And then there was life. Oh goodness me. The real deal about Easter is and always has been life. It is, to my knowledge, the most life-affirming celebration that there is on the planet. It is the affirmation of, the celebration of life itself, of promise, of future, of potential, of possibility, of eternal, well, possibility. Sorry if I'm getting too technical.
Now, the reason that Easter is such a big deal is that it undercuts the entire understanding that we have about each and every single day that there is. We have an idea about time as being essentially
linear - each day you wake up, and each night you go to bed, and there's some stuff in the middle, but time only progresses in one direction. To quote Tyler Durden from Fight Club:
This is your life. Good to the last drop.
It doesn't get any better than this.
This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
When Fight Club came out, oh WOW was it ever a big deal. It was a big deal because it said, maybe for the first time out loud, the truth that we all secretly knew about the way the world worked, and about the futility of all of our lives. Yes, we all lived each and every single day like this, but nobody ever TALKED about it. And there it was, on the big screen (or in novel form), and you had this stuff confirmed. The growing, gnawing unease that there was in your life, you were finally getting it writ large for you. It was a serious issue. You'd spent your life filling it with Swedish furniture, and khakis, and coffee and routine, but it was all to do with trying to forget that you were dying one minute at a time. And Tyler Durden rudely reminded you of that. And with every tooth that fell out, with every punch thrown, it was a desperate attempt to reclaim life.
But here's the problem. You can eschew the khakis, the swedish furniture, the coffee, the cancer meetings, all of it, and what are you left with? Beating each other up, anarchy, death, and war. Just insane, impotent rage, dedicated at overthrowing the government, the banks, the businesses, making soap, all that, anarchy reigning, but not really getting you anywhere. You're just replacing Khakis with soap, but not getting at the core issue, which is that this is your life, and it's ending on minute at a time.
Now, on the internet, as I usually do, I've been seeing lots of pictures about the pagan origins of Easter. This is the picture I've been seeing:
Yes, this is the issue
Easter's pagan origins. But this too, doesn't really get to the heart of what we're talking about as Christians, not really. Sex and fertility are good things, don't get me wrong, but it's more replacement. It's more replacing Swedish furniture and khakis with sex and fertility. You're dying, your life is running out, so let's make requests to the gods to give us sex and many children and all this. And when you look at Easter as celebrated by Christians, you may get a little bit suspicious. Hey wait a minute, we might say, what's the deal with the bunnies and the eggs and all that.
My answer? Nothing at all.
G.K. Chesterton, with whom you might disagree with quite a bit, said something remarkably astute about the various faiths, and I'll included this paganism business here too. He said that according to the world, the various faiths all say the same thing, but differ in terms of their robes, their rituals, their various trappings and so on.
But the world is wrong on that. The various faiths are remarkably similar in their rituals, in their trappings, in their robes, all that, but they differ remarkably in what they actually say. And this is where the Christian faith in their greatest celebration, in their biggest day of the year, differs so vastly from the pagan celebration. You may have eggs at home (but not at church), you may have bunnies at home (but not at church), but what is the celebration about?
It's not about fertility.
It's not about sex.
It's not about bunnies or eggs, or anything like that. It's about life. It's about real life. Life that undercuts the assumption that you've had for the entirety of it that things only go in one direction. Life to death. Intact to broken. You've thought your entire life that the second law of thermodynamics was in effect, and that things, including the universe, were running down over time. And that everything is just going to run out and break own over time, and will fall apart.
Including you.
But the Christian celebration of Easter, the real one, takes all that, and breaks it. It shows you, in the person of Jesus Christ, that this is not the end. That life is not going in one direction, to destruction and death and that's it. In the person of Jesus Christ, for the first time, but not for the last, there could be life. And not just fertility, not generations, not more children on this planet that will eventually die. Not more khakis, not more Swedish furniture, not more chaos not more fights. But more life.
Part of the way through Fight Club, Tyler Durden informs his disciples that they have to give up, and they have to realize that they too will die. Until then, they are nothing. Sure enough. But the overall question that we as Christians have, is that once you realize that you too will die, once you realize that you will die, so will your children, your parents, your pets, everyone you ever cared about, and everyone ever, then what? Where is any confidence at all?
It's in Christ. It's in the empty tomb. It's in the promise of life, even in the face of death, even as the world spins to destruction.
It's in life.
PJ.
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