easter message, the monks say, for all year long.

I’m Kim Lawton in Rostrevor, Northern Ireland.

LAWTON (August 5, 2005): I was in touch with Father Nolan again this week. He told me his community feels great joy at the IRA disarmament, but they also know that hopes have come and gone many times before. He said, “It is clear that a long, long process of healing has to be lived through in our deeply wounded and still so bitterly divided society.” [Read Father Mark-Ephrem Nolan's comments on the Irish Republican Army's July 28, 2005 statement ending its armed struggle.]

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, an overwhelming number of Americans — 83 percent — believe that Jesus rose from the dead. This Easter season, Mel Gibson’s controversial movie THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST has provoked unprecedented national conversation about the crucifixion. But some Christian theologians believe those conversations have not gone far enough. Kim Lawton sat down with prominent author and Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge to reflect on crucifixion and resurrection.

KIM LAWTON: The styles and traditions may vary, but on Easter Sunday, all Christians celebrate a central tenet of their faith: that Jesus Christ was crucified and three days later, he rose again. The story may be 2,000 years old, but Christians believe it still has meaning today.

Reverend FLEMING RUTLEDGE: Jesus is alive. There’s never a possibility of the event fading into the mists of the past because this is about a living God who acts and speaks in our own time and will continue to do so.

LAWTON: Over the centuries, the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection has been told, and retold, through art, music, and drama. And public interest hasn’t waned.

(To Rev. Rutledge): What is it about the story that still intrigues us?

Rev. RUTLEDGE: If you’re not a believer, it’s a cultural phenomenon of some sort. It’s related to the history of art and the history of warfare. But if one is a believer, then this is the story that never dies, because this is the story of God’s decisive, once-for-all intervention, on behalf of his creation, to save it.

LAWTON: Fleming Rutledge was one of the first women to be ordained in the U.S. Episcopal Church, and she has been called one of America’s best preachers. A popular Holy Week speaker, she has written widely about crucifixion and resurrection themes. She says visual depictions such as Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST cannot convey the full Easter story.

Rev. RUTLEDGE: The meaning of the cross can’t be found in looking at the beating and the flaying and the nailing. The meaning can only be grasped through very deep engagement with the various portions of Scripture where this is proclaimed. It is the word, the words, the message that brings life.

LAWTON: In Gibson’s depiction, virtually the entire film focuses on the crucifixion and the violence leading up to it; only a few seconds at the end are devoted to the resurrection.

(To Rev. Rutledge): Can the crucifixion be understood apart from the resurrection?

Rev. RUTLEDGE: The crucifixion and the resurrection were a single event. The incredible discrepancy between the horrible obscenity of the crucifixion and the glory of the resurrection is very important. It’s that contrast that gives the story such power. Otherwise it’s just another story about a dying and rising god. There are zillions of those. But this is a story about a historical event that was then reversed.

LAWTON: Differing streams of Christianity have at times placed more emphasis on one over the other. Theologians have criticized many Protestants, and particularly Evangelicals, for jumping too quickly to the happy ending of Easter without first meditating on the grief and horror of Good Friday.

Rev. RUTLEDGE: That is what makes Easter Day what it is. Easter Day was not just a bursting forth of a dead person from the tomb. Easter Day was the overcoming of absolute nihilism, absolute total dehumanization, degradation.

LAWTON: Other Christians may concentrate on the suffering of the crucifixion without remembering the rest of the story. But Fleming Rutledge says the resurrection vindicates the crucifixion.

Rev. RUTLEDGE: No one would be interested in the crucifixion if it weren’t for the resurrection. We wouldn’t even know that there had ever been such a person as Jesus of Nazareth, if he had not been raised from the dead. That is my view. We don’t know the names of any other crucified victims in history. Something happened. Exactly what it was is a matter of dispute, but something tremendous and unpredictable and unforeseen and unprecedented happened. And it was a victory over sin and death.

LAWTON: Rutledge has preached Holy Week sermons for nearly 25 years. She’s keenly aware of the need to come up with something fresh to say every time. But she says she rarely finds herself at a loss.

