Christian Mythbusters

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared tries to break the myths surrounding LGBTQIA+ Christians by sharing the stories of three leaders in the Christian church. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1 WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple here.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

In last week’s episode, I talked about the history of PRIDE month and how the church should be an ally in pride, exploring the question from the standpoint of Scripture. To continue our engagement with Christians and PRIDE, this week I want to exit the theoretical and enter the lived world of LGBTQIA+ Christians by sharing with you a few people in the church who have been tremendous leaders and role models for the gay Christian movement.  

I’m using a great resource put out by Stonewall, an LGBTQIA rights organization in the United Kingdom that is named for the 1969 Stonewall uprising which marked the start of the PRIDE movement. Their motto is “acceptance without exception” and you can find out more about these and other individuals by Googling their 48-page booklet “Christian Role Models for LGBT Equality.”

Rachel Mann’s given name at birth was Nick because she was assigned male at birth. However, from  the age of four, she always felt like she was a girl. She prayed every night growing up that she would wake up as a girl the next morning. Eventually, she rejected God because she couldn’t understand how a loving God could create someone like her, with such a deep internal struggle over her gender identity. 

Rachel began to transition when she was 22, and it wasn’t until she was 26 that she had a strong enough sense of who she was to try once more to offer herself to God, to a God who, in her words “wouldn’t let me go.” She finally prayed to God, afraid of what God might say back to her, and what she heard instead of condemnation was this: “Actually, I love you, Rachel, in your deepest being and I accept you completely.’ 

Rachel returned to the Church of England and found a spiritual home there . Seven years later, she discerned a calling to the priesthood, went to seminary, and was ordained a priest in 2006, ten years after she had returned to faith in God. Now the Reverend Rachel Mann is a Canon and Poet-in-Residence at Manchester Cathedral in England. 

Judith Kotzé is an identical twin who was raised in the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, in a family that had generations of ministers. She didn’t know she was a lesbian growing up because she was focused on her sense of calling to ministry, eventually being ordained as one of the very first women clergy in the Dutch Reformed Church. While in university, she began to realize she was attracted to women, and she prayed for God to take it away , to give her the gift of celibacy. She was ordained and, after four years of ministry, she fell in love with a woman, making it clear that celibacy was not her calling. Eventually, Judith came to the belief that love is love and in 2000 met the woman who is now her partner. They married in 2007. She didn’t think her parents would come to the wedding and when she did it was a milestone for the entire famil...

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared tries to break the myth that PRIDE month and the church cannot go together. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1 WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple here.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

Happy Pride Month! I’m enjoying seeing all the rainbows and messages of support all over social media as we celebrate PRIDE and raise up our LGBTQ siblings and their ongoing fight for equality and justice in the world and the church.

I know in our area there probably aren’t many churches that are planning on celebrating PRIDE and so I thought this might be a good week to break the myth that PRIDE month and the church cannot go together.

First, a little background on the onth. In the 1960s, homosexual acts were illegal in nearly every state of our country with the exception of Illinois. If you were a restaurant and had openly gay employees or served openly gay customers, you ran the risk of being shut down. Because of this, most gay bars were operated by organized crime, which (on one side) paid police to look the other way and (on the other side) blackmailed wealthy customers. It was even a crime in New York City to dress as a member of the opposite sex. 

When it came to the Stonewall Inn, the payouts had stopped, most people think, triggering the police to decide to shut down the bar for good. On a hot summer night in late June of 1969, eight undercover police officers entered the bar and began arresting the bar employees along with any drag queens or cross dressing patrons.  

More police arrived  and, according to witness reports, the crowd was enraged when the police roughed up a woman dressed in masculine clothes. The Stonewall Riots began and lasted for three nights, launching the start of the Gay Rights movement. A year later, on the first anniversary of the police raid at the Stonewall Inn, New York gay activities organized the first Gay Pride Parade. It began with just a few hundred people but by the time it reached Central Park it had thousands of people joining in.  

So, why should the church celebrate PRIDE month? 

Well, let’s be honest, the church has for far too long been on the side of oppression, dehumanization, and the rejection of our LGBTQ siblings in Christ. Christian leaders have lauded therapies to convert gay people, to make them straight, with deadly consequences and a markedly high increase in the risk of suicide for those who underwent such therapy. Many Christians in our country have fought (and continue to fight) the gay rights movement every step of the way.

But not all of us. 

