Madness

If you are a news junkie like me, this has been quite a week.

A ferry sank in South Korea, most likely killing hundreds of teenage children

The Malaysian airline plane is still missing

A white supremacist gunned down three innocent people around a Jewish center

Remembering the tragedy of the Boston Marathon bombing

Two hundred young girls were kidnapped from their boarding school in Nigeria

And those are just some of the big stories I heard on the national news, which doesn't even touch on the stories from our communities, our neighborhoods, our families.  It's been a depressing week for our world.  But it was also Holy Week.  So when I read this passage in my theology textbook* at the beginning of the week, the message stuck with me and gave me hope.  The authors had just shared a passage from Alice in Wonderland where Alice was talking with the Cheshire Cat and trying to make sense of her surroundings in Wonderland.

"With Lewis Carroll, it is not too difficult to make the case that our world is mad, or has gone mad - disordered, uncontrolled, senseless, frenzied, fanatical, panic-stricken, insane in many respects.  According to the Christian gospel, it was into such a world that God the Father sent his Son, who in the power of the Spirit walked this earth full of truth and grace, preaching and embodying a message of faith and hope and love  But for all his earnest efforts, Christ was nailed to a cross.  We crucified God.  That is indeed madness - by any standard a murder, an injustice, a tragedy, an absurdity.  Headline: Creature Kills Creator.  What is even more absurd is that Christ came back to us and issued an "all forgiven."  Theology negotiates this madness of divine love in a world still mad, yet searching."

I love celebrating Easter.  I love that Christ conquered death.  I love that the madness in our world is not the end of our story.  Jesus Christ is risen today.  Alleluia.



* An Introduction to Christian Theology, by Richard J Plantinga, Thomas R. Thompson, and Matthew D. Lundberg, p. 44-45.