Rev. RUTLEDGE: One of my deepest convictions is that the Scripture is ever renewing, and that’s one of the aspects of Christianity that not everybody fully understands. Scripture, the Holy Bible — one doesn’t need to be a fundamentalist at all to understand how there is life that flows from it, new, every day. The challenge is communicating it in a fresh way, so that the old story becomes the new story and people begin to be aware of it: “This is my story, too.”

LAWTON: And once again this year, Christians are indeed celebrating that story as their own.

I’m Kim Lawton in Rye Brook, New York.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, a look at the meaning of Holy Week and Easter through the eyes of best-selling author Frederick Buechner. Buechner is one of the most highly acclaimed modern Christian writers. He’s also an ordained minister whose works on life and faith are widely quoted in Easter sermons. Kim Lawton caught up with Buechner in the churchyard of the historic Pisgah Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky.

KIM LAWTON: During Holy Week, Christians remember the last events in the life of Jesus — the stories and teachings that form the foundation of their faith. The observances of Holy Week are ancient and familiar. Christians say the 2,000-year-old Easter themes of suffering, redemption, and hope have enduring meaning.

Author and ordained Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner says he finds great reassurance in those beliefs, especially during a time of war and uncertainty.

FREDERICK BUECHNER (Author and Presbyterian Minister): Martin Luther said once, “If I were God, I’d kick the world to pieces.” But Martin Luther wasn’t God, God is God, and God has never kicked the world to pieces. He keeps reentering the world, keeps offering himself to the world — by grace, keeps somehow blessing the world, making possible a kind of life which we all, in our deepest being, hunger for.

LAWTON: On the church calendar, Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, when Christians wave palm branches as did the citizens who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem. Buechner says this year, he was struck anew by the biblical account in Luke, which also describes Jesus as weeping because the city didn’t recognize how true peace could be attained.

Mr. BUECHNER: And I thought he could be saying that just as easily today — would that the world, the United States, knew the things that make for peace. So I thought a lot about Jesus’ tears for Jerusalem, how he would be weeping still, again, today.

LAWTON: On Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, Christians remember the betrayal, crucifixion, and death of Jesus. The services are somber and mournful. They focus on Jesus’ suffering — something Buechner says everyone can relate to.

Mr. BUECHNER: Which of us has not suffered, one way or another? I mean, we’ve all had our crucifixions, where God seems to be absent and light seems to disappear and the world is dark and terrifying.

LAWTON: According to the Bible story, on the cross, just before his death, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Mr. BUECHNER: We’ve all known our dark times. We’ve all felt abandoned by God or felt there was no such thing as God to abandon us, just the emptiness, the craziness of the world.

LAWTON: Yet the story doesn’t end there. According to Christian teaching, three days after the crucifixion, Jesus rose from the dead, forever conquering sin and death. The horror of the cross opened the way to salvation and new life for everyone.

Mr. BUECHNER: The best has come out of it, which is this nourishing current of hope and new life that still flows in spite of everything. There must be a God, how else could it happen?

LAWTON: Many Christians observe this great contrast with special services on Holy Saturday, with a late-night vigil, or in the pre-dawn of Easter morning. They gather in darkness and await the light of Easter.

Mr. BUECHNER: Darkness symbolizes that out of which faith can arise, that which faith must somehow confront. The great opponents, if you want, of darkness and light are brought together within a space of less than a week — the darkness of the crucifixion and the blaze of the resurrection, whatever that was. Out of this comes this triumphant hope.

LAWTON: Buechner says he believes deeply in the resurrection and its continuing power — even though he can’t explain exactly what happened that Easter morning.

Mr. BUECHNER: What really matters is not so much what happened there. It’s what happens now. What happens in your life and my life. Is God making himself known in some powerful and saving way among people, even, who don’t give a hoot about God? Is this still a reality which is part of the madness and self-destructiveness and darkness of the world? That’s what really matters.

LAWTON: Which of the Easter themes have particular relevance this year, in light of current events?

Mr. BUECHNER: I’m a terrible pessimist in many ways as far as the state of the world is today. But I feel ultimately that beneath the level of all the madness and horror is this saving, life-giving, nourishing, healing, beautiful, mystery is the best word for it — that somehow an elusive, holy plan is being worked out in the affairs of the earth.

