Looking for the risen Jesus --- in the streets

Yolanda Renee King

Those of us who are secular Christians --- generally non-theistic and rarely given to magic thinking --- approach our tradition's Holy Week (commencing today on Palm Sunday and concluding with Easter) from various perspectives.

The death of a man called Jesus and his storied resurrection are at the heart of it, but when viewed in context and considering the mythic story-telling that inflates their significance into a primitive and bizarre atoning blood sacrifice --- only part.

I think about others who have died for our sins --- millions of Jews, demonized for centuries by the church; millions of indigenous people slaughtered or otherwise dispatched by Christian soldiers operating in the spirit of Nicholas V's "doctrine of discovery"; millions who have died in war; the 17 who died Feb. 14 at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, victims in part of this new turning toward the messianic potential of assault-style rifles and other weaponry now that Jesus has proved such a disappointment.

Searching for the resurrected Jesus, too --- believing that such a miracle occurs only in the hearts and minds of women, men and children when the way he taught --- love and service --- rises within them. Sometimes driven by righteous anger.

Sometimes, the risen Jesus is in the streets --- Saturday's "March for Our Lives."

Finding prophetic vision in the voices of children, including that of 9-year-old Yolanda Renee King, granddaughter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, on Saturday in Washington, D.C.:

"My grandfather had a dream that his four little children would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream that enough is enough, and that this should be a gun-free world, period."

Amen.