363 | Common Grounds | Good Friday through Easter | Dale and Judy Luffman (Rebroadcast)

Originally released April 14th, 2017, Project Zion is rebroadcasting our  interview with Judy and the late Apostle Dale Luffman. Judy and Dale discuss the most important weekend in Christianity: Good Friday through Easter. 

*Apostle Dale Luffman passed away on March 25, 2020. 

Host: Karin Peter
Guest: Judy and Dale Luffman

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Intro and Outro music used with permission: 

“For Everyone Born,” Community of Christ Sings #285. Music © 2006 Brian Mann, admin. General Board of Global Ministries t/a GBGMusik, 458 Ponce de Leon Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30308. copyright@umcmission.org 

“The Trees of the Field,” Community of Christ Sings # 645, Music © 1975 Stuart Dauerman, Lillenas Publishing Company (admin. Music Services). 

All music for this episode was performed by Dr. Jan Kraybill, and produced by Chad Godfrey.  

NOTE: The series that make up Faith Unfiltered explore the unique spiritual and theological gifts Community of Christ offers for today's world. Although Faith Unfiltered is a Ministry of Community of Christ. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Community of Christ. 

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363 | Common Grounds | Good Friday through Easter | Dale and Judy Luffman (Rebroadcast)

Project Zion Podcast 

Josh Mangelson  00:22

Thanks for listening to another episode of Project Zion. This podcast explores the unique spiritual and theological gifts the Restoration offers for today's world. Project Zion is sponsored by the Latter-day Seekers team from Community of Christ.

Karin Peter  00:55

Welcome, I'm Karin Peter, and this is “Common Grounds” where we have conversations about the liturgical or Christian calendar. So, to offer a brief review for those who are just picking up the series now, through the seasons and holy days of the liturgical calendar, we relive the story of faith, the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The calendar begins four weeks before Christmas, with the season of Advent, and moves through Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time. In each season, we participate with our whole being through scripture, symbol, color and hymnody. As we learn more about the liturgical calendar, and as we learn to live it as part of our spiritual practice, we deepen our understanding of discipleship and what it means to live in Christian community. So today, we have two guests. I'm here with Judy Luffman and her spouse, Dr. Dale Luffman, and Judy and Dale are both Community of Christ ministers. They are natives of the Pacific Northwest, and they have returned to the west to retire after decades of service to Community of Christ and to the Community of Christ Seminary. And so, as a bit of introduction, Judy, Dale, would you like to share something about yourself with us?

Judy Luffman  02:24

I'm Judy. Hi. I am a native Oregonian. I was born in Oregon and grew up here, taught school for a while here, and then when Dale was full time Minister for Community of Christ, it took us across the United States to different states. And as Karin has already said, once we retired, we were delighted to be able to move back here. 

Karin Peter  02:46

Thanks, Judy. Dale, what would you like to share?

Dale Luffman  02:49

Well, as you shared, we have been in the Church’s service for most of our adult life, went under Church appointment in 1979, served across the United States. When I was in the Council of 12, for almost 20 years, I served a number of assignments internationally, as well as in the United States and Canada, and found that to be both rewarding and challenging, as an experience of ministry. Through all that, worship has always played a predominant and significant part of the Church's life, a form of the Church’s witness. And so, it's just good to speak of some of the elements, particularly with regard to Good Friday and Easter today.

Karin Peter  03:42

So as a point of full disclosure, I want to share that Dale was one of my professors in seminary, and so, I'm trying to reflect all of the learnings of that period of time, so that I reflect the wonderful experience of participating in that endeavor. So today we are here to talk about not just one holy day, but we're talking about Good Friday through Easter, this part of Holy Week, and what it has to say to us as far as shaping and forming us in the ministry and message of Jesus. So, my initial question has to do with when Good Friday and Easter kind of fall in the calendar.

