Easter Story
Slightly belated meditations on Easter (Resurrection Sunday).
Easter Story belongs to the following groups:
All About Your Best Work, All Things Poetic, Artistic, Philosophical and Living Christianity1 May 2009
Easter Story
A great cross stands tall upon a dark mountaintop. As the sun begins to rise the sky turns red and black clouds begin to swirl. Heavy fog lifts and the green grass is revealed. So are the darkened streaks of blood that have stained the rough wooden cross. The silence is overpowering. Great suffering took place here. He was murdered here – by His own kin, and by His enemies. Those who were once divided in hatred now joined together to torture this Man. They were filled with rage. They hated His questioning of their carefully controlled social order. They wanted the poor kept hungry and naked. They blamed the sick for their own suffering. They angrily turned a blind eye to the plight of the homeless.
Then He came in. No title in their eyes. It was said He was descended from an Ancient King, but so were many others in their nation. He was not one of them, yet He had the audacity to question their rules and religions. He angered them. They decided to silence Him.
Here is that silence. That place where they silenced the Man who had so angered the nation’s leaders. He brought in on Himself, with His radical talk of social upheaval. He incited the people to madness; they wanted to crown Him King and have Him lead an army against their hated oppressors. Hey had to do something about Him.
Time passed. The people moved on. Another day, another criminal executed on a Cross. Sure, there were rumours that the cemeteries gave up some of their dead, as corpses came crawling out of the earth and wandered into the villages. Some said that a great earthquake had so shaken the temple that the curtain separating its inner sanctuary from the unholy people was torn from top to bottom. They ignored this. They moved on with their lives.
There stands that cross but in the lightening dawn a new surprise awaits. Somehow the air seems clearer. Birdsong breaks the solitude. A flower opens, turning to the sun.
New rumours begin. The criminal’s body is no longer in its tomb. That tomb had been covered with a heavy stone, sealed with the King’s seal and guarded by armoured watchmen. Now some woman has coming running from the cemetery crying that she met with an angel and with the criminal Himself. The dead man, publicly executed before a large crowd, has somehow