An Easter Argument

While my husband and I drove to church for the Easter morning service, we had an enlightening argument. He wasn't particularly looking forward to the morning's festivities and explained to me how much he doesn't like Easter. I, on the other hand, had already been to an earlier service and couldn't wait for the next one.

"Easter is the most difficult Christian holiday," he told me. "The story is completely unbelievable and yet you're asked to accept it--required to accept it. And when have you ever seen a person rise from the dead?"

"Easter is the most accessible, most translatable, most encompassing of the Christian holidays," I told him. "It is the best, truest, most liberating story of all."

So we were at an impasse, not that I didn't see his point. The simple and literal Easter story, that Jesus, a man who lived 2012 years ago, was killed and three days later came back to life, does require a rather magnificent leap of faith. (Although many have been willing to make it.) But what is the heart of the message? What is the meaning behind a death and a resurrection?

To show that ultimately life triumphs over death, love over hate/fear, and goodness over evil. Nothing, no thing, no person, no power, no group of people, no event, no torture, no trials, no cruelty, can ever be the victor against Divinity, God's presence with us, Emmanuel.

This is the essence to me of the story. We also see it played out in the great resurrection of the season, in Spring's profusion and vigor. Of course this is no accident as Easter was originally a pagan holiday. But the fundamental belief at the core of Easter is one at the core of every great religious tradition and this is it: there is only one power, all present, all knowing, all powerful, that is Love or God or Good.

Most people, including those in spiritual and religious traditions, have a hard time with this concept. They believe in evil, in the devil, in overwhelming bad, or they may doubt that good and love are equal to the negative forces in the world. They point out countless examples to prove this point, from the Holocaust to hurricanes to the nightly news. And I don't mean to say that these things aren't facts. I mean to say that they aren't true powers.

Before you write me off as crazy, let me explain. Can you remember the last time you felt angry? Felt hatred? Sadness? Fear? Did those feelings arise from feelings of power? When you felt them, did you feel powerful? After you felt them, did you feel powerful?

I can see this in my children, in my friends, and, of course, in my self.  I have never heard a person say, "I hate that woman so much. Hating her feels awesome. I'm filled with strength and power when I hate her. " We dip into the negative emotions because we feel afraid, vulnerable, or profoundly powerless. Is a child who goes into a school and shoots his friend actually powerful? Or is he an example of the most broken, empty, powerless person of all?

For me, the radical, joyous, life transforming message of Easter resides in the fundamental truth that there is ONE power and that power is all good. Did Jesus die and rise again? We can't know for certain. But whether he did or did not, the end result has been the same, hasn't it? Because of the countless people throughout history who have believed an unbelievable thing, this crazy story has been kept alive, and for whatever ill it has brought, it has also brought good. We have to separate the power of the message, a redemptive missive of Love, from the structure of religion, the culture of our own religious pasts, the wounds of religion in our life--how it has hurt us, let us down, left us unfulfilled, and so on--and choose to believe in ideas that will increase the presence, reality and potency of good in our own lives and in the life of the world. Isn't that what we want when we bemoan the existence of evil? Put your eyes on the Sun, even on a cloudy day, and remember where true strength resides. It is not a matter of one great power, and one lesser power. There is one power and then there is the absence of power.

This is the understanding that filled me with joy that morning, and every morning, though the day be gray. We all of us have to rely, at least sometimes, on truths we cannot immediately see, especially when our faith is the very thing that brings us joy and gives us hope. How do we know it is real? Because once we believe in it, we have it! And it is real within us and therefore our very real contribution to the world.

Rev. Sam Wilde