Judy Luffman  04:31

And that's a moveable date, as we all know. It was tied initially to Passover, the Jewish Passover, which was tied in turn to the first full moon after the spring equinox, the vernal equinox. And in the Gregorian calendar they've maintained that although they've made the adjustment to say it’s the first Sunday after the first full moon and so on, and so that's why it's always different, a little bit different every year, however, it can be calculated forward and backwards for many, many centuries, actually. This year Easter is in mid-April, which is fairly late. It can be in early, mid-March, and the range, you know, floats around between those dates.

Karin Peter  05:15

But, always in the spring.

Judy Luffman  05:17

After yeah, it's always the first full moon after March 20, 21st, whatever, whenever spring equinox hits.

Karin Peter  05:25

So in talking about Good Friday and Easter, why would it behoove us to talk about both of those holy days at the same time? What's going on here with Good Friday and Easter?

Dale Luffman  05:39

It's a part of the Church’s celebrated activity that begins with Ash Wednesday and Lent, goes through Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and well, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and then Easter. It's important to pause and say, "Why Good Friday? Why can't we just go to Easter?” I remember when I was the stake president in Kirtland, Ohio. We would hold what we called Holy Week series in the Kirtland Temple. And people would often say to me, “Good Friday, such a downer. Why can't we celebrate?” Well, that's the point. It is a downer, in a sense. It's not the celebrative experience of Easter. But to get to Easter we really try to think about what it is in the life and ministry of Jesus that commends to us a reliving of his life, so that who he was, what he said, and what he did, influences and frames our lives and our living. So Good Friday and Easter takes us on a journey. And like every journey, it doesn't always work out the way we think we would like it to. It takes us places, oftentimes, that we would not have chosen, but they are places where we need to spend some time.

Karin Peter  07:19

So as we've traveled through the calendar thus far, we are picking up having had a conversation about Maundy Thursday, and where we are in the narrative at that point. So, talk to us a little bit about what that narrative is, and how we move into Good Friday, and the experience of Good Friday, and then on through the Easter experience.

Judy Luffman  07:45

Maundy Thursday, as we tend to observe it, is more in a way more similar to a Passover feast, or sometimes reenactments of the Last Supper, those kinds of things. So, it's a remembrance of the time Jesus and the disciples were all together essentially for the last time in communion and fellowship with each other before Judas's betrayal and the trial and everything that followed after. It's not as dark a time as Good Friday necessarily. There are hints of that coming. But it leads to Good Friday, which as Dale has already mentioned, we tend to want to skip over. Good Friday, the term itself is sort of a strange term, I think. Another way to think of it is Holy Friday, and that's really a more accurate definition. Good Friday is probably a misnomer, so you can think of it as Holy Friday. And it helps us remember the pain the disciples felt, the discomfort they felt, the fear they felt, the physical pain Jesus went through on the cross and leading up to that being, you know, whipped and the crown of thorns on his head and all of that. If we don't vicariously live that experience, Easter is just a party, is just, you know, good feelings and balloon releases and celebrating butterflies flying and all of this. You lose the magnificence of what the resurrection is all about, if you don't experience the death, and the pain, and the suffering and the fear.

Karin Peter  09:26

So, as we've talked about the different seasons and holy days, and I really like the Holy Friday as opposed to Good Friday, which is confusing, as we've talked about that, we know that we learn about these, we relive these experiences by looking at the scriptures. Looking at what the Gospels have to say to us about what took place is really how we get our understanding and our traditions of this experience in the liturgical calendar. So, talk to us a little bit about what the scriptures have to tell us about Good Friday through Easter.