The Episcopal Church began reconsidering our stance on LGBTQ persons and the church in the 1970s, culminating in the 2003 election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay and partnered priest, as the Bishop of New Hampshire. After marriage equality came to our country, our church also changed our own canons and authorized a liturgy bringing sacramental marriage equality to the church as well.

We do this because Jesus tells us that the law and...

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared tries to break some of the myths that that Christians cannot be socialists (and maybe even break the myth that Americans cannot either). You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1 WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple here.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

As President Biden and Congress continually work in budget negotiations and other legislative qustions, there is a word that keeps cropping up, one that is used pretty regularly to smear and dismiss political policies that are actually widely popular with our citizens. That word is “socialism.”

I think that one of the most unfortunate developments in American political and religious thought in the twentieth-century was the conversion of the word “socialism” into something that is somehow un-American. And so, this week I’d like to break the myth that Christians cannot be socialists (and maybe even break the myth that Americans cannot either). 

The scare concepts linking democratic socialism to communism are unfortunate, albeit rather expected. The most salient difference between the two is that democratic socialists believe in precisely that—a democracy. Communist forms of government are not democratic because the people do not get to vote those who represent them. In communist systems, the state controls everything and a small group of people control the state. 

In communism, there is no such thing as private property—everything is held by the state and individuals are given their basic needs from the state. Contemporary Democratic Socialists (and I would include myself in this camp) do not advocate for a wholesale government take-over of all means of production (which would be classical socialism), but instead is argue for the government to take over those systems best handled by the government. 

We already do this in America, believing it makes most sense for the government to provide for a military, for a safety-net for the poor to exist through Social Security and Medicare, and to have a hand in ensuring there is adequate public housing. The Democratic Socialist argument, for example, when it comes to the current insurance-based system is that it is an inherently inefficient and unjust way of paying for healthcare in our country. Medicare for All would more effectively accomplish this work. Given the fact that our healthcare costs are far above any other developed country (all of whom have some form of government-provided care) and that our healthcare outcomes are far below other countries, I find this argument persuasive.

And knowing what percentage of a church’s budget winds up going to pay for private insurance, I think there is a strong stewardship argument to be made that a church’s dollars could be spent elsewhere if the government would provide effective healthcare. 

Regardless, Christians should not be scared by language of socialism. One of the most significant reasons is because Christian Socialism is a real, valid, and authentic tradition. It continues to be a significant part of the history of my own tradition of Anglican Christianity. This movement,

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared tries to break some of the myths that Christianity is all about escape from the world. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1 WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple here.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

In my family, my wife and I have two very different approaches to vacation. I like to imagine all kinds of possibilities, spending endless amounts of time scrolling through a wide variety of  possibilities. Her approach to vacation is not to imagine manifold possibilities but to make a clear, concrete, and eminently practical plan. What are we doing? Where are we going? Can we afford it… and will the bathroom be nice? 

Like some of you, I would imagine, my own googling of vacation ideas has started to increase once more, I will admit. With the lifting of mask mandates for vaccinated people, the possibility of a vaccine for children, and with more airline miles saved in our Delta account than I have ever seen, following a year and a half of pandemic shut-down, I’m definitely ready for a trip of some sorts, something more than going to Meijer and coming home to report how many unmasked people I saw this time. 

And this talk of vacation and getting away makes me think of how escape from the world has been a persistent temptation in Christianity, with groups wanting to turn in on themselves and just be left alone. So, this week, I thought I’d try to break the myth that Christianity is about escaping the world. 

In the Gospel reading appointed in the lectionary last Sunday, Jesus responded to our own desire to escape from the world. He prayed in John 17 for his disciples (and us), asking God to protect them precisely because Jesus is sending them into the world. Jesus sends us into the world. 

And the reason we are sent into the world is because we are meant to be Christ for this world today. And this should actually bring us joy.

You see, we are not sent into the world as some kind of subversive agent to beat up on all the bad people we don’t like. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like that job sometimes. But that’s not actually the job Jesus gives us. . We are sent into the world to be people of mercy, kindness, faithfulness, and justice. And when we do that, we will find joy.  When we live as Jesus says he would like us to live, then the joy of Christ will be made complete in us. 

I know you want a break. Lord knows I want a break. And a break is a good thing. But after times of rest and recreation, we need to return to our calling and vocation in the world. 

And after the separation and distance of this past year and a half of pandemic, as a church we need to return to our calling and vocation in this world and all the ways were unable to do it before. In my parish, just like most churches, we kept ourselves together during this pandemic. We connected in challenging times, grieving, laughing, and working together using virtual means. 

