Happy Easter!

A Catholic Charitable organization sends me a rosary every year. This time, I'm determined to find out what it means and how it's used.

I’ve two Good Friday services to go to today; I’ve decided not to go to either. I find the ritualistic retelling of the execution of Jesus and the story of the resurrection unsettling, not because it’s not worth telling, but because experience has suggested that its repetition year after year, in the same manner as the year before, produces little outward consequence and so seems more of a self-indulgence than a renewed “call to arms.”

      But that’s me.

      Not that the content of the message is completely trouble-free for me either. In the hymns we sing, in the sermons we hear, the core message is roughly this: we are all sinners (“would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I”) and Jesus’ suffering and death was substitutionary; that is to say, God allowing his own son to be tortured and killed in place of us who really deserve crucifixion. Both the image of ourselves as soiled and decadent without any redeeming characteristics and the application of the ancient—generally idolatrous—concept of human sacrifice—the scapegoat—strike me as misinterpretations of the message.

      And what is the message? Time and time again, the Gospels portray Christ as a rebel and revolutionary as regards a recalcitrant and misguided establishment, and a physician as regards the suffering of the sick, the poor and the hungry. His armaments include love, forgiveness, mercy and a reason for hope. That we are forgiven for our weaknesses and hesitations ought to be a given by now; repeating that transaction constantly is in itself a weakness, a sign of a lack of confidence in the basic core of our being as active, purpose-directed, committed disciples.

      I’m sometimes reminded of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where Queen Gertrude’s judgment of a player is that “ . . . the lady doth protest too much, me thinks,” (Ham:III.ii) or of a child who repeatedly and passionately announces his love for his father to the point where the father has to wonder what motivates this excessive display.

      For me, Christ’s crucifixion and death is the ultimate demonstration of the distance to which love will go in order to prosper. Peacemaking, feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoner, clothing the naked, speaking truth to power, healing the sick, all these exact a cost, a sacrifice. By his death, Christ has taught us an obedience to the principle that love is not only the best answer to human suffering, it’s the only answer. His example for us should energize us to a revived commitment to that great cause: a kingdom of peace where all can live in plenty and health, free from fear, fulfilled and satisfied that a good life lived makes mortality easier.

      Avoiding condemnation at the last judgment is not the central purpose of a career of discipleship; surely we who know Christ no longer harbour doubts, not about the reason for the establishment’s putting Jesus to death nor about the clear call to us to continue that which he began— and for which he was prepared to die.

       Or, at least, we shouldn’t.

      I neither begrudge nor criticize those who take another view, for whom the Lent/Good Friday/Easter sequence is uplifting and re-energizing. As we measure perfection, we all need to admit that we haven’t arrived there yet—and never will. We are human; our sensibilities and sensitivities are not the same, but the possibilities for which we reach are unlimited.

      My Easter message to you all is that you ought not let anyone tell you that you fall short of worthiness in the eyes of Jesus Christ, or that you ought to be better than you are, that you should seek to accomplish that which lies beyond your means, possibly. You are a child of God’s creation, a creation that may seem to be harsh and impersonal, but in the eyes of the master who walked among us, you are not only accepted but are valued like a child who is heir to the love of a kind and tender mother, a strong and trustworthy father.

      Happy Easter, however you choose to celebrate new life! The spirit of Christ has come to dwell among us. WOW!