‘Anyway’, she said, ‘it’s all about Jesus’.
‘But what about the empty tomb?’, asked her theologian father.
‘We don’t worship the tomb, daddy’, she said. ‘Jesus is the bit that matters’.
‘So why is there a cross?’
‘Because people always seem to forget about that bit, and because that’s how Jesus remembers himself to us’.
‘But what about the yellow bit?’
‘Ah. That bit is just to make it pretty, silly’.
jasongoroncy.com 
Yellow is a pretty colour.
And why listen to a sermon when the drawings say it all!
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She is trying to stretch your theology, Jason. The yellow silly bit is the best part. It is the colour of an egg yoke. It is that part in the gospel, where the person is free to be silly. ‘For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit to a yoke of slavery’. So, trust she keeps drawing you on to enjoy this new freedom, in the yellow zone!
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Fantastic…’how Jesus remembers himself to us’ So when is she starting her systematic theology? The risen Lord is risen as the crucified one and no other, otherwise he is unmembered and unremembered and the pretty bits are completely irrelevant
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@ Pam: because drawings don’t say it all.
@ Trevor: ‘… that part in the gospel, where the person is free to be silly’. I’ve never heard you sounding so Barthian (NB. this is a good thing).
@ Bruce: I agree. I thought it was Sinead at her most Jensonesque moment yet.
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It’s also very ‘james alison’. Naid for junior theologian of the month!
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What were your daughter’s thoughts on the cross as constitutive of the divine life in Christ? Brilliant pics, cute :-)!
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@ Bobby: I’ll ask her. In the meantime, is there a Dora the Explorer program that introduces and unpacks some of that?
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Thanks Jason. I’ll start listening to sermons again! No more drawing on the back of the news sheet.
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Pam, there’s nothing wrong with doodling on the newsletter. In fact, I can’t think of anything better to do with it. And in my experience, the best time to so doodle is during the sermon, at the conclusion of which the art work may be morphed into a paper aeroplane. I try not to doodle and preach simultaneously.
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@ Bobby. I asked her, and here’s her response: ‘The cross changed God. God now has holes in his body. He looks at the holes and he remembers the people who hurt him … and he loves them’.
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Thank you, thank you, Jason, for sharing this with us. As you’ve already said, it’s very Jensonian, not least in that part about Jesus ‘remembering himself to us’! Remember what Jensons does with Jeremias’ idea that the Eucharist is meant to make God remember us? As people have pointed out, her willingness to include silliness in her reflections on Jesus’ death is wonderful (and wonderfully Barthian), and so is what she says about not worshipping the empty tomb!
Looking at the pictures, I’m struck by the fact that even on the cross Jesus is crowned and smiling! That’s very Eastern, isn’t it? And I love that she leaves the cross in the ‘after’ picture, as well. The cross remains, but transfigured (empty and brilliant red, not red darkened with blue). She not only has both the cross and the resurrection, but she lets the resurrection lighten her picture of the cross, and lets the cross stand even her picture of Easter reality.
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