If faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen ... then I'm there!
I have lots of hopes that are not based on much evidence! It's all gonna by alright ... I don't quite know how it's all gonna be alright, but it is. It's like believing in God or Jesus or the Saints and all the prophets ... hoping for the evidence of things not seen.
My favorite writer, Frederick Buechner says "Our eyes are just our eyes and not all we have for seeing, maybe not even the best we have for seeing. Facts are all the eye can see, eyes cannot see truth. It's not with the eyes of the head that we see truths like that, but with the eyes of the heart. To see (Jesus) with the heart is to know, in the long run, that his is the only life worth living."
So if you're going to try to emulate the life of Jesus, you need to understand that crucifixions are involved.
It's Good Friday ... which wasn't all that good for Jesus. After getting the shit kicked out of him, they nailed his ass to a cross ... to hang naked in the sun (there was no little white cloth to cover him) ... until he died ... which he did.
Which is where the whole faith part comes in.
I think Jesus hoped he'd come back but nobody had done it before. There was no real evidence that he would. He was a romantic though ... he believed ... he had faith.
Hanging there on the cross, he had to have thought to himself more than once ... "I hope I have this right."
It's the same with the rest of us.
God, I hope I have this right though the evidence I have is noticeably lacking.
Oh well, my heart tells me I'm doing the right things.
And some of us do ... and some of don't.
And there are the selfish bastards who make up the rest of the Easter story ... Governors, High Priests, soldiers who just follow orders ... Mothers, believers and the occasional rich person who gives up his prepaid tomb so a homeless dead man can have be rolled away.
Then ... figuratively or literally ... Jesus came back from the dead.
All of these later, he dominates the calendar with Christmas and Easter, has his own section in bookstores, owns his own recording industry, has his name invoked at most awards ceremonies, is a guttural response to good things happening or bad things happening around the world and literally owns eleven o'clock each and every Sunday!!!
If it was changing the world that Jesus had hoped for, with no evidence of it ever happening ... he did all right.
But if it was something more ... giving the rest of us an example of what it means to look at things from the eyes of the heart ... then he did that too.
I think it's the later.