LAWTON: On Easter Sunday, in church after church, year after year, sorrow gives way to rejoicing as Christians celebrate the idea that death doesn’t have the final word. Pageantry, singing, flowers, even new clothes all symbolize the Christian belief that Jesus overcame death — and so will all who believe. It’s a victory, Christians say, that transcends time and circumstance.

Archbishop THEODORE MCCARRICK (At service): We are called to rise up above all the bad news of our time and rejoice in the good news of Easter: Jesus Christ is risen.

Mr. BUECHNER: “All shall be well, and all manner of things will be well.” That somehow remains true no matter what. That’s, I think, the message of Easter.

LAWTON: And amid war, sickness, fear, and death, it’s a message being celebrated again this year. I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

On Palm Sunday:

I looked back at the account in Luke of Palm Sunday. It’s only there you find it where Jesus, as he approaches the city, looks at it and weeps. Except for the weeping over Lazarus, I don’t know anyplace else in the New Testament where he is shown as weeping. And he weeps because he says, “Jerusalem, if only you knew the things that make for peace.” And he says, “The time is not far off when your enemies will set an encampment against you, and they will dash you against the rocks and your little ones with you and leave not one stone upon the other, because you did not know the time of God’s coming to you.”

“Would that you knew the things that make for peace.” He could be saying that just as easily today — would that the world, the United States, knew the things that make for peace. In a way they do, but they don’t somehow live out of those things; they live out of other things, antagonisms and fears and aggressiveness and things of that kind. I thought a lot about Jesus’ tears for Jerusalem, how he would be weeping still, again, today for the same reason: “Would that they knew the things that make for peace.”

It was a pathetic little procession. I think if you had been there, it wouldn’t have amounted to much — somebody from nowhere riding on a donkey into a city. No television cameras, no hoopla, no band. But nonetheless, as his life went, it was his moment of triumph, and people hailed him as the Son of David and [said], “Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.” Yet people are so fickle, as has often been pointed out. Within a week or less than a week of that, they were saying, “Crucify him.”

I can’t help thinking of the stories one hears out of Iraq about the Iraqis running out and embracing American soldiers and giving them flowers. But three weeks from yesterday, who knows what they’ll be doing — shooting at them from windows as we will be shooting at them. Because the world is mad. It’s always been mad — never known the things that make for peace, never acted out of them … or rarely.

On the crucifixion:

There was the crucifixion, this hideous death of this good man with God absent, as far as one can tell. And in the garden, Jesus says, “Would this cup could pass from me,” and sweats blood. “Nonetheless, not my will, but yours be done.” And there’s no indication that God said a bloody thing.

And then again on the cross, that terrible cry: “Why have you let me down? Why have you abandoned me?” And again, no answer. God is either absent or, at least, he is not in evidence, apparently to Jesus or to anybody else. Out of this hideous death and out of this almost more hideous feeling one has that here was this good man, not only being tortured to death but also abandoned by the God for whom, in a way, he was dying — out of this, nonetheless, comes whatever on earth it was that happened two days after the crucifixion, which we use the word “resurrection” for. What happened? Who knows? And in a way, almost, who cares? Because even if somebody had been there with a television camera and taken a picture of Jesus walking out of the tomb, what would that be except, for many people, an interesting historical fact, just as it’s interesting to know that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492? But what difference does that make to me? So what if a Jew in the year 30 A.D. was brought back from the dead? In other words, what’s important is not so much what happened in the half-light of daybreak on that day in 30 A.D., but what happens now. What matters is not what happened on Easter Sunday, but what happens in my life. Is there any sense that, for you and for me, Jesus exists, or the power that was in Jesus, the power that led people to see him as kind of transparency to holiness itself, to the mystery itself? If that is alive, that’s all that matters, and what happened on that day is of little consequence except in a minor historical way.

On the role of suffering in the life of faith:

Which of us has not suffered one way or another? We’ve all had our crucifixions, where God seems to be absent and light seems to disappear, and the world is dark and terrifying. Anybody with faith or without faith has had somehow to live through that kind of a time. The question is, What comes out of that time?

