A Wild and Crazy God
It begins Sunday for Christians, Monday at sunset for Jews. For both faiths, it is the holiest time of the year, the time that defines them as a people chosen by God to witness to the world. Both holy weeks revolve around the life of a reluctant savior, a man empowered by God to deliver others from misery and death. One was a prince who abandoned his royal inheritance to become a shepherd, until God spoke to him in the wilderness and directed him to liberate all his people. The other was a common laborer who, after a pilgrimage in the wilderness, became a shepherd to a small sect of his people, but who, after his death, was exalted by a growing body of followers who called him Prince of Peace. The one died of old age, gazing from a distance at the Promised Land he would never enter; the other died young, executed by an occupying power for his dangerous ideas, which included the teaching that all the earth could become a Promised Land. There I will end my listing of parallels betwe...