Of all the Christian holidays, Easter is the one that strikes me as the most odd. I’m sorry dear followers of Christ, but this holiday kind of typifies why I’m agnostic.
Don’t get me wrong. I like it. I like lamb for dinner, chocolate bunnies and the cuteness of kids hunting for dyed hard-boiled eggs. As holidays go, it’s not over commercialized, and doesn’t require annoying people to tell me how merry I have to be.
But here’s the thing that confuses me when I take too close a look at the theology of it...
The entire point of the New Testament is that God, the Father, sacrificed his only Son, Jesus, so that man could be forgiven of his sin. In the Old Testament, the Jews sacrificed lambs to make things square with god. But Jesus, the lamb of God, was sacrificed so that man could be washed free of sin. That was the New Testament, in other words, the new agreement. No more lambs would need be slaughtered. Jesus dying on the cross took care of all that, forever and ever.
Please, don’t think I’m being disrespectful. I’m trying not to be. But it’s hard to ask these questions without sounding like a sarcastic snot.
So here’s the snotty sounding question...If Jesus came back to life three days later (Happy Easter!), and then went up to heaven to rule at the right hand of his Father, what did the Father actually sacrifice?
This is the story I was told while trying to be a born again Christian (after being a casual Jew for most of my childhood) a few decades ago. Jesus, during the three days, went down to Hell and had a big fight with Satan, defeated him, and thus, his work done, he left and went back to heaven knowing that mankind was now saved from having to go to hell.
(The loophole in the fine print is that people have to be Christians to not go to hell. That is apparently the deal Satan agreed to after Jesus made him cry uncle by applying the double-snake headlock, a WCW banned hold, but no holds are barred in Hell.)
That sounds cool and all, but still, it was just three days. It was the length of a holiday weekend. And then, after what I grant might have been a really bad three days (like maybe as bad as the Labor Day weekend I spent in a Tijuana jail) he went back to live with his Dad. Today, Jesus sits in heaven looking over us all, answering prayers, and waiting for the rapture when he is going to come down and kick some more Satan ass. (And if you read the Left Behind series, you know that Jesus comes back with laser-beam eyes like Superman.)
I just don’t get it. The important thing about Christianity is Jesus’ sacrifice, and thanks to Mel Gibson, we know that it was horrible, especially when filmed in slow motion. But then how do we value that sacrifice when Jesus moved home (maybe back into his old room? Or did Dad turn it into a "den"?) three days later where he could start training up for Round Two with the devil?
Again, I’m sorry to poke a little fun and ask disrespectful questions on a holy day for much of the world.
And to make up for it, let me say thank you for this delightful holiday when we celebrate the risen lord, and also, as a bonus, the fertility and lustful procreation that comes with spring through the symbols of rabbits, eggs and chocolate. And we get to eat leg of lamb, which miles better than turkey.