Dale Luffman  10:05

Yes, it's really very important not to disconnect Good Friday with Easter. In fact, in some of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, there is a celebration of Holy Saturday, which often will lift up the text in Jonah, of being in the belly of the great fish, as that in between time of death, to empty tomb and resurrection. What the scriptures do for us is it helps us to journey through an embedded tradition. Scripture gives expression to an embedded tradition, embedded in us in ways that we are not usually conscious of. That traditioning began simply by word of mouth. It was the stories, the oral stories told by, we see it even in some of the earliest scriptures, the stories told to one another to communities, which get captured earliest, actually, in Paul's writings, where he's reflecting on what those traditions mean, and what they say to the earliest Christian communities about who they are and what they're about, and the One to whom they owe their allegiance as Lord and they confess. With Paul's witness, the Church is formed, quite frankly. Now, he doesn't tell the story of Jesus, as we sing, but he is reflecting on the meaning and significance of the life and ministry and witness of Jesus, and in that, the witness of God's activity on the behalf of all the creation. We find that in Mark, the earliest Gospel, an account of both the, well, the whole journey of Jesus's life, for a specific community at a specific time, just before the fall of the Jerusalem temple. And in that narrative, that faithful narrative of Mark, Mark wants us to experience the empty tomb. And, he walks us through what traditionally we experienced as the events, but the gospel actually ends with Mark 16, verse eight, where he just leaves us in front of an empty tomb. The very nature of Mark's narrative is that Mark is constantly asking you and me, “Do you get it? Do you understand? Do you get it?” The narrative is constructed in such a way as to constantly ask us the question, "Do you get it?” And the empty tomb asks us that same question. Later, there is an emendation to the text, an adding-on of several verses, to bring Mark into alignment with Luke and with Matthew to profess, “He's risen!” But actually, it violates the narrative of Mark's gospel, Mark wants us to encounter an empty tomb, and stay there for a while. Matthew and Luke, on the other hand, share various accounts of not only the death and burial and empty tomb, but the resurrected appearances of Jesus. They interpret them in different ways because they, Matthew and Luke, are writing to two very different communities. One is a primarily Jewish Christian community. The other is primarily a Gentile Christian community, whose questions and issues are different, and they write for their audience. And their attestations of the resurrection as the Easter witness are framed by those audiences. They aren't telling different stories. They are telling the story so that it will be heard. And that's why it, particularly in Luke's account, he uses the road to Emmaus account as a primary resurrection experience. In fact, it's a classic of discovery, walking in faith, who Jesus is with us. What Luke is really doing is he's extending the Easter witness. It's not a once only then and there. It's a here and now and moving with us into the future kind of witness of the Easter's glory. John is a whole different, as they say, kettle of fish. John writes for a very different purpose, at a very different time, a much later time, writing for an audience which has been thrown out of the synagogues. And he's trying to make sense out of all that. Some authors have said that John's Gospel is a gospel about Passion Week with a long introduction. And if you look at John's Gospel, almost half of the gospel has to do with the final week of Jesus. Now, one has to pause when one comes to John and ask, “Now what's most important to John?” That last week of Jesus. And so, the resurrection, the Good Friday and Easter frame that resurrection, become the preeminent witness of John's Gospel. And so, you have this very elaborate affirmation of this event. But it's central to his whole Gospel. This whole Holy Week is half of his Gospel. That says something to us.

Karin Peter  16:06

So, while we're talking about the Gospels, and the way that story has been told, can you tell us a little bit about the very different role of women in the witness of the resurrected Christ?

Dale Luffman  16:20

Yes. One of the amazing things that is often missed because of our patriarchal eyes and our conditioning, is the significance of women's witness. Who were the ones that were first at the tomb? In Mark's gospel, who were the ones that stayed at the cross? All the disciples, all of them, abandoned him, other than the women. The women stayed, who were the ones that hightailed it to the tomb, because they had not had the time to properly prepare Jesus's body for burial. So, they went early on Sunday morning to do that, which had not been done because it got dark too soon, and in the Sabbath, so it was prohibited that they do anything like that. And so, they went to do the tasks that they would have done, but they were the first ones there, and the witnesses and they, Mary and Martha, become the, quite frankly, the first apostles. In fact, there are traditions that would name them as the apostles’ apostle, Mary, particularly. She is the apostle who offers her apostolic witness to those who will be named the apostles. And that's throughout all four Gospels. You have a witness there, it's, we have to remember her as Fiorenza suggests. There is a memory of her in being the apostolic witness, the first apostolic witness that then is conveyed through the Church by the 12.

