happy Easter. This is the big day, and it has been treated a thousand different ways, from the special-effect intense movie version to dry archaeological speculation. But it's the story, stupid. And in the realm of story tellers, not much is sacred. The bible is a good example.
We identify with the story because it is us, opressed by a malevolent autocracy, saved by a handsome young man with long hair and a little bit of a beard. (Is that a woman? Or Bob Seger?) As the story goes, he is, of course, worshipped and he is eventually, of course, taken away. No wonder so many priests are gay. How can a hopeless gay man resist handling the body, daily, of such a savior? Jesus Christ, as we have remade him over twenty centuries, is the perfect object of love for a gay man who is afraid to 'flesh-out' his sexuality.
Did Jesus really live? Did he screw the teenage disciple, John ("the one whom Jesus loved")? Or was he just in love with him? Or maybe he was an alien, like the eight foot tall, genderless creatures from Shirley McLaine's books. She asked them about Christ, and they knew who he was. Hmmm.. Anything is possible, and if you don't think so, revisit the Crusades. Ah, the things that are possible in the name of love...
But this is the day that makes us, the oppressed, winners. You too can be oppressed, just conjure up some self-pitying lament connected at least tenuously to something real—the connection needn't be logical—and voila, you are in need of a savior! And we just happen to have one, don'tcha know.
In these days of Christianity's decline, as Jesus-loving fanatics of every ilk come rushing to the fore with increasingly stupid arguments about Who God Is, and as the Easter-incompatible versions of God held by the vast majority of earth's population are absorbed into formerly christian-dominated cultures, Easter is becoming a curious event. God no longer is comfortable (or maybe never was, we just didn't care before) cramped within one narrow theology.
we may not need to inaugurate a new religion to accommodate these changes, yet. But for the sake of the story, to keep it fresh and meaningful for us today, we must redefine what it means for us, and to do that we must rediscover a place in our lives where resurrection is important.
I don't know if I can do that. Can you?
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