But there is more we need to do. The church needs to be embodied once more.

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared tries to break some of the myths about Christianity and the continued violence in the Holy Land. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1 WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple here.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

This week has seen a marked increase in violence in the Holy Land as conflicts between Palestinians, the Israeli military and police, and Jewish nationalists have escalated. At the base of the current rise in tension is the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, a Palestinian area under threat of eviction by Jewish families who want to claim the land as their own. This has led to increasing tensions in Jerusalem as well, particularly around the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Temple Mount. 

Now, I’m certainly not going to solve the problems of peace in the Holy Land in a short five-minute episode, but as someone who has been to Israel numerous times, both academically and as a pilgrim, I’m often concerned about the way American Christians think about and treat the nation of Israel. So,  this week I’d like to bust some of the myths around Christianity and the Holy Land. 

First, we need to be clear that the support of modern Israel in American Christianity comes from a very odd theological stream known as Christian Zionism. Inspired by a dispensationalist view of Christianity, these Christian Zionists believe returning the Jewish people to Israel will hasten the end times and the return of Christ. In the late twentieth century, people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson helped blend Christian Zionism with conservative politics, insisting that Bible-believing Christians must always stand with and for Israel, no matter what. 

If you don’t live in this theological world, I know this all sounds strange. I know it did to me when I was in college and I first  went to Israel on an archeological trip. We worked at a site owned by an organization that literally was planting flowers in the desert to hasten Christ’s return. I was just digging and trying to learn.

One of the most unfortunate results of the rise of Christian Zionism in America has been the increasing ignorance most Christians have of their siblings in Christ in the Holy Land: Palestinian Christians. 

Yes, not all Palestinians are Muslim. In fact, fully one fifth of the 13 million Palestinians around the world are Christian. But many have had to flee the Holy Land due to violence and the Israeli oppression of Palestinians. Palestinian Christians used to be 21% of the Arab population and now they are just 8%. When you consider all of Israel, Christians are now just 2% of the total population in the Holy Land.

And even in strong Christian communities, the numbers have plummeted. Bethlehem, the site of one of the oldest churches in all Christendom, used to be one of the few remaining strongholds of Palestinian Christians, where they made up 80% of the regional population. Now, they are barely 10%

In my own Anglican tradition, we have a diocese in Jerusalem with its center and cathedral there, just outside the old city. In fact,

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared continues to break some of the myths about the resurrection of Christ which we celebrate during Eastertide. This week, he turns to the question of why the resurrection is an important part of Christian belief. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1 WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple here.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

Last week, as we continue walking through the Great Fifty Days of Easter, I sought to break some of the myths surrounding the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Specifically, I tried to speak to the theological principal that Jesus was bodily raised. I talked about how this was more than resuscitation of a corpse—that his resurrected body was different than a normal mortal body—but that the idea that he was still raised bodily is indeed a core tenet of the Christian faith, both Scripturally and theologically. 

But I should probably be clear this week that I didn’t answer one of the key questions you might have… why? Why is the truth of the bodily resurrection so important? Why do people like author John Updike, whose poem “Seven Stanzas at Easter” I shared last week, say things like, “Make no mistake: if he rose at all, it was as His body; if the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall.” Will it really?

The “why” question is important, and so this week I’d like to try to break the myth that some people have who think that believing in the resurrection probably isn’t an essential part of the Christian faith. 

I talked last week about the essentiality of the bodily resurrection of Christ in the Scriptural witness. In particular, I highlighted the words from the Apostle John in his First Epistle, “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.”

The Apostle Paul spoke to this as well, in the fifteenth chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians, where he said, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

 So, clearly the apostles and the early church believed the truth of the bodily resurrection… but the question remains… why? Why does it matter?

To be clear, the church has spent the better part of two thousand years exploring this question and there is no way I could summarize all those theological arguments in the next two and a half minutes I have. That said, there are two reasons for the essentiality bodily resurrection that I, personally, find particularly persuasive. 

The bodily resurrection is essential for the same reason that the incarnation is essential—because in Christ God chose to be one of us, to take on our nature, to experience all the delight, pain, and struggle of mortality. All of the pain and struggle, the guilt and doubt, that has plagued you as a human,

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared breaks some of the myths about the resurrection of Christ which we celebrate during Eastertide. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1 WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple here.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

Usually, right around this time of year, I get the delight of wishing people a Happy Easter and enjoying the quizzical looks they give me in return. 

