We should be ashamed of Easter. Even while we celebrate Jesus' resurrection, we should keep in mind that we caused his crucifixion and his need to rise from such a horrific death.
Jesus did not come into this world to be crucified and rise again. He came to be one of us and to bring us the fullness of God's infinitely overflowing love for us. As one of us, he freely and lovingly shared the fullness of our human life: our human peace, joy, sadness, humor, love, and even our natural little faults--I like to think that at least once when he was young he hit his thumb with a hammer.
He also sinlessly took to himself our willfully created destructiveness, a destructiveness so deep that we created, e.g., ecological destruction, slavery, poverty; racial, sexual and economic injustice; hatred, persecutions and war. So in order to save us from our own destructiveness, he accepted it in all its depth, even to dying the horrific death of crucifixion, the specially horrible form of destruction that we had created in his time.
Jesus could have lived and died peacefully among us. We made Good Friday and Easter Sunday necessary, and that's what we must be ashamed of. As Christmas is the innocent joy of God's infinite peace and love overflowing onto the earth, Easter is joy caused by our shameful history.
I suggest that the best way to enjoy Easter is to help begin a new history, to begin anew to live a newly elevated life of wondrous possibilities for ourselves and for the world, in the loving, saving grace of Christ. We can begin now to work harder to help build the kingdom of God here on earth until Jesus returns.
Thus we can turn the shame of Easter into an Easter of humility and gratitude, and humbly and thankfully celebrate God's loving glory as we wish ourselves a Happy Easter.
Jesus did not come into this world to be crucified and rise again. He came to be one of us and to bring us the fullness of God's infinitely overflowing love for us. As one of us, he freely and lovingly shared the fullness of our human life: our human peace, joy, sadness, humor, love, and even our natural little faults--I like to think that at least once when he was young he hit his thumb with a hammer.
He also sinlessly took to himself our willfully created destructiveness, a destructiveness so deep that we created, e.g., ecological destruction, slavery, poverty; racial, sexual and economic injustice; hatred, persecutions and war. So in order to save us from our own destructiveness, he accepted it in all its depth, even to dying the horrific death of crucifixion, the specially horrible form of destruction that we had created in his time.
Jesus could have lived and died peacefully among us. We made Good Friday and Easter Sunday necessary, and that's what we must be ashamed of. As Christmas is the innocent joy of God's infinite peace and love overflowing onto the earth, Easter is joy caused by our shameful history.
I suggest that the best way to enjoy Easter is to help begin a new history, to begin anew to live a newly elevated life of wondrous possibilities for ourselves and for the world, in the loving, saving grace of Christ. We can begin now to work harder to help build the kingdom of God here on earth until Jesus returns.
Thus we can turn the shame of Easter into an Easter of humility and gratitude, and humbly and thankfully celebrate God's loving glory as we wish ourselves a Happy Easter.
