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Christ if Risen, Easter, Easter changes everything, Frederica Mathews-Green, Good news of the Resurrection, Holly Jolly Easter?, No Easter-No Christmas, O Sacred Head now Wounded, Suffering, Unencumbered by the silly, When the beautiful is made banal
When the beautiful is made banal.
“It’s that time of year again, when school children are colouring pictures of Jesus hanging from a cross, and shop-owners fill their windows with gaily coloured cutouts of the Flogging at the Pillar. In the malls everyone’s humming along with seasonal hits on the sound system, like “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” (did you hear the Chipmunks’ version?). Car dealers are promoting Great Big Empty-Tomb Size discounts on Toyotas.”
So begins Frederica Mathew-Green’s satirical article, “Easter Changes Everything.” She continues:
“Yes, it’s beginning to look a lot like Easter. Who hasn’t been invited to an ‘In His Steps’ party, where players move plastic pieces around a board emblazoned with a map of Jesus’ last suffering day in Jerusalem?
Not me, for one. Somehow we just don’t make the same boisterous fun of Holy Week that we do of Christmas…
No one plans to have a holly jolly Easter. But when you think about the astonishing claims Christians make for Easter, that neglect seems pretty strange, even to an outsider. My friend Mitch is Jewish, but his encounters with suffering during medical training led him to doubt whether there even is a God. Yet last Christmas he sent me this note:
‘Looking at the Christmas thing from a man raised in a Jewish home, the big celebration in Christianity should be Easter. No Easter, no Christianity. So all the focus on Christmas, at least to me, is misdirected.’
Why Christians don’t whoop it up more at Easter is a mystery to me. How inspirational! How joyful! That is the time to toast each other, lay on gifts, attend worship services, pack in the rich food. Something really substantial and holy to remember.
No Easter, no Christianity. Mitch has a point. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, who cares whether he was born in a manger or a 7-11? If he didn’t rise from the dead, Christmas is meaningless too…
Easter tells us of something children can’t understand, because it addresses things they don’t yet have to know: the weariness of life, the pain, the profound loneliness and hovering fear of meaninglessness. Yet in the midst of this desolation we find Jesus, triumphant over death and still shockingly alive, present to us in ways we cannot understand much less explain. In him we find vibrancy of life, and a firm compassion that does not deny our suffering but transforms and illuminates it. He is life itself. As life incarnate, he could not be held back by death…
On [Easter] we will sing, over and over, dozens of times, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death…” It is not a children’s song. But grownups are taller, and can see farther, and know what hard blows life can bring. Easter may seem boring to children, and it is blessedly unencumbered by the silly fun that plagues Christmas. Yet it contains the one thing needful for every human life: the good news of Resurrection.
Easter didn’t change anything? Easter changes everything.”
“Easter Changes Everything” by Frederica Mathews-Green.
To read Mathew-Green’s faith journey, see “I Met Christ: My Conversation Story“.
More Enigma Than Dogma 
I wonder if the issue with Easter is that the celebration is preceded by death and thus it is hard to know how to celebrate that. But at the same time, I completely agree that we do not celebrate with the exuberance that should accompany such a life changing and world altering event. I feel challenged to up my family’s celebration this weekend.
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“Celebration” is probably the wrong word, isn’t it. If one follows 40 days of Lent into “holy week” with its attention to “Maundy Thursday”, “Good Friday”, and “Holy Saturday”, then one has commemorated with as much reflection and sorrow as is humanly possible. Add to this the fact that Christ’s Resurrection has been culturally neutered by chocolate bunnies – and it is no wonder that it is nearly impossible to gain a bigger view of the event that is life changing and the ground of our faith. I certainly don’t want to give the impression I have done any better at thoughtful commemoration; its just that our culture is so profoundly cut adrift and post-christian as to make a mockery of real faith in Christ. Thus we speak prophetically into this current wilderness. We are made for such a time as this.
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Yes and Amen! May the Light shine ever brighter in the darkness!
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