I once was lost...

The timeless words of 'Amazing Grace' are rattling around my head this morning as I reflect on yesterday's Easter celebrations. The Easter story--indeed the whole Gospel--reminds us that we have been found, that God has sought us out in an unimaginable way, in a way that we could never have anticipated. I think this is often lost on most of us. Especially at Easter, we might have the tendency to congratulate ourselves on recognizing the truth of the salvific event, on seeing in the Cross, the "right way". But this draws us no closer to the reality of Christ than those who seek to eliminate him from the Christian experience.
This past week a Jesuit friend of mine sent me a newspaper article that featured an interview with Gretta Vosper, a United Church minister and "trailblazer" in the progressive Christianity movement in Canada. At Gretta's church this week, the words of hymns about the resurrection that featured Christ, or Jesus, or God, were changed and the offending words substituted for something innocuous like "Glorious Hope"...Needless to say, even non-Christians might be left scratching their heads at the theological ineptness required to pull off such a self-aggrandizing maneuver.
Nevertheless, I fear that often those of us who would consider ourselves more theologically orthodox also run the risk of turning Jesus into what we want him to be, and assuming that when we force him into our self-specific molds we have suddenly "found Jesus" as the saying goes. One thing Easter teaches us, is that if we had looked for the God that washes our feet, cries out in agony, sacrifices himself on a cross and dies that death would be overcome in his resurrection, we never would have "found God". This event is so remarkable, so unapologetically other than what we expect from God, and yet this, and not any other idea we have, holds the truth of God, that God has chosen to reveal to us in a brazen act of Love. The god that appeases us, or who waits to slap our wrists when we're bad or bullies us into submission, is a god of our own creation. The God who loves, who challenges us, and who fills our lives with meaning is the One who reveals Godself to us.
The event of the Cross--the life, death and resurrection of Jesus--is not the divisive point that separates those of us who are right about God from those of us who aren't, but rather the point at which all people are gathered in equality--equally in need of love, meaning and renewal, and equally amazed by and in need of Grace. The Cross is not a reason for Christians to claim God, to accuse others, not even to debate theology; it is God's choice to seek out creation, to enter into our lives and to free us from all that holds us back from abundant love for God, neighbour and ourselves.