By the end of the first century of the common era, the message of Jesus the preacher had been entirely transformed into a message about Jesus, turning the spokesperson of radical compassion into a magical symbol who hods out a promise of life after death. We have no reliable sources to tell us much about the message of the historical Jesus since the authors of the New Testament had their own agendas which had little or nothing to do with what the historical Jesus had to say. We have only hints and suggestions of what really happened on the first Easter but this message attempts to strip away the dirt and stones that both Rome and the early church tried to bury Jesus’ message under.

Estrangement among family and friends is a sad occurrence which is becoming increasingly common in a society that continues to trend towards isolation and loneliness. Our decade is more polarized than most but even though we can rehearse the arguments to defend our distance from parents, siblings, and formerly close friends, we really can do better if we make reconciliation our goal. Sometimes we have to put some distance between ourselves and those who would extinguish our "light" but estrangement should be a last resort. Let's not be too hasty in giving up on love.