This poem, “God is Dead. Good,” from Kester Brewin makes a great reading for a Good Friday service to mark the end of an Atheism for Lent Course:
Today, there is no hope.
There is no resurrection,
no looking forward to a Sunday
which does not yet exist in even
the wildest imaginations.
There is no prayer
no solace
no point.
God has died.
It’s over.
Finished.
Give up.
Go home.
Return to work.
The best you can do
is carry on the memory;
the only remainder of belief,
now all has been strung up
and screwed up,
is to consider that may be
his life was well lived,
and that helping the poor
and standing up for the oppressed
was worth living
and dying for.
God has died.
We live still
this Friday
to do Good.
Another thing that I did for the Forsaken by God service that we held at the end of the Atheism for Lent Course that I ran at Journey last year, was modify some dialogue from Angels in America, adding a sprinkling of Nietzsche’s madman, to make a reading entitled, “Sue the Bastard”:
The prophet, yes. That is what they call me. I am like a madman in a market place.
God abandoned us. He isn’t coming back. And if he ever did come back, if he ever dared to show his face in the garden again, if he ever returned to see how much suffering his abandonment had created, and if all he had to offer was death, we should sue the bastard. That’s my only contribution to all this theology, all this a/theology. Sue the bastard for walking out. How dare he?! He walked out on us, He ought to pay.
We suffer. But we don’t want death, we want life. I want more life. So bless me anyway. I want more life, I can’t help myself, I do, I want more life. I’ve lived through such terrible times and there are people who’ve lived through much, much worse. But we see them living anyway, when they’re more spirit than body, when they’re more sores than skin, when they’re burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. I don’t know if it’s not braver to die, but I recognise the habit, the addiction of being alive. We don’t want death, we don’t want After Life, we want life, here and now. And if we can find hope anywhere, anyhow, that’s it, that’s the best we can do. So bless us anyway, we want more life.
Thus spake the prophet!
Xochitl Alvizo has written a great post, “The Hunger Games, Holy Week, and Re-Imagining Ritual,” which takes its cue from Danielle Tumminio’s CNN article, ”Hunger Games asks us not to watch.”
Tumminio writes,
Read moreWhat would Good Friday be like if once, just once, Christians stopped their church services in protest or stopped a re-enactment of Jesus’ death and took him down from the cross just in time?
