This is Holy Week for Christians around the world that is leading to the celebration of Easter this coming Sunday.
The Easter message is simple enough. God raised Jesus from the dead. The tomb where his body was placed was discovered to be empty and his disciples said it was empty because Jesus was alive again.
That message was believed and rejected, but as the message of the resurrection of Jesus spread, enough believed leading to the emergence of the religious movement that became known as Christianity.
That movement evolved into what we know today as the church, the community that bears the name of “Christ.”
Perhaps one of history’s greatest ironies is that the church itself has become one of the primary barriers to people becoming Christian.
Church history is filled with stories of the church’s failure to speak and act in ways that resembled the teachings of Jesus in any way. The church has ignored and contradicted the life and teachings of Jesus as much as it has lived up to them.
That’s a major reason why churches in America today sit empty most Sundays even if they are filled on Easter. Christians no longer attend church, less than 25% do on any regular basis.
At the same time, the majority still believe in the message of love, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and justice that were themes in the teachings of Jesus. They still believe that treating one’s neighbor the way one wants to be treated is a noble and ennobling goal toward which everyone should strive.
The reason people still believe in these things is because they still believe in God. That, after all, is what Easter is truly about.
Easter is not about Jesus. It is about God, about God raising Jesus from the dead. To believe God is real is to trust that life is born of God, and that death will not ultimately be the final word.
If there is God, by definition neither death nor falsehood nor evil nor anything in all creation can ultimately destroy life or separate us from God.
That is the Easter message, and that is why it is a symbol of hope. It reminds us that God exists even when circumstances would deny it.
I realize that embracing the message of Easter is not easy.
It wasn’t for the first followers of Jesus. That he was alive was too good to be true so they naturally doubted it. Over time the truth of Easter penetrated their skepticism and despair to the point where they became a movement that began telling Jesus’ story.
By telling it the first followers of Jesus were thumbing their noses at the notion that Rome could erase the words of Jesus or Jesus himself from history.
Nor could Rome extinguish the light Jesus had brought to their lives and through them to the world.
By celebrating Easter I have thrown my lot in with those first followers of Jesus. Against all odds, I choose to believe in God, believe God is real, and so I don’t have much trouble believing the God who created life in the first place could bring life out of a tomb.
I have no proof of that. It’s a choice I have made to believe in the Easter message which has the effect of helping me not lose hope in the worst of times and circumstances.
In the last few years I have needed that more than ever.
Donald Trump and the people who supported him early and especially those who still do have caused me to wonder how people who claim to be Christians could be as blind to truth as they are.
They have led me to question the Christian message itself, question whether it does more harm than good, led me to wonder why the church has so often chosen to betray the teachings of Jesus rather than living by them.
Thankfully, the message of Easter has always renewed my spirit and saved me from giving up in the face of the spiritual corruption Christian charlatans have promoted in the past and are doing so today.
Celebrating Easter is my way of once again choosing to believe in God and, thus, to trust in the ultimate goodness of life.
I don’t have to be in church to do that. I don’t even have to belong to the church to do that.
All I need to do is to embrace the message of Easter that God is, and in making that choice I am empowered to cling to the hope that life always triumphs over death, truth always outlasts falsehood, and hope always overpowers despair.
That is a universal message that transcends Christianity itself. Thus, Easter can be understood as a celebration that encompasses the whole creation and all peoples without regard to race, creed, color, or religion.
Thus, of all the days of our lives, Easter is surely a day that God has made, and all of us, all of creation, can rejoice and be glad in it.
Happy Easter!
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