Easter Reflection 2020
When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the colorful candy, the whimsy of dyed eggs, the thrill of the hunt.
As I grew older, I learned the story of the God who became man, who loved us so much that he died in our place. They call it the most beautiful story ever told.
But as I got older still, I began to question that narrative. Because no matter how I tried to contort my brain, I couldn’t get that to align with the rest of the Bible story.
When I read the teachings of Jesus, I saw him proclaiming a God who had been completely misunderstood by humans. “You have heard it said this...” he would say, and then he would flip the common understanding completely upside down. Jesus taught about forgiveness, non-violence, peace, love, mercy, and grace, and then said that “if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” (And frankly, it was precisely this subversive teaching that made the religious people conspire to kill him.)
And so when Christian churches tell the Easter story, I cringe a little bit because that image of God is not the God that Jesus believed in. In their story, God hates his creation, and is so reviled and disgusted by human sin that he can’t even look at us, much less be in our presence. In their story, the only way for the Father to love us as his children was to brutally murder his only son in our place. Then, once Vengeance and Justice were satisfied, he could be duped into thinking we were perfect only if we were covered in Jesus’s blood (much like Isaac was duped into blessing Jacob because he was wearing Esau’s clothes) because we were still such utter wretched creatures that there was no way he could truly love us otherwise.
....What?!
If I can be so bold, this story is actually a pagan understanding of the Divine. It’s ritualistic, it’s primal, it’s religion at its worst form—and it’s exactly the story all humans everywhere have told themselves since the beginning of time:
“My crops aren’t growing. The gods must hate me because I’m doing something wrong, and so they’re punishing me. I have to go throw a virgin into a volcano and then I’ll be made right with them.”
“My wife isn’t getting pregnant. It’s the sins of her family. Maybe if I go murder her father, God will bless us.”
“That man is blind. What awful sins must he or his family have committed for God to haven given him such a curse? He needs to go to the temple and sacrifice many goats.”
But Jesus rescues us from that way of thinking. God loves his creation; he will leave the 99 to find the one who went astray; he uproots his entire house to find the lost coin; he will RUN to his prodigal child and welcome her home without demanding a sacrifice or ritual. Jesus’s death doesn’t represent the depth of God’s hatred for us and our sin; it reveals the nature of a God who already loves us, who can already forgive us without demanding a price to be paid. The cross reveals a suffering, vulnerable God who will go so far as death to show us a better way to be human, a better way of understanding who God is and what he is really like. And when he rose again on Sunday—when even death itself could not hold him—he declared his victory and proved that everything he had been saying, teaching, and proclaiming was true. God is not who we thought he was. There’s a kingdom coming. And there’s work to do.
(There’s so much I still don’t understand about how this works or what it means. I gave my students an assignment on researching all the theories of atonement last week, so I’m hoping I’ll learn and discover something new as I read their papers.)
God loves you, no matter how much you’ve sinned. And whatever happened that day on the cross had nothing to do with hatred or divine violence; it has everything to do with submission, obedience, and overwhelming love.
Anyway, there’s not really an end to this post, so here’s a picture of me on Easter *almost* 30 years ago lol.
As I grew older, I learned the story of the God who became man, who loved us so much that he died in our place. They call it the most beautiful story ever told.
But as I got older still, I began to question that narrative. Because no matter how I tried to contort my brain, I couldn’t get that to align with the rest of the Bible story.
When I read the teachings of Jesus, I saw him proclaiming a God who had been completely misunderstood by humans. “You have heard it said this...” he would say, and then he would flip the common understanding completely upside down. Jesus taught about forgiveness, non-violence, peace, love, mercy, and grace, and then said that “if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” (And frankly, it was precisely this subversive teaching that made the religious people conspire to kill him.)
And so when Christian churches tell the Easter story, I cringe a little bit because that image of God is not the God that Jesus believed in. In their story, God hates his creation, and is so reviled and disgusted by human sin that he can’t even look at us, much less be in our presence. In their story, the only way for the Father to love us as his children was to brutally murder his only son in our place. Then, once Vengeance and Justice were satisfied, he could be duped into thinking we were perfect only if we were covered in Jesus’s blood (much like Isaac was duped into blessing Jacob because he was wearing Esau’s clothes) because we were still such utter wretched creatures that there was no way he could truly love us otherwise.
....What?!
If I can be so bold, this story is actually a pagan understanding of the Divine. It’s ritualistic, it’s primal, it’s religion at its worst form—and it’s exactly the story all humans everywhere have told themselves since the beginning of time:
“My crops aren’t growing. The gods must hate me because I’m doing something wrong, and so they’re punishing me. I have to go throw a virgin into a volcano and then I’ll be made right with them.”
“My wife isn’t getting pregnant. It’s the sins of her family. Maybe if I go murder her father, God will bless us.”
“That man is blind. What awful sins must he or his family have committed for God to haven given him such a curse? He needs to go to the temple and sacrifice many goats.”
But Jesus rescues us from that way of thinking. God loves his creation; he will leave the 99 to find the one who went astray; he uproots his entire house to find the lost coin; he will RUN to his prodigal child and welcome her home without demanding a sacrifice or ritual. Jesus’s death doesn’t represent the depth of God’s hatred for us and our sin; it reveals the nature of a God who already loves us, who can already forgive us without demanding a price to be paid. The cross reveals a suffering, vulnerable God who will go so far as death to show us a better way to be human, a better way of understanding who God is and what he is really like. And when he rose again on Sunday—when even death itself could not hold him—he declared his victory and proved that everything he had been saying, teaching, and proclaiming was true. God is not who we thought he was. There’s a kingdom coming. And there’s work to do.
(There’s so much I still don’t understand about how this works or what it means. I gave my students an assignment on researching all the theories of atonement last week, so I’m hoping I’ll learn and discover something new as I read their papers.)
God loves you, no matter how much you’ve sinned. And whatever happened that day on the cross had nothing to do with hatred or divine violence; it has everything to do with submission, obedience, and overwhelming love.
Anyway, there’s not really an end to this post, so here’s a picture of me on Easter *almost* 30 years ago lol.
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