You see, in the tradition of the church, Easter isn’t just one Sunday, it’s Fifty Days of feasting—fifty days of feasting after the forty days of Lent. That’s because the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is such a profound reality-changing event that it needs a full fifty days to celebrate it. That also explains why my daughter is still eating Easter candy, much to the occasional annoyance of my wife! My daughter is just traditional in her celebrations, even at four years old.

But these continued Easter celebrations raise a question I hear sometimes… just what was the resurrection anyway? What does it mean when we say we  believe Jesus rose from the dead? Did a corpse come back to life? Was it a resuscitation, like when paramedics bring back someone whose heart stops, just one that is more miraculous because it took place after Jesus was dead for three days?

All of these questions, I think, mean today is a great day to break some of the myths about the resurrection of Christ which we celebrate during Eastertide.

First, the resurrection of Christ was not the mere resuscitation of a corpse. It can be compared to Lazarus, for instance, who Jesus bodily raised from the dead—resuscitated—after Lazarus had been dead for four days. However, Lazarus’s original body was raised up and that means that Lazarus still grew old and eventually Lazarus did finally die. 

Jesus’s resurrected body, however, was very different from his body that was put to death by a violent state and jealous religious powers. For one thing, it seems that Jesus’s disciples did not immediately recognize him—often, not until he heard them say their name or he showed them his wounds. For another, in his resurrected body, he seemed able to enter and exit rooms with locked doors. And the point that he was raised with his wounds is deeply important, emphasizing that God did not erase the painful path, but that God makes it new.

Some would suggest that maybe the experience of the disciples was some kind of mass hallucination, or at least an experience of a spiritual being who came back after Jesus’s death.

And yet, the Scriptural witness is clear that though his resurrected body was different, it was still a body. He was not some kind of ghost or spiritual being. When his disciples struggled to believe, he ate a piece of fish with them, demonstrating that he was indeed bodily there. He invited St. Thomas to stick his hand right into his side and to probe the holes in his pierced hands with his fingers. Jesus breathed on the apostles, giving them the gift of the Holy Spirit. And St. John is abundantly clear that Jesus was raised bodily when he begins his first epistle,

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared breaks some of the myth that you outgrow the need for bedtime prayers. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1 WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple here.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

In my own family, though I am the priest, it is my wife who has come up with the nighttime prayers we say with my four-year old daughter at the end of the day. I say we, but my daughter almost always demands that Mommy does nighttime prayers with her, because “That’s what Mommy does, Daddy, not you.” It’s always an interesting direction to receive as a priest!

When I was a child, I used to have the worst nightmares. I got into the habit of praying for God to calm my spirit and take the nightmares away. And, believe it or not it actually worked most of the time.   The recurrent nightmares stopped. I still get night terrors from time to time, but prayer generally helps calm me, particularly if I remember to pray before I go to sleep. 

So, this week I’d like to break the myth that you outgrow the need for bedtime prayers. 

Most of us who grew up with bedtime prayers eventually sort of grew out of the practice probably—at least until you have kids of your own and start it all over again with them. But I wonder if all of us would have a lot less stress at nighttime, if we would sleep more easily, if we would even have less stress during the day, by spending some time at the end of every day being present with God. 

In the church, there is a long tradition of set prayers for different times in the day, usually called the Daily Office, Divine Office, or Canonical Hours. Most of us know of them because of the practice of monks reciting these prayer offices throughout the day, but they’re not just for monks. In fact, by placing a structure of the Daily Office in the first Book of Common Prayer in 16th-century England, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was trying to move the practice of daily prayers out of the monastery and put it back in the average Christian household. 

In the Episcopal Church, my favorite of all of the daily offices is the office of Compline, the prayers said at nighttime before going to bed. The title comes from the Latin word completorium, from which we get the English word “complete.” The office of compline is meant to “complete” the day by ending it in prayer. 

The basic structure of compline was established by St. Benedict in the sixth century: three psalms, a hymn, a lesson, a verse and response, the kyrie, and a blessing.” Over time it grew to include the Lord’s Prayer, a Confession, and the great hymn known as the Nunc dimittis. This hymn comes from the words spoken by aged Simeon when the child Jesus was presented in the temple, “Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised; for these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see: A Light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.”

