Easter and the Funky Dollar Bill
Last Sunday Alexa sent some photos and videos of Christian participating in the Hollywood Hills United Methodist Church Palm Sunday procession.
It was awesome.
He was waving his palm and dressed in a green robe. The text Alexa sent us afterward said “Christian said at Sunday school they talked about Jesus. The people who didn’t like him deaded him.”
Thursday evening, Holy Thursday, I sat on my deck and watched the full moon rise. The pink moon it’s called from what I have read. That moon is significant because Easter always occurs on the Sunday following the rising of that full moon.
Today being the day after Easter, I had off from work. Today turned out to be Earth Day as well, which I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t heard on the radio while on one of my multiple trips to Home Depot to buy dirt and plants. I think every weekend that it is not raining and I am not traveling this time of the year, is “Earth Day” at my house.
This weekend and today was particularly intense with earth activities. We spent most of the weekend working on the yard, the koi pond, and the gardens. As we usually do the day before Easter, we took a break from the yard to go to the cemetery and plant new flowers at Donny’s grave site.
Each spring when I clean up the yard and the gardens I cut down last year’s now brown and dry ornamental grasses so that the new growth can occur. In one such grass I cut down I found a long overlooked relic from an Easter past. Stuck deep in the stubble of the now trimmed grass was a plastic Easter egg. I opened it up and inside I found this funky old dollar bill, weathered from the years it was hidden and overlooked in its colored plastic shell.
Funky dollar bill. I had to laugh a little when I thought about it.
When I was a freshman in high school, a kid down the street used to drive a few of us to school every day. One day he had a new eight track tape for us to listen to by a band I had never heard of called Funkadelic. It was a little out there, but it was awesome. We would be head bobbing all the way from Oceanport to Shore Regional High School.
Funky Dollar Bill was a song written by George Clinton, a name that meant nothing to four white kids in 1971 but George would go on to be quite influential in music.
The song was from the album titled Free Your Mind and Your ♦♦♦ Will Follow (sorry, this is the redacted version of the title). A now classic album in my opinion, it included a song by the same name. Of course I wouldn’t have known it in 70’s but I read recently that the album was said to have Christian themes.
“Free your mind…, the kingdom of heaven is within,” the opening lyrics repeated over and over throughout the song.
The kingdom of heaven is within.
The kingdom of God is within.
The kingdom of God is amongst us.
The Bible tells us Jesus would say that when asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come.
Jesus knew God had come and was already among them.
In the next chapter of Luke, Jesus would tell his disciples for the third time what was about to happen to him as was written by the prophets.
And then a few chapters later, as Christian learned, Jesus was “deaded.” But it didn’t really have so much to do with those who didn’t like him, it was as it was meant to be, as it had to be.
And three days after that, prophesy was completely fulfilled.
So, I think George had it right.
Free your mind…
Because there is much that can follow.