Karin Peter  18:10

So, when you mentioned Fiorenza, you're talking about Elisabeth Fiorenza, the feminist theologian?

Dale Luffman  18:15

Yes.

Karin Peter  18:16

Okay. So, understanding that what we're really doing is reliving this scripture story each year, as we experience Good Friday through Easter, how is that experience lived out traditionally in the Christian community?

Judy Luffman  18:35

Good Friday, in the broader Christian community, has some interesting traditions that we in Community of Christ are maybe slowly starting to understand and appreciate and mimic a little bit. I became more familiar with this one Holy Week season when I attended a Lutheran Good Friday service. And it really opened my eyes. They celebrated a service that's called tenebrae, or service of darkness. Their sanctuary, they didn't really have icons, but statuary and the cross at the front of the chapel. All of those important visual images were draped with black netting. There were no candles present in the room. The lighting was very subdued. The hymns that were sung were things like, “Tis Midnight, and On Olive’s Brow”, you know, other traditional things, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”, those kinds of hymns. The scriptures all had to do with the death and the dying. The thing that was the most striking to me was at the end of the service. The minister took the scriptures, this was the only thing that had been on the altar other than a black cloth, the open book of scriptures. He picked it up and he slammed it shut with a very loud, forceful noise. And he processed down the aisle out of the sanctuary. And all of us in the congregation followed him out. And the lights were extinguished. You really, in that moment, I could hardly talk about it, experienced what the darkness was like. It was very moving.

Dale Luffman  20:21

And I think that's exactly why we need to follow the scriptures and journey in and with the scriptures, including that close-this of the volume that says, now we rest in God, and wait on God for the resurrection. Celebrating Good Friday to Easter's joy is at the heart of what it means to be Christian.

Karin Peter  20:51

So many times, when we think about Christian holidays, especially in the United States, we tend to put Christmas as the epitome of our experience. And yet, traditionally, the epitome of our experience is Easter morning. It is the resurrection. So, as a visual person, Judy, when you shared about tenebrae, I can see that darkness close in. And then we live in that through Holy Saturday. And we live in that dark space until the experience of Easter morning. So, throughout kind of the historical observance of Easter, it's almost as if that importance of that moment has been reduced somehow, from how it was meant to be. How would it have been in the early Christian communities?

Dale Luffman  21:48

Oh, Easter was the most important, celebrative moment in the early Christian Church. When you talk about the early Christian Church, you really are talking about the early Christian Churches. So, there were various practices, but one of the norming practices that was held in many of the churches, particularly in the east, but throughout the east and west, was the practice of persons who were seeking to become Christians, catechumens, they were called, would study for a long time and would evidence their moral transformation. This could last for two or three years before they were allowed to be baptized. This was the thing we're being formed to be Christians formed and formed in the tradition. But their baptism was done on Easter. Easter was the day of being laid into the watery grave and risen in the semblance of the resurrection, that they would be immersed into the life of Christ and come to life in their discipleship in him. So, it took on this wonderful acting out of the life and ministry of Jesus as represented in his death and resurrection.

Karin Peter  23:20

So when we think about being left in the darkness on Good Friday and going through Holy Saturday, what is the visual or traditional impact then, having walked out of the chapel and darkness, of coming back into the community experience of Easter morning?

Judy Luffman  23:39

Many of our Community of Christ congregations will have an Easter sunrise service and so the transformation from the darkness and the grief you feel from Holy Friday, Good Friday, is transformed with the coming of the light, literally, with dawn breaking, if you have that service as dawn is breaking. The sanctuaries will often be decorated with lilies, Easter lilies. They're actually symbolic, if you think about the shape of that flower, they're like a trumpet. And they're one of the earliest blooming flowers in spring and so they symbolize not only the trumpet celebrating the resurrection, but that the rebirth that is a part of that season. The colors in the sanctuary will be changed from black of Holy Friday to white, with white all over everything. Sometimes purple, the royal color of purple, is used during Lent. That's gone, replaced by white. So, you have all these images of bright white light all over the place, white flowers that help bring back the light that is there from the resurrected Christ.

