He nice, the Jesus

On the way to Chad's church today, I decided it was time to acquaint Cas with my favorite Easter story.  David Sedaris writes many of my favorite short stories.  He wrote one about Easter called Jesus Shaves.  In this story, Sedaris was in a French language class trying to learn conversational skills.  He was in this class in Paris with people from several other countries.  A Moroccan woman was in the class, trying to improve her grammar, and in the end, becoming an unbearable know-it-all.  When the subject of Easter arose, this woman who was raised in a Muslim country had no idea.  The people in the class tried, in broken French, to explain the occasion.  They said wonderfully funny things in very messy and child-like language.  One of the people in the class summed it up, "He nice, the Jesus.  He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today."

I read that story to him in the car en route to the church I'd never visited.  I'm not a church regular, and I haven't been to a Presbyterian service in recent memory, so I had no preconceived notion of what to expect.  It was one of those cool contemporary churches.  There was a rock band drum kit at the front, which tells me that they generally try to do a rock-and-roll-Jesus kind of service.  There were data projectors showing Power Point slides up at the front of the church.  I guess I was raised in a more buttoned-down way.  Church is simple.  Sit, stand, kneel.  Speak only when spoken to.  Don't wiggle or make unnecessary noise.  Enjoy the organ music and sing from the hymnal.  There were some parallels, but not a bunch.

The sermon bothered me.  It felt a little man-centric.  The pastor talked about how it was so amazing that Mary Magdalene was the one who witnessed the resurrected Jesus.  Apparently, the pastor would have been happier if someone like Peter was there.  But no such luck- just Mary.  (a girl, and not even a particularly great one, from the sound of things).  The thing that happened in the midst of the discussion of the astounding fact that Mary saw the resurrected Lord was a sports metaphor.  I guess that, while we should be amazed that a mere woman was present at the resurrection of Jesus, we should also talk a little bit about football.  Because Texas.  Jesus.  Football.

Maybe I am a Minnesotan at heart.  The Jesus I learned about in my childhood wasn't particularly known for his sports skills.  And I wasn't raised to be stunned when a mere woman was able to do something big.  Stupid feminism.  It wrecks your whole sense of self doubt as a lady-American.

Still, Chad and Becky were in an amazing choir, and we got a few opportunities to hear them sing.  I told Cas that I was just like an overgrown kid, though, and I spent far too much of my time watching the person playing the big kettle drum.  He admitted the same.  What kind of adults are we that we focus on the big, cool drum instead of the choir, the service, and the girl-person who talked with the resurrected Jesus?

After the service, we went to the very pretty flowers at the front of the church and took photos.  Here we are:

We even had someone else take a whole group picture:

After that, we went out to eat.  Cas and I packed some jeans and casual shirts before we left this morning, and from the restaurant, we went to my parents' house.  We had dessert there and a few glasses of Ouzo.  I mentioned Ouzo to my mother a while back when Cas and I had our big Greek dinner, and Mom reminded me of how much she liked it.  I decided to bring over a bottle today and share it.  She was quite happy.  

After dessert and Ouzo, Cas, Danny Dad and I went out for beers.  Cas doesn't make it out for Sunday beers with Dad that often, but it's really nice when he can be there.  Dad appreciates spending time with the man who chose his favorite (only) daughter.  I appreciate that Cas seems happy to be around my parents.  He reminded me today that he really likes my people.  I do, too, and I am happy that they like him back.