These thoughts are largely inspired by the Easter service we experienced today at Mosaic. A podcast will be available through their website.
He is risen!
He is risen indeed!
Humanity has long dreamed of its gods coming to earth and entering into the human experience. The Greek gods especially were persistent in their visitations, mainly conjugal (and they seemed to avoid taking on human form). Other cultures imagined their gods descending, too: creating, teaching, interfering, and testing. Is the Christian dream of Jesus any different? Is Jesus humanity’s dream come true? What makes Christianity unique?
In Jesus, we find a god who refuses to come for a visit. Instead, he intentionally sets aside the powers, rights, and privileges of godhood and enters humanity on its lowest level, as a hungry newborn of outcast parents, claiming only the questionable status of an illegitimate child. Once he embarks on his inaugural tour of his chosen nation and people, he is shunned by the learned and embraced by the poor and “sinners”. Instead of awe and acclamation, he receives rejection and finally, crucifixion. The prophet Isaiah said it this way:
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
What was it about him that we just didn’t get? What did we fail to recognize? Does it make any sense at all that a god would walk among humanity and be told, “No thanks, you’re just not what were looking for” as if he were a job applicant?
I think that in this instance, truth truly is stranger than fiction. Our ideas of a godly visitation are waking dreams, visions of how this existence could be spectacular and elevated beyond the ordinary. This whole experience with Jesus doesn’t appeal to us. Somehow it seems so banal, even dirty, and it’s just not what we would have chosen. We could have written a better story ourselves if we were allowed. We love fairy tales; the prince is always supposed to slay the dragon and win the heart of the princess. The prince is never supposed to die. The god who descends for his pleasure or to evaluate some specimen of humanity and then retreats to Mount Olympus for high tea just seems so much more… well, godly.
My point is that Jesus makes sense just because we wouldn’t have dreamed him up. Our dreams do have a basis in reality; the fault lies with us if we refuse to accept the reality just because it doesn’t square with our wishes. While those other gods stopped by to take their pleasure, or to see if humanity was keeping up standards, or to sway a battle in one direction or another (poor Hector!), this god was different. Jesus didn’t come for himself; he came for us. I don’t doubt that he enjoyed much of his time as a man, but wouldn’t you have been frustrated by spending your time with a group of guys who were stubborn, confused, and only loyal until you were arrested and tried for your life? I would have been. Not to mention growing up as a social bastard because my parents weren’t married when I was conceived; not to mention having no roof over my head; not to mention going into all this knowing that the end of the story was my own death, that this prince would be slain by the dragon. Yeah, I would probably have spent some time looking over my shoulder for the next applicant, too.
Jesus doesn’t. In fact, he steadfastly refuses to take an easy escape route. Instead, he submits himself to the authority of those he created. The last hours of his life are spent in pain, humiliation, and torture. Finally, he receives a criminal’s death on a cross hanging between two thieves. The prince has died; the fairy tale has played false; there is no happy ending. Friday is desolate.
If the story ended on Friday, Jesus would be a character in a fairy tale read by no one. This god’s visit would be a failure and we would continue to tell visitation stories and dream of a true fairytale prince to lift us above our human existence.
However.
This isn’t just any god, or just any fairy tale. This is the One, the True Story, with the True Prince. And the ending? It is the ultimate Happy Ending. This story ends, not on Friday, but on Sunday instead, and the grave is empty. The Prince has died, grappled with Death, and triumphed. Death itself was the dragon, and Jesus conquered Death once and for all. Jesus’ victory over death, his resurrection, it was all for us—to rob Death of its power and renew our hope in eternity. Jesus has died, true, but Jesus has risen from the dead. For us, life is Christ, and death is now gain.
There are no more dragons to slay, but we continue to dream. We long for happy endings because we are destined for one. We are not destined for tragedy and for death. There is a fairy tale which is better than we could ever have imagined, precisely because it is beyond our wildest dreams. Imagine, if you will, a god who loves us so ardently that he cast everything aside, embraced humanity at its most visceral level, submitted even to Death itself, only to rise again in a new, glorified body, and crush Death’s power forever. Having done all this, he extends his hands, the hands that we nailed to a cross, to welcome us into his kingdom. Now that is a fairy tale to believe in.
We adopted caterpillars from the local children's museum this year. They come in communion cups with lids; for about a week they do nothing but eat something that looks like peanut butter but probably isn't. After that time, they enter their chrysalis, spend another week or so in there (during which time you are supposed to make a butterfly house for them because the butterfly certainly won't fit in the cup... did anyone else read the poem about the monster in the mason jar? Thanks, Mrs. Brown, for officially and forever creeping me out about butterflies). One day, they magically emerge and you can either release them immediately or feed them sugar water for a couple of days, then release them. Here are the pictures from our family release. OK, never mind. Arranging the pictures is a royal pain in blogger. If you want to see them, click on the flickr link (the April set). The above picture is, in fact, one of the girls' butterflies. It was a fun experience but I have no profound thoughts about it whatsoever.