Karin Peter  24:59

So, Judy, you're an accomplished musician. Do you have a favorite Easter hymn that brings that, not just in a visual way, but brings that in a community way that people would sing together on Easter?

Judy Luffman  25:15

Oh, my goodness, there are so many of them. I love “Christ is Alive” and “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” and “Lift Your Glad Voices”, which is almost a dance one. There isn't a single one really, that I don't like. They are all helpful in getting us to that rejoicing place. But you don't get there if you haven't done Good Friday.

Karin Peter  25:38

Ah, so we're back to the reality of the experience.

Dale Luffman  25:42

You can't sing “Alleluia” if you haven't taken the journey.

Judy Luffman  25:46

In fact, there is a tradition, if you think back to what you've heard about Advent. Often, during Advent, it is appropriate to put aside Christmas carols. You don't sing Christmas carols till Christmas Day. Lent is similar in the term, “alleluia”. In some Christian traditions, they do not speak that word during Lent, those 40 days. And, in some traditions, they have a ceremony, for lack of a better term, where they'll take a banner with “alleluia” on it, and they actually bury it outside and it stays in the ground. On Easter morning, they'll process out, they will uncover the banner and they will joyously shout, “Alleluia! Alleluia! He is risen!”

Dale Luffman  26:35

Yup. Now, there is a connection here with the Latter Day Saint tradition. And it got expressed in the dedication of Kirtland Temple. It was called the Hosanna. The expression of “Hosanna! Hosanna!”  And particularly, “The Spirit of God, Like a Fire is Burning”. You don't shout out the word “shout”. That's a stage direction in the hymn in order that you sing the “alleluias”. “Hosanna! Hosanna!” That in a sense, the dedication of the Kirtland Temple captured a bit of that even though it wasn't on Easter Sunday, but there is a capturing of that whole symbolism of “Hosanna”. Hallelujah.

Karin Peter  27:21

So, in the culture in which we live, many people participate in Easter, but they participate in the commercialization of Easter. And I admit, I buy my share of Easter candy too for the grandkids. And the jelly beans and the marshmallow chicks seem to appear earlier and earlier in the grocery store. These actually developed over the centuries of Easter traditions from other places, and we've kind of disconnected them from their origins. Any comments on some of those traditions?

Judy Luffman  27:56

Painting Easter eggs is a very ancient tradition. Exchanging eggs was a symbol of new life, and they were precious commodities, a good source of protein, and so, that was an important part of Easter celebration for many centuries, actually. The candy stuff, it’s just exploded. And it's an interesting fact to note that next to Halloween, Easter is the biggest candy consuming holiday of the year. So that's kind of down a different track than we really want to be thinking about. It is the oldest Christian holiday as has been mentioned before. The whole idea of giving candy and an Easter Bunny, and that kind of thing, originated in Europe. There are some who think the term Easter itself is named for a pagan holiday. There's not a lot of firm evidence about that. The evidence lies more in the idea that it's a remembrance of the paschal holiday, the paschal part of Jesus’ life. And that's where Easter term comes from. So, it's helpful in my mind to think that and keep it the holy season that it is and not the commercial season.

Karin Peter  29:06

So, a lot of people listening have children. And so, I'm curious if you might have something to share about how the traditions of Easter, of the more significant meanings of Easter, can somehow coexist with our Easter bunnies and Easter baskets in the life of our families. How do we help make connections through the experience of the joyful Easter egg hunt and the nature of the resurrected Christ?

