It is Easter afternoon and I sit here contemplating the importance of the Christian holiday just celebrated. As a child, of course, I thought it was all about chocolate bunnies and colored eggs and the like. Then as I grew up, Easter became a mysterious time about a miracle that I could never quite get my arms around. For those who have read much of what I write, it has become clear I am not one for miracles. Then my children were born and Easter again became the more comfortable day of chocolate, eggs and family. My children are now well past the age of such frivolous things, though I am proud to say they are not past frivolity by any stretch of the imagination, which they also do. I find myself at an age where what is real in spirit has become very important to me.
So what to do with Easter? I am now somewhat comfortable that the entire story was a marvelous ruse concocted by wise and well-connected men of the time for the purpose of accomplishing precisely what it managed to accomplish. I have also come to realize that this is the moment that the teachings of Jesus became permanent, real and different than the prophetizing of all of the many others of that time, the time previous and, for the most part, of all the times since.
The teachings of Jesus were unique. They changed the thinking of the world. They were about a personal relationship with God that did not require an intermediary. They are about love, unconditional love, for everyone including, and perhaps most particularly, our enemies. They are about our connection to God, referred to as the Spirit of Truth, that allows us to always know in our hearts, if we will only listen, what is the right thing to do. And it is just that simple and just that glorious.
Those concepts were not what the leaders of the church, then or now really, wanted to hear. After all their jobs depended upon the reliance of the masses.
If each of us are connected directly to God and can interact directly with God then why do we need them?
If the secret is so simple, love everyone unconditionally, then what mysteries remain for the religious leaders to hold over our heads?
But Jesus never wrote any of this down. His followers were simple illiterate men. Like so many others, his message was told by those who knew him, those influenced by him, those who followed him. Given the rather negative reception he received when offered freedom by Pilot, his followers were not in the majority by a log shot. His strongest disciple denied him three times. The objective was simple, cut off the head of the snake and the entire snake dies. Certainly, without the rest of the story, that would certainly have happened and we would not know the great vision of a great but simple man.
During the weekend, the focus at our church was about how we exhibit those basic principles. We were asked to contemplate those who have been victims around the world. Those who no one seems to love. Very powerful.
I spent a Saturday morning with several men discussing this time in the Christian calendar and what it means. The focus was on how hard it is to exhibit unconditional love.
While certainly we should contemplate these things at all times, I wonder if we would consider them at all had the "Easter story" not occurred the way it did?
So the moment that Jesus failed to dutifully remain in his tomb, however it is that he disappeared from it, and then when he then appeared to several people thereafter, whether risen from the dead or risen from the presumed death makes no difference, his status as immortal and the immortality of his simple message became inevitable.
It is a funny thing for me to to say really, but, thank heavens.
