Easter bunnies everywhere, also little, yellow chickens and newborn lambs. All of them very cute, but nothing compared to the drama that is Easter, i.e. the death of Jesus. However, when we feel bad about loving the cuteness, but forgetting the drama then we should remember that the old Jewish "Passah" which turned into our Easter was full of animals - for sacrifice.
Not until the First Council of Nicaea in 325 was the bloody drama of Jesus the main point of this Springtime event, but from then on it was the main point in the Christian faith: Jesus let himself be born, prosecuted, condemned and executed for our sake. He died to free us from Sin, actually the inherited Original Sin that stems from Adam's and Eve's transgression. As to our own, personal everyday sins I don't think they come into it, but I'm not sure, and the most common interpretation is that that's the sin he wanted to take on so we shouldn't be condemned for being sinners.
To read about Easter in the Bible is confusing because it's not the same in the renderings in all four disciples. Christ is being tortured and condemned in all of these four gospels, but the crucifixation itself is described differently by each disciple and what's a triumph in one is a tragedy in another. It's in St. Mark and St. Matthew we find the heart rending last words of the dying Jesus on the Cross (St. Matthew: 27, 46): "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Yes, why indeed, if he expected to be saved from Death and wasn't.
If that's the case then Jesus reacts to pain and fear of death in a very human way, but when we go to St. Luke it's quite another story. Here Jesus' last words are (St. Luke, 23, 46): "And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit; ..." In St. John his last words are: "It's finished."
Two for and two against the superhuman death of a tortured god/human and all we have is our faith. This most important event in the Bible doesn't give us a real bearing on what's going on if we don't believe in Jesus. To believe in him - and I don't although I love him - means seeing this crucifixion as the ultimate success of Christ come to save us by sacrificing himself. If one doesn't believe this then it's still a very touching story of a man who was duped and then deluded himself into this awful death on a cross. In both cases one's heart flies out to the tortured man hanging there for six hours before he gives up his spirit.
Originally Posted On Site: 2009-04-10 04:12:14
Last Login: 01.28.12
Visits as of 12-12-07: 416
Comments:
|
|||
|
|||
