I’ve always been more interested in the death of Jesus than his resurrection. The resurrection feels like a cop out. Like the authors and architects of my religion had to make it conform to the standards of mythology and epic narrative.
There are stories of believers who did not immediately learn of the resurrection. They remained faithful for years to the Christ who had died on a cross, before learning that he had afterwards walked through walls and floated up into the sky. Part of me wants to be part of a secret sect who was never brought the News. We would believe because of the man who lived, not the man who lived again. Those of us who died–our elderly and our children–would join Him, wherever he was. Not because he had floated into the sky, but because he had gone before us, and stayed there.
Because that some messiah was raised from the dead but then allowed my perfect daughter to go before me is absurd, and I refuse to pretend otherwise. I do not lose hope that there is some explanation, mind you. I would simply point out that your social network proclamations of “He is risen!” ring a little flat this season.
Some zealous believers damaged an image of Christ on the cross this week because they thought it defaming. They struck his image in the face. Here He was in his most blatantly symbolic–molded in cheap plastic by those who claim to honor him, then surrounded by our human waste–and they erased his face. In their attempts to keep Him separate–holy and resurrected–they removed him from us, and left us only with our waste.
They enforce the voice that says this is punishment for historic acts. They remove the hope of rescue from this mire, that this life is not as it seems, that time and its suffering are just a constraint she has been saved from.
There are some who will find the above paragraphs telling of a lost or misguided faith (“1 Corinthians 15!” I hear you flipping to), perhaps even compelled to intervene (with a Facebook comment–LOL!) or pray.
Here’s a great post about Easter that references Mark 8:
…This passage has always stuck with me. I don’t believe that Jesus walked on water or multiplied loaves and fishes. …But that strange statement by the blind man at the end–“I see men like trees, walking around.” It’s strange. It’s beautiful. And it sounds real. It doesn’t sound fake. It sounds like something that a blind man, upon seeing the world for the first time, might actually say. Groping for something to compare the sight of fellow human beings to, he might say that they remind him of trees; landlocked trees that he has touched and felt before–trees that are suddenly uprooted and are moving around.
It’s an eerie passage…[it] does seem oddly convincing–in a way that is different from so much of the Bible, which so often does not seem oddly convincing. And so, did a bunch of people actually see Jesus restore sight to a blind man? …Well? …Did they?
I’ve always been more convinced by curious disbelief than by firm, rational beliefs.
Here is another good analysis of the Piss Christ vandalism by my friend Kester.