Pink Jesus in a Wyrd World

Sometimes things are so weird, they can’t be ignored. This year, Ash Wednesday fell on Valentine’s Day and now Easter falls on April Fools’ Day. What an odd circumstance of synchronicity for two holy days in the same year. While it’s not the only time this has happened, it does me make me wonder about the confluence of the sacred and secular in our culture. There is a very murky space between the holy and the profane, but it’s often in this peculiar spiritual dream space where we can find illumination.

Illumination is not about receiving rational answers to unanswerable mysteries. Illumination is becoming comfortable living in a world of dream logic. (When dreaming the scene makes total sense, and then we wake up, the experience is difficult to explain.)

I’ve found in most forms of Christianity, people want Jesus and God to be something like the Magic 8 Ball, or an oracle who answers our questions. Let me introduce you to Pink Jesus. He was given to me by a young adult from St Brigid’s Community. He’s a very beautiful figurine of the Resurrected Jesus, a 12-inch, molded plastic that has a ceramic feel and a nice weight. The figurine has long flowing hair and robes. His right hand has two fingers extended in the sign of blessing. His left-hand rests upon the sash draped across his shoulders, representing the loving Sacred Heart of Jesus. And pink represents God’s love and forgiveness.

The most fascinating part of Pink Jesus is you can ask him questions. Inside the figure, floats a multisided dice. Anyone have a question for Pink Jesus?


Some of the answers are: Wait for a sign. The holy water will sting. Watch out for the lightening. Pray harder. I still love you. Let me ask dad.

Need an answer? Consult the Pink Jesus. Sounds funny, odd, maybe a little sacrilegious, I guess that’s why I like it. You kind of have to be willing to accept the idea of dream logic in order to imagine such oddities. The idea of resurrection lives in the world of dream logic.

Mary Magdalene was living in the world of dream logic on that dark morning when she went to visit Jesus’ tomb. She had gone there looking for the dead body of Jesus. The tomb was empty. Her grief of losing Jesus was compounded by believing that his body had been stolen.

In her despair, two angels appeared, asking her “Why are you crying?” She was not comforted. But then, she encountered a man she believed to be the keeper of the cemetery. He asked her why she was sobbing.

Then the man called her by name. Jesus the Christ, the resurrected one, whispered her name. Mary Magdalene herself was resurrected into the experience of Jesus’ resurrection. She had an unexplainable mystical experience. Hearing Jesus the Christ call her name was so powerful it transformed her life. So much so that Mary was eventually able to mystically translate her dream logic into a way of living her life. She lived in a perpetual state of being resurrected.

Her mystical experience gave her the power to become the disciple to the disciples. A woman, a mystic, would be the first evangelist, not Peter, not John, not Paul, but Mary Magdalene. She would use her mystical experience to hold the frightened community of Jesus’ followers together. Her mystical relationship with Jesus and her understanding of his teachings fueled the fire needed to inspire the followers of Jesus to move out of the prison of their fear into a life of discipleship.

Times I wish I could have an experience like Mary Magdalene.
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A wise Irishman once asked me, “You wouldn’t be insulting God by looking for him, now would you?” My natural instinct is to search for God, to ache for a mystical experience. Yet, the more I look, the less likely it will be discovered. I search for answers and only find more questions. The more I cling to a dream, the more likely I am to choke it to death.

The story of Easter teaches us that Jesus the Christ will find us in the space between the sacred and the secular, between the holy and the profane. He will find us in our grief and in our despair. He will find us in our dark journey through the shadowlands of dusk and dawn. And in those in between places, he will teach us how to live with endless questions. He will teach us how to live in the world of dream logic. He will give us wisdom. And he will call us by our name. Amen.