An Anglican priest in Devon, England is live tweeting the story of Easter on a daily basis from the point of view of Jesus.
According to a post on the Diocese of Exeter website, the story of the week leading up to the death of Jesus has been rewritten for tweeting:
“We wanted to help people really connect with the events of the last week in Jesus’ life,” Canon Andrew Godsall said. “Trying to reduce the events of Holy Week to 140 characters each day has been a real challenge – but an exciting one.”
When talking with the BBC about the project Godsall compared the project with the way Jesus use parables to make his message relatable in popular culture. He had the idea during a social media course.
“The idea with tweeting the passion is to help people relate to a familiar story in a contemporary way. Jesus used contemporary phrases all of the time,” said Godsall. “He wanted to make people sit up and listen so he used provocative words. Sometimes people got the wrong end of the stick – and maybe he did that deliberately – but it made them think!”
The first tweet went out on Palm Sunday and portrays a Jesus who is very annoyed by his reception into Jerusalem:
Waving branches at me like I’m a King! So tempted to go that way. If only they knew how this week was going to play out. #makeway ! #passion
“So far I really love the concept,” said Steve Mohr, Pastor of Summit Christian Center in Tacoma, Washington. “It makes me stop and see it from another perspective. It’s excellent, it’s deep, it helps me to reflect.”
— Diocese of Exeter (@CofEDevon) March 24, 2013
The second is about Jesus being upset in the Temple:
Thrown weight around in Temple; exclusion makes me mad! There’ll be consequences! Boys gone to get claret 4 Thursday. #allwelcome #passion
— Diocese of Exeter (@CofEDevon) March 25, 2013
Canon Godsall isn’t concerned about offending more traditional church members with the project. He told the BBC, “There are people who say we shouldn’t be engaging with contemporary culture, we should be separate from it.”
The tweets will all go out once per day from @CofEDevon with the hashtag #passion.
