It will definitely be a lean Easter! But what is Easter for us Greek Orthodox?

Eastern Orthodox icons of the resurrection do not show risen Jesus alone. Instead, they show Jesus reaching down to grasp Adam and Eve and pull them also from their tombs. Jesus is yanking them bald headed.

Surrounded by the usual code words for these holidays -- "freedom from slavery" for the first, "resurrection and new life" for the second -- this question may seem at the least silly and at worst an exercise of blasphemous anti-religiosity. Yet, it is actually a serious question

On this Good Friday, as on many before, I consider anew the full range of torture and humiliation to which Jesus of Nazareth was subjected, physical and sexual. The latter is so traumatizing for the Church that we have covered it up -- literally.

So, the question really remains -- who killed Jesus? If we read the Gospels poorly, as with what is labeled "face value" or "plain sense", we will always have to decide between the three usual culprits: God, the Romans, or the Jewish leaders.

The Gospels -- and several other passages of the New Testament -- state explicitly that God killed Jesus. God sacrificed his only son for the redemption of man according to Scripture:

Lately I have been thinking about the crucifixion of Jesus and how such a macabre symbol of execution as the cross has become a symbol of hope for believers in Jesus. It is both bizarre and extraordinary.

The "mystery of the cross" is an invitation for believers to reflect on the willingness of their Creator to suffer the worst degradation imaginable by someone like them--and so unlike them so as to redeem them from their sins.

It is Mark's shattered and shattering Gospel that demands close Christian attention, before we move up and away from it to the joyous epiphany of Sunday morning. Good Friday Christianity puts the agony in the ecstasy, insisting that there is no other way.

I peered into the Incarnation's beauty: Jesus is fully God and fully human. He didn't merely act like a human; he wasn't a human-like wraith. He was God living a genuinely human life, which means God himself begged for mercy on a dark night.

How is it that Jesus' death accomplishes the forgiveness of my sin? By what cosmic mechanism does that take place?

In the weeks before Easter, during the traditional season of Lent, Christians fix their hearts on the death of Jesus Christ. They reflect upon what he endured because they believe that it was redemptive.

It should mean something to Christians, then, that an execution is at the center of the faith and this season of Lent.

There's a problem with penal substitution. Biblical sacrifices do not represent human attempts to purchase forgiveness; instead, they offer a ritual means of acknowledging the costliness of sin and alienation from God.

Rollins says that Jesus' cry from the cross was a point at which he experienced "a profoundly personal, painful existential atheism."

Why would God send Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb of God, dying for the sins of the world, instead of just destroying sin, or perhaps offering grace and forgiveness to the very ones created by God?

Jesus' execution is as historically certain as any ancient event can ever be but what about all those very specific details that fill out the story?

Good Friday is Earth Day, an especially opportune time to see and feel and repent of creation's pain -- which is ours.

By Michele Chabin Religion News Service JERUSALEM (RNS) An Israeli-Canadian journalist believes he may have tracked down two of the iron nails use...

A moment's reflection will tell you that the standard Sunday school answer to the question "Why was Jesus crucified?" would have made little sense to those directly involved in the event itself.