Beyond Easter eggs is Jesus the rebel

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/04/2017 (2568 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s an old joke about Easter, based on an unfortunate announcement, likely apocryphal, from a church bulletin. “Being Good Friday, the vicar’s wife will come forward and lay an egg on the altar.” Poor vicar’s wife, poor congregation, poor altar. But most of all, poor Jesus Christ. Because while there may be a few movies on television about it this week, and, of course, the bunnies and the chocolate, Easter has become for many people even less significant than Christmas. At least there’s supposed to be a war on the materialism of Christmas (there’s not, really), and we still somehow associate the season with being nice to people, at least until the holiday is over.

But as a Christian, I’m not sure I blame people for wondering what all the fuss is supposed to be about. In all honesty, ask most young or even not-so-young Canadians what they think of Christianity, and they’ll talk of angry people denouncing homosexuality, abortion, pornography and euthanasia, and certainly not appearing to be very tolerant and loving.

It’s an understandable reaction. Franklin Graham, for example, may be North America’s most famous Christian. He rather likes Vladimir Putin and thinks Islam is evil, that Barack Obama is a friend of the anti-Christ, Donald Trump is divinely destined and gays and lesbians should be banned from churches because “Satan wants to devour your homes.” He’s also, by the way, paid US$1 million a year for being president of the charity Samaritan’s Purse. He also has more than five million followers on social media and a vast international following.

So what is the truth about Jesus, the man from a provincial, northern district of an occupied land whose crucifixion and resurrection 2,000 years ago we Christians remember this holy week? Opinions vary, of course, and I guarantee that after this column any number of my co-religionists will write to me explaining how I am hell-bound, obscenely mistaken and so on.

Never mind. I believe Jesus was the most terrifyingly revolutionary figure in human history and that he makes every secular radical look like a cuddly Rotarian.

He was someone who was angry not at how or whom people loved, or how they raised a family, but at hypocrisy, legalism, exploitation and the mistreatment of the poor and needy. Sell everything, he said. Gain victory by losing, he said. Love your enemies, he said. Forgive those who do the most repugnant things to you, he said. Take the world and rebuild it, he said.

None of that tends to come across particularly clearly when popes in palaces say women can’t be priests, nor when evangelical leaders damn gay men and women to hell. The church has blood on its hands, guilt on its soul and shame on its face.

But there is another side to the followers of the Son of God from Galilee. There are those — and they are beyond the counting — who are seldom seen and heard, but build and staff hospitals in poverty-stricken war zones, who try to bring peace, who attempt to reconcile and understand, who admit past crimes and try to do better, who reflect the true face of Jesus every single day.

They are the ones we should turn to when we want to understand what Easter is about, but they are too busy living the Christian message to shout the mockery of that message whenever journalists want an angry fundamentalist to deliver the usual nonsense.

It’s the Messiah they follow who we need to recall this week. A man who never ran a corporation, never led an army, never formed a government or built a church, but who changed the entire world. For his goodness he was betrayed, arrested, abused, whipped and executed. And rose again. Yes, I know many reading this doubt that last part, but if you try to live according the first bits, it’s amazing how the rest falls into place.

“Jesus was the most terrifyingly revolutionary figure in human history and he makes every secular radical look like a cuddly Rotarian.”

Let’s hope the vicar’s wife has no misfortune with an egg, but let’s also hope a few more of us this Easter will see through the shouting and the blurred glass to see what it’s all about.

Eat some chocolate by all means, even eat too much, but know that while sugar satisfies only briefly, the truth lasts forever.

Happy Easter.

Michael Coren’s latest book is Epiphany: A Christian’s Change of Heart and Mind over Same-Sex Marriage.