Dale Luffman  29:41

I think we do this by making sure that we establish counter-narratives, alternatives to what the culture dictates is the story. When we were raising our children, I think we tried to do this particularly on Christmas morning by going to the scriptures, reading the Christmas story, having an occasion to reflect on that. I know it was torture for our kids at some times because they had to wait to open their presents, but we made sure there was a time to share the story. I think the similar thing needs to be done with, well the whole of Holy Week, but particularly with Good Friday and Easter, is that we make sure that that story does not go untold. And, we don't just wait to go to church to tell the story, but the story gets told in our family, and then rehearsed at church, thought about, reflected on. I think that constancy of telling the story is really important.

Karin Peter  30:51

Telling the story and the tradition of the Gospels, which is what they were doing. So, sharing the narrative of Easter with children, I can see where that is a wonderful experience. Good Friday, however, is a little bit more difficult if we're going to help that be part of the narrative that shapes and forms children and young people in Christian discipleship. What can be done, as parents, as Sunday school teachers, for us to help that part of the story become relevant in young people's lives?

Judy Luffman  31:27

I think we can adopt some of the ideas from a tenebrae service and help them experience what it's like to turn off a flashlight in a dark room, or extinguish candles that are going, something that represents the light going out for a while. When you experience the difference from light to dark, you can start to internalize a little bit how people might have felt as Jesus was dying, and upon his death, because there were no guarantees. They didn't totally understand that this resurrection he'd been talking about was actually going to happen. They just knew he was dead. So, if we can help our kids experience darkness, true darkness, and some of those feelings, it can lead them to a growing understanding as they develop.

Dale Luffman  32:17

I think we can also, and it doesn't just mean when we're trying to demonstrate Good Friday on Good Friday, but there are times within a child's life or in our own life, where things are very dark, where we encounter our Good Fridays. And, I think we need to identify them in the Gospel story, not just have them as, “That's a horrible, bad, terrible thing that happened”, and leave it there. But what does that mean, in terms of from our faith perspective? How do we view that? And where does that leave room for a resurrection, where there is hope, and there is rising, as it were, in a new day? I think there are ways that we can use situations and encounters and tragedy as a means of bringing the Easter story alive in that moment.

Karin Peter  33:14

Which is part of shaping and forming us in our lifelong discipleship. So, as you have prepared for this particular episode of “Common Grounds”, do you have any personal reflections or memories of an experience of the Good Friday to Easter season that you'd like to share?

Dale Luffman  33:34

Yeah, I grew up in a small rural congregation of the RLDS church, and it was rural and we were a fairly agricultural area, simple folk, good, but simple folk. And so, Easter was a big deal and we would always have something new that we wore that day. That was a part of the tradition. I think it probably was because we were not any of us were that wealthy. We were poor and most of us knew it. That was one way to celebrate who we were. I think I came to appreciate the whole Holy Week, Good Friday, Easter experience as a young adult as I was drawn more into ecumenical arenas. I attended a Roman Catholic college. Soon, in my ministry, I was involved in ecumenical endeavors. And, I was encountered with much more highly liturgical traditions than was my experience and I found in those, both a refreshment and a contribution to my spiritual life, that had not been a part of my own experience. And I guess liturgically I was drawn to more liturgical calendar by that exposure. And so, when I was a member of the Council of 12, and in my fields, I would always find a place that I was going to do a Holy Week series. And I would go into a congregation, sometimes I would find a small congregation because they were always thinking, well, the apostle never comes here, they always go to the big ones. But I'd find a small congregation and I would go, and I would be with the people. And I would walk with them through that experience of Holy Week, which would include Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter. And I found that to be a very important modeling of what the scriptures intend, and I guess, trying to live through and in and out of those scriptures, and invite others to join me in that. I thought that was an important apostolic witness. And, that's one of my personal memories of doing that. Since leaving the Council of 12, I kind of miss it. I miss it. I get invited to preach on Easter, but the journey doesn't happen. And, I think there's, I guess my own personal experience is, I've lost something.

Judy Luffman  36:26

Dale was talking about new clothes for Easter, and that's one of my fondest memories. My mother would make a matching outfit for me. So, on Easter Sunday, we'd be dressed alike, and it would be new, and it connected me to not only family tradition, but to church tradition, because she was also Community of Christ. And the newness was a way to celebrate new life and resurrection. And that strikes me. We weren't big on the eggs and the candy, and I mean, we dyed eggs, but we didn't have a lot of candy and that kind of stuff. It was more preparing ourselves as new creatures to go to church and celebrate together the risen Lord. That was significant.

Karin Peter  37:12

So, one of the things that we've tried to do in talking about the different seasons and holy days of the calendar, is to help people understand the importance of living in the space of the season we're in, living in the space of the holiday we are observing, as part of a spiritual practice. Is there anything that you would like to share about that way of living the liturgical calendar for our listeners going forward from this episode, as they enter into Good Friday and Easter?

Dale Luffman  37:48

This would not surprise you, Karin, but I find that living in and out of the scripture narratives is extremely important. And there are ways that we can do that. There are well written liturgical materials, by Phyllis Tickle and others that can aid us in that. There also is a resource that is a set of commentaries that have picked up in their usage in the life of Community of Christ over the last few years and that's called the Feasting on the Word commentary. It's not just for preachers and teachers in the church, but one can use that commentary as a spiritual guide to encounter the story and then encounter persons who are competently reflecting on the exegetical significance of these texts, for sermons for teachings, that sort of thing. I find those invaluable. And it's not like I'm not familiar with this, but I like to go back and hear the story anew, and to be challenged by perspectives that may not have been the way I would have come to the text, but who invite me into a conversation about the text. I think it's that conversation about the text that brings life to me and witness to my life that is just really important.

Judy Luffman  39:21

Karin mentioned that I'm a musician and one of the things that speaks to me in spiritual formation are hymn texts. And so, while scripture pulls Dale in, hymn texts pull me in. What we're both getting at in our own way, is that you have to be intentional about it. You have to make time in your life to sit down with either The Bible or some other book of scripture, or a commentary, like Feasting on the Word, or Community of Christ Sings or other good religious music, good theologically sound religious music. You have to make time for that, to listen, to think, to read, to ponder, to pray. And if you don't do that, time is a critical piece to me, if you don't do that, then we're just kind of going through the motions.

Karin Peter  40:14

Any last thoughts? You've given us so much to think about entering into Good Friday through Easter. Any last thoughts that have come to mind as we've had this discussion?

Dale Luffman  40:26

Hallelujah!

Judy Luffman  40:28

Well, you're a little premature. It’s not Easter yet. But that would be my last comment. Allow yourself to feel the journey, to feel the despair of Holy Friday, Good Friday, before you turn toward the celebration of the resurrection.

Karin Peter  40:45

Thank you, both of you, so very much, for this conversation. I want to close with a quote from Clarence Jordan who was one of the cofounders of the Koinonia Farm. And he wrote this, “The resurrection of Jesus was simply God's unwillingness to take our, ‘No’, for an answer. He raised Jesus, not as an invitation to us to come to heaven when we die, but as a declaration that he himself has now established permanent, eternal residents here on earth. He is standing beside us, strengthening us in this life. The Good News of the resurrection of Jesus is not that we shall die and go home to be with him, but that he has risen and comes home with us, bringing all his hungry, naked, thirsty, sick, prisoner brothers with him.” Again, thank you. I'm Karin Peter. This is “Common Grounds”, part of the Project Zion Podcast. Our next episode will be a discussion with Blake Smith in Chicago, Illinois, and our topic will be the season of Pentecost. Thanks for listening.

Josh Mangelson  42:23

The views expressed in this episode are of those speaking, and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Latter-day Seekers Team, or of Community of Christ. The music has been provided by Ben hollington You can find his music at Mormon guitar.com.