Passing Over Easter

by Dennis Green

I am a Jesus Freak who does not believe in the Resurrection. I listen to Christians explain that “He is Risen!” is what their faith is all about, that it would be meaningless without the Resurrection, and I am unmoved. Quite the contrary, I feel that the Crucifixion is real, final, that the Spirit might be eternal, but that the body of Jesus died. Period. R.I.P.

For me, that real death at the hands of the authorities, and of the mob, makes his life all the more meaningful and poignant. The Shroud of Turin, if it is genuine, is a priceless artifact only because it was wrapped around a corpse.

How can Jesus be my brother and my friend if he cheated death? I know that I will die, and that you will too, that all of us humans are mortal. And if Jesus’ dying was some sort of dumb show, a farce, playing dead for three days, pretending, then what does it mean to say that he was “fully human”?

Passover is a different sort of celebration than Easter. It marks the occasion of the tenth plague visited upon the Egyptians to force them to let the Jews go upon their Exodus. The firstborn male of every household, including Pharaoh’s son, and even the firstborn of cattle, were slain by the Angel of the Lord. But the Jews had been told to paint their doorposts with the blood of the spring lamb, another example of animal sacrifice, and so the Angel of Death would pass over that abode.

So the tradition was there for many years, the notion of cheating death visited upon others who “deserved” it. The coincidence of Passover and Easter is not entirely accidental, but similar to the many echoes of Jewish thought found in early Christian theology. Until the coming of Saul of Tarsus, in fact, the early apostles did not believe that Jesus came to save Gentiles at all, but only his fellow Jews.

Like many Jewish traditions — such as circumcision — Passover is intended to reinforce the idea of an exclusive love of God for the Jewish people, the Chosen People, a love that keeps them separate from the rest of mankind, and especially the other tribes of the Middle East, including the Samaritans, the Arabs and the Persians. This very notion, of course, was turned against them by the Nazis in Hitler’s Germany, who forced them to wear the Yellow Star and the label “Juden” to set them apart for discrimination and eventual near-extermination.

My own sense of Jesus, and his teachings, however, is of a very inclusive Rabbi, one who says repeatedly about the Jewish tradition and laws, “But I say unto you…” I believe he would find the doctrines of “Virgin Birth” or of the “Resurrection” offensive to his humanity, an attempt to set him apart and to make his love for sinners an exclusive little club.

For that’s what Christianity has become, with its many layers of dogma, doctrine and hokum. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, but supposedly not because he needed to be cleansed of sin. I’ll take the human Jesus along with the Divine, thank you very much.

And for me, the crucified Jesus, who dies and stays that way, is my brother, and my friend. No cheating death, none of this “He is Risen!” stuff, nor any of the other dogma that makes him more, or less, than human. And he paid special attention to the poor. Why?

Because, the opposite of poverty is not wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice. And the love of Jesus is mercy and forgiveness, turning the other cheek. That’s the most divine justice of all.

©2010 Dennis Green