APRIL 4, 2021 – Today is Christianity’s big day when lamentations over the Crucifixion change to shouts of “Halleluiah!” over the Resurrection. This is the day when it is said that Jesus, deader ’n a door . . . er, crucifixion . . . nail, came to, sat up, rolled the stone away from the tomb, and walked back into the sunshine.
Bingo! You’ve got, “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” which I used to think was a line by a cynical promoter, who, with tongue in cheek, knew damn well he was marketing, “The biggest yarn ever told.”
Fine. Believe the story or call it a yarn. Either way, I’ve learned to look beyond the particulars to see the larger truth.
Two days before the Big Day, evil and hopeless humankind showed itself so low, so irredeemable, it could kill the paragon of perfection, the beloved offspring of the Creator, the guy who was sent by said Creator to save us from ourselves. Under such circumstances, what in hell was the chance of humankind’s salvation? Dead, done, and gone. Two millennia later, we’re just as good at being bad.
Yet here we are—still, again—hyped on hope. Every year we bounce back like an Easter bunny hopping along with a basket full of plastic grass and milk chocolate likenesses of itself. Out of the darkest darkness, we find light, hope, redemption, and . . . Easter eggs. How can you beat that? You can’t—without drugs.
(I should add, it helps to be in the Northern Hemisphere, where the tilt of Mother Earth brings the season that complements the Father’s day in the sun.)
For me and myself, the truth of the Easter story doesn’t turn on one’s “belief” in it. There’s something bigger going on here; something far bigger than a “God” that would cynically ignore his own universal laws to instill “faith” in our otherwise faithless hearts and minds—certainly something bigger than a “God” so small as to favor the prayers of one American football team over another. For me, the gist of Easter is that no matter how dark and doom-ridden our world and lives can be, hope springs eternal. Why? The globe turns, the clouds part, the sun shines. Even when one day that sun burns up, implodes, then goes “super-nova,” the galaxy will keep turning and churning as it floats through space. The universe will go on until time loops back to where it’s never been. That’s all way bigger than any of the world’s woes. Which is another way of saying, “Don’t fret. Time conquers all, even time.”
We humans are a flash in the cosmic pan. The greatest miracle of that flash is our awareness of it—awareness defined by our sins and our sufferings; our capacity for hope, goodness and beauty; but above all, by our belief in . . . something bigger than ourselves, like, uh, well er . . . call it all “God.”
The only problem is, as a friend’s pastor puts it, “We keep looking for God and keep finding religion.”
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
