Easter--When It All Comes Together

Easter Sunday—everything I wrote about Maundy Thursday and Good Friday would be meaningless twaddle if it weren’t for today. This is the day when it all began to make sense. This is the day when the Twelve Apostles, finally, began to get what Christ was talking about.
Up until Easter Sunday (Paskha, or Passover, they call it in most European countries, after the original Jewish celebration), Christ looks like a somewhat suicidally dumb schmuck. He was told not to go near Jerusalem. He had so thoroughly annoyed (and FRIGHTENED) the political and religious leaders of his time that it was dangerous for him to go.
One of his own followers, after they could not dissuade him from going, turned to the others and shrugged, “Let’s go with him—and die with him”. They were under no illusions. He insisted on going and what everyone expected happened. They killed him.
Not just suicidal, but he sounds like a deluded schmuck who thought he was on some kind of mission for God. He said, “I must go to Jerusalem because that’s where all prophets get killed”. He wanted to put himself in the same category as Isaiah, who got sawed in half by an ancient Jewish king who was under as much pressure as the current Jewish leaders.
He had appalled these same leaders by claiming to be one with God—“Before Abraham was, I am”, he had proclaimed. No one missed the reference to the day God identified himself to Moses by telling him—“I am who I am.” “I am”—the unspeakable name of the non-contingent God—and, in a day when blasphemy was taken seriously, to claim to BE “I am” was the ultimate blasphemy, for which the only punishment must be death.
Besides this Christ was stirring up large crowds, dangerous to do under the nose of a Roman garrison on the edge of an Empire that faced a dangerous foreign enemy (Parthia). Jewish leaders lived in fear that some local firebrand would stir things up enough that a Roman army would move in on them and wipe out their nation and their temple. (It happened forty years later.)
So they maneuvered to get Christ killed—by the same Roman authorities they feared. They warned the Roman governor that Christ had said he would rise again; unlike the Apostles, they had at least listened to what he was saying. The Romans posted a guard so no overzealous follower could sneak into the tomb, spirit the body away, and claim he came back to life.
The Roman guard was found unconscious. They babbled about some space men in shiny suits who rolled away the huge stone at the entrance and knocked them all out. (Matthew’s account) They were bribed to shut up and the horrified leaders claimed the body was stolen.
The Apostles refused to believe anybody’s story about a resurrection until Christ walked through a locked door and identified himself. (They were so intent in hiding, it is most unlikely that they took on any Roman guards!)
Good Friday suddenly has meaning. Not only did God sacrifice his son for men—he raised him back up from the dead—the Christian Bible suggests that, unlike merely creating the cosmos, the defeat of death itself took serious exertion of divine power.
Not only does the Christian God raise Christ from death and Hell itself, but now the promise can be made to all men—“Oh death, where is thy sting; Oh grave, where is thy victory?” The Christian message becomes—“We live because He lives”. The keys to Death and Hell are now in the hands of the Son of God who sacrificed himself to save men from them.
It is an astonishing proclamation. Death does not win. What we bury will live again. Body, soul and Spirit—all because of Good Friday AND Easter morning. The last great horror of men, dying, has now had its fangs pulled.
Believe it or disbelieve it—it is an astonishing claim. Take it as truth, and it is the best news you will ever hear. Deny it—and run the risk (Pascal’s Wager) of facing an offended deity who takes a dim view of ingratitude—of whom it is written “Fear Him who, when he has killed, can kill again”.

Good Friday Stands Alone and Unique

It’s Good Friday. It celebrates the day on which Jesus Christ was sentenced to death and executed by crucifixion—a uniquely cruel form of death, which the Romans probably borrowed from our friends the ancient Iraqi’s (the Assyrians).
It also celebrates the single event that absolutely and totally separates the Christian faith from ALL other religions. No one who understands Good Friday can possibly suggest that Christianity stands as just “another road to the same god.”
There is nothing like the events and theology of Good Friday in Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Taoism, Confucianism or any of the modern animist or ancient pagan religions. If nowhere else, on Good Friday Christianity stands unique and alone.
In all these religions, man is left to seek God. It is humanity that does the seeking. It is the human being who must propitiate any offended or angry deity. It is his problem to deal with if he commits a malfeasance that threatens to deny a good reincarnation or a happy hereafter.
Allah may be merciful, but it is up to those who follow Islam to earn that mercy—by following all the requirements of Sharia law. Even orthodox Judaism holds that man must earn the good will of God by keeping the laws found in the Torah, the Talmud, the Mishnah and a host of other legal compilations. God may have sought Abraham, but after that it’s up to men.
Christianity—through Good Friday—says “No” to all of the above. God seeks man—not just one man, like Abraham or Muhammad, but ALL men. He does this, on Good Friday, because men are totally incapable of saving themselves, atoning for their own misdeeds, pleasing God or winning his favor in any regard.
Total incapacity. We betrayed and wrecked the contract he made with the very first humans and the only acceptable payment for treason is death. In the eyes of the Christian God, we are all traitors, all hopelessly tainted with the stench of high treason.
(Benedict Arnold could not have paid enough to win back the good graces of his countrymen. The only thing that would have happened to him had he ever been captured would have been death. In the eyes of the Christian God, all of us are Benedict Arnolds.)
But, according to Jewish and Christian scriptures, God made man for his own company—to enjoy his company, to raise as children and to delight in our growth and achievements. He is not inclined to just walk away and say, “Well, I lost this one”.
To understand Good Friday, it helps to understand what C.S.Lewis was saying in “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe”. Aslan, Christ, cared enough about the human Edmundd—who had betrayed him—to pay the blood debt for him, He died in Edmund’s place.
On Christmas God sent his only begotten son to die in our place. On Good Friday, he accomplished his mission and died for us. No other faith has a God willing to sacrifice so much for human beings. We don’t sacrifice, HE sacrifices in our place.
When Christianity proselytizes, it talks explicitly about one thing and implicitly about another. Explicitly it calls upon men to admit to their treason and accept the sacrifice made for them. Implicitly the question is raised—how will a God, who sent his own son to die for you, finally react if you refuse his offer and distain his sacrifice?
How would you react if you sent your kid to die for someone and he despised your offer? (That’s where and why “Hellfire and Damnation” preaching originates. It is, as Christian scripture says, “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God”. How angry would you be?)
No other faith makes such an offer—or adds such a warning. Good Friday stands unique and alone. It is a humiliating faith. It says, bluntly, “You’re helpless”. And there’s not a thing you are able to do about it. People like Christmas and Easter; Good Friday isn’t popular.