Suffering plays a role in every life. We’ve all known our dark times; we’ve all felt abandoned by God or felt there was no such thing as God to abandon us — just the emptiness, the craziness of the world. And out of this, faith can often come. In my own life, I’ve never gone through a dark time without eventually somewhere finding a treasure in it — maybe luck, maybe grace, maybe who knows what. But there are others, of course, for whom suffering somehow becomes the executioner, where the suffering is so pervasive and intense and unanswerable that somehow any possibility of faith seems to be destroyed by it. So who knows the role of suffering? We all experience it; some come out of it with a kind of faith in spite of that. The only story we really can tell is our own story. I don’t know about the story of people who have grown up in hopeless situations, in slums, in wartime, in times of hunger and all that kind of thing. I can’t tell their stories. I can only hope that somehow God can find a way to those people. I don’t know about that. I only know about myself — that often it’s in my own darkest times, or out of them somehow, has come a treasure, a glimpse of something beyond or deep at the heart of suffering.

I can hardly imagine anybody not going through a Good Friday, one way or another, going through the darkness, one way or the other. I can’t. In fact, I would be a little bit leery of anybody who felt that he or she had somehow come straight to a kind of faith having had no suffering at all. I’d think, well, you don’t really know what life is all about. You don’t know what faith is all about, if all you know is little goody two-shoes kind of version of reality.

On the darkness of Holy Week:

Darkness symbolizes that out of which faith can arise, that which faith must somehow confront, the darkness that we all experience as human beings, I think, the darkness of doubt and pain and suffering and all that kind of thing.

Also the suffering of Christ — that wonderful Maundy Thursday service where one by one the candles are put out until finally, there is one candle left and that is put out. And the cross is veiled, at least in the Episcopal Church — they put [on] a purple veil, as if the sadness, the suffering of this moment is something one cannot look upon.

There’s a lot of darkness in Holy Week. I think also of the darkness of the resurrection itself, that morning when it was hard to be sure what you were seeing, where Mary thought it was Jesus and it turned out to be the gardener, this figure in white. She’s not quite sure who she’s seen or what she’s seen — the confusion of it. The account is rather garbled — who got there first and who told whom, all of it taking place in half-darkness anyway, not in a great blaze of light … the darkness and the confusion and the half-light of that Easter morning, where nobody is quite sure what happened. I don’t think anywhere does it describe somehow the sun coming up in a great burst of glory, but in some sense the sun did come up. The most powerful argument for the fact that something extraordinary happened on that Sunday morning is the fact that the church survived, this little band of terrified Jews who were hiding out somewhere. [There is] that famous scene where Jesus appears before them and Thomas is not there, do you remember? And then Jesus comes by. Something happened to galvanize them into a movement that has survived for all these 2,000 years, something extraordinary.

The New Testament doesn’t try to pretend that it happened with flags flying and the light rising to a crescendo. It happens subtly, it happens in half-light, it happens here, it happens there. Jesus comes, then he’s not there anymore, and yet the proclamation is that it was an event of cosmic significance, not only in terms of the whole destiny of the earth but in terms of our own destinies — that somehow this reality, which not even that kind of death could destroy, remains among us and within us and approachable, and something to which one can give oneself and listen to, wait for.

On symbols and metaphors:

All these symbols we use — the image that we are such terrible sinners that we could not possibly atone for our sins so God gave his only son, this innocent man, to atone for us. Well, that’s one way of talking about it, but what kind of a God is that who would visit horrors upon this one holy and beautiful life in order to do whatever it was He thought He was doing? All these metaphors we use for describing the meaning of the death of Jesus are very clumsy ones — the idea that God punished him instead of us, the lamb sacrifice. They’re all useful ways of sketching a kind of outline of it, but if they are taken literally in any sense of the word, they are deadening, they are off-putting very often, I think.

On the resurrection:

I have no idea what happened except, as I say, what really matters is not so much what happened there as what happens now — what happens in your life and my life, what happens in the world, what happens the next five days, five years of human history. Is God making himself known in some powerful and saving way among people, even [people] who don’t give a hoot about God? Is this still a reality which is part of the madness and self-destructiveness and darkness of the world? That’s what really matters.

I’m a terrible pessimist in many ways as far as the state of the world is today, as far as our country is today. In the process of putting down a tyranny in Iraq we have become the great tyrants of the world. We are the ones whose regime is really to be terrified [of]. We have this enormous power, we can do anything, and now already there’s talk about going on into Syria, going on into Iran. What has happened when the role this nation for so long played of a beacon of hope and of civilization becomes the great bully of the world? In this way I’m a terrible pessimist. I shudder to think; we’ve opened Pandora’s Box. We have most of the Arab world against us; most of Europe looks upon us as a greater threat to peace than ever. … Old Saddam Hussein with his California-size country and his few weapons of mass destruction, which have never even turned up. … We are the ones who are the threat to the world. I get very depressed about that.

But, I feel ultimately, that wonderful line from DEUTERONOMY — “underneath are the everlasting arms.” Beneath the level of all the madness and horror and whatever other darkness, whatever other word you want to use, is this saving, life-giving, nourishing, healing, beautiful, mystery is the best word for it — forget all metaphors for it. It is a mystery, a mystery with a capital M — that somehow an elusive, holy plan is being worked out in the affairs of the earth. If it is real, it is real at all times. Easter is a time for focusing on it just because the great opponents, if you want, of darkness and light are brought together within a space of less than a week — the darkness of the crucifixion and the blaze of the resurrection, whatever that was. Out of this comes this triumphant hope.

The trouble is the church is stuck with the same words, the same images, and I find myself, very often, so tired, so frustrated by church because I feel that these same things have been said generation after generation, again and again, and here’s this congregation [and it's] being said again, the same images … and it does become kind of flat and deadening after a time. Not only does the preacher have to find some new way of saying it, but the preacher has to get in touch again with the reality of it in his own or her own life. In other words, not just talk about the resurrection then, but also, in what way has this man or this woman who stands up there in a black gown experienced it himself? — to talk out of that, to set the images aside for the moment and give a glimpse of that which the images are clumsily trying to convey.

On Easter and preachers:

Imagine having to preach as many times as a preacher has to — 48, 49 Sundays out of the year? I can’t imagine doing it; I also can’t imagine, though, the whole business of running a church, all the administrative details. So much gets buried in the way of what one hopes was originally a passion for God, for Christ; that gets buried and, I think, terribly difficult for them. And [there is] a great reluctance in many of them to speak their own human truth — that somehow they think of themselves as having to get up and present something that is presentable to the congregation, whereas what the congregation wants to know is, “How about you? How can you believe all this? Do you still believe it? Tell me the truth about yourself. Do you really think God exists, and if so, why? Why do you think that when there is so much reason to think there is no such thing?” But I think so many of them don’t touch that because they use the old formulas.

One wonders what will become of the church. Certain branches of it are growing, but in so many parts of the world it’s dying, and maybe that’s just as well. Maybe it’s had its day, and God will never die; God will always make himself known one way or the other — maybe not in the church at all, but who knows how? I’ve often said in churches [that] the best thing that could happen is if the church burned down and all the computers were lost and all the bulletins were blown away by the wind, and the minister was run over by a truck, and you’ve got nothing left except each other and God. That would be the best thing that could happen to you, because that’s where it all began, and that’s what it’s all about. All the rest is window dressing; it is trappings, it is words, words, words, words, words, words, words, which after time become just babble — God babble.

On the Easter message:

The essential message is that nothing, no horror can happen that can permanently, irrevocably quench the presence of holiness that is always there “underneath the everlasting arms.” No matter what dreadful things take place, that remains the heart of reality. There is that wonderful thing from the British saint, Julian of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all manner of things will be well.” That somehow remains true no matter what. That’s, I think, the message of Easter. Yes, this hideous death of a good man abandoned, as it would seem, by God. Yet the best has come out of it, which is this nourishing current of hope and new life that still flows in spite of everything. There must be a God. How else could it happen? Why else would it happen?

Martin Luther said once, “If I were God, I’d kick the world to pieces.” But Martin Luther wasn’t God. God is God, and God has never kicked the world to pieces. He keeps reentering the world, keeps offering himself to the world — by grace, keeps somehow blessing the world, making possible a kind of life which we all, in our deepest being, hunger for.