Jesus + Sisyphus

Welcome to this conversation

Jesus + Sisyphus - Easter Episode. Easter is coming. It’s coming after a year of being sealed up and weighed down by the pandemic and a handful or two of other things, including winter. On Easter, Sunday, April 4, Fabric gathered via video livestreams to have some fun despite those stones. Let’s take a break from pushing them. And we might even be able to realize that they don’t seal us off from what really matters as much as we think. We are calling it, “Jesus & Sisyphus.” Watch the amazing video gathering or listen to the podcast to find out why!

Easter Episode: Jesus + Sisyphus

Even though the Jesus story may be more familiar to more people, the Sisyphus story may be more like our lives. Sisyphus’ stone is me “on my own.” It’s about me and what I can accomplish by my own strength, insight, capacity, and perspective. Jesus’ stone is me…fully woven. It speaks of me being a part of and a product of something much bigger than just me.

Something to consider: How do you see your story in the story of Sisyphus pushing a heavy load up a mountain with no end in sight? What do you want your life to be about?

I want a vision of my life based on what is possible, not just what I feel trapped by. - Greg Meyer

Greg retold the story of Jesus. Imagine that day of Jesus’ execution for those who knew and loved him. What could have been heavier than taking the limp body of the person who had inspired such hope, courage, vision, power - and lowering it from a cross and unceremoniously laying it in a borrowed tomb because the Sabbath was about to begin? It must have been like Sisyphus would have felt, mid-mountain, lonely, cold, hungry…his grip slipping … the stone rolling over him back to the bottom of his mountain.

Something to consider: When have you felt this kind of despair or sense of futility? When have you had glimpses of optimism only to be met again with the immovable or unbearable?

Why are you looking for the living among the dead? (Lk 24.5)

What if the life we really want, isn’t sealed up in the tomb we keep knocking on the door of? Maybe the truth is that the life you are looking for can’t be seen by the eyes you had for your old life. You need new eyes; you need to look for and at something else.

You can’t trust your view of the world, or of the future, from what you can see from behind the boulder.

Don’t get the impression that this is going to be all nice and pretty, and everything will get solved and you can get on with life. That’s the “wouldn’t it be nice!” wishful-thinking kind of hope. The fact that no one could quite be sure if it were Jesus or not after he rose from the dead, but that they joined together looking for and living out that hope anyway tells me that realizing hope is always a work-in-progress.

Something to consider: Where are you connected, even a little bit, with others who remind and help you see and be part of that work-in-progress kind of hope?

Thank you for making Fabric a community that is always seeking to see and be hope, alive. Happy Easter!

More Resources…

Group Discussion Guide: Click HERE.