One of my favorite compline prayers in our prayer book is this one, “Keep watch,

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared breaks some of the myth of whether or not the church still has repentance and concrete work to do when it comes to her history with slavery. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1 WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple here.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

Earlier this week I got an email from the School of Theology at Sewanee, where I did my second master’s degree and also my doctorate. Sewanee has decided to rename a longstanding lecture series, one that has been around for nearly a century. It used to be known as the DuBose lectures, so named for William Porcher DuBose. Dubose was one of the first professors at the seminary, which was founded after the end of the Civil War. DeBose also remains one of the greatest theologians that has ever existed in The Episcopal Church, with his writings still having significant respect today.

So, you may be asking, why would they remove his name from the lecture series which has borne it for so long?

Well, there is tremendous difficulty with DuBuse and his history with slavery. His family owned over 200 slaves before the Civil War. During the Civil War, he left seminary to fight on the side of the Confederacy. And then, after the war he was quoted saying that even though we would now say slavery was sin, it had been a system which was beneficial to both slave and owner. 

The specific quote my seminary shared in relating their decision to remove DuBose’s name from the lecture series was this: “Now that the judgement is passed [that slavery needed to end], we join in it. Slavery we say, is a sin, and a sin of which we could not possibly be guilty.” To go a step further, DuBose also praises the rising Ku Klux Klan in his memoirs.

Now, I know that some people, including some of my fellow alumni and siblings in The Episcopal Church, will see the removal of DuBose’s name from this lecture series as yet another example of the so-called “cancel-culture.” DuBose was a profoundly insightful theologian who lived in a specific context that resulted in him having a significant blind spot when it came to slavery. Is that reason enough to banish his name from the seminary’s lecture series?

I would say, yes. It absolutely is. And, furthermore, it provides an excellent opportunity to break the myth of whether or not the church still has repentance and concrete work to do when it comes to her history with slavery. 

It is essential that Christians today acknowledge that the centuries of slavery in the United States of America were explicitly and vigorously supported by Christians and leaders in the church. Even after the Civil War, when some in the South believed their defeat in the war had been God’s divine providence, Christian leaders still believed it was God’s punishment for mistreating slaves… not for owning slaves. They continued to argue for a so-called “Christian slavery” that would have been OK. 

It is no surprise, then, that following the Civil War, the theological weight of the church was thrown behind segregation and the Jim Crow south that was beginning to emerge.

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared breaks some of the myths we often believe about the inevitability of death—and how that influences how we live our lives, particularly during a pandemic. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1 WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am. You can also subscribe to the podcast on Apple here.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

Well, here we are in Wednesday after the great celebrations of Easter, the feast of the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and I’m pleased to tell you that Easter is not over. In the church, Easter is such an important day that it is traditionally celebrated for a full 50 days50 days of celebration for the Easter season to follow the 40 days of penitence we had during Lent.

And yet with COVID-19 cases still rising, with our own state of Michigan taking the undesirable spot of first place in the country with regard to how bad the pandemic is here, and with people still dying every day to this disease, adding to the over half a million people we have lost, it can feel a little hard to celebrate.

But Easter teaches us an important gospel truth and that is that death simply will not win in the end and so this week I’d like to try to break some of the myths we often believe about the inevitability of death.

If your church follows the lectionary, you heard in the Gospel of Mark how all the disciples

failed Jesus by running away from him during his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. And in Mark’s gospel, even the generally faithful women disciples failed by not going out to share the good news that Jesus had risen but instead running home terrified at what was happening. My sermon on Easter Sunday this past week talked about how Mark tells the story this way to make it very clear to us that the resurrection is entirely the work of God, that it’s not something we bring about, that all of us will fail but the God will always bring life out of death, grace out of our failures.

And while that is indeed the glorious and grace filled Easter truth, the resurrection also compels us to think and act differently about death as Christians. In our church’s liturgy at a funeral mass, we talk about the reality that life is changed for Christians, not ended, by death. That doesn’t mean we don’t grieve. Even Jesus wept when Lazarus died, knowing he was going to raise him up from the dead in just a few minutes. Death can be horrible and painful. But as Christians we also believe it is never the end, that love will persist past death.

And though death will continue to be inevitable until our Lord returns to finally set the world fully aright, to heal it with God’s love, we shouldn’t run towards deathg. St. Paul himself recognized this in his writings when he would talk about the fact that even though he knows that when he dies he will go to be with our Lord, he also knows that while he is still here our Lord has worked for him to do.

And I hope you know that God has work for you to do, particularly right now. I can think of no better way to celebrate Easter then to start once more following the advice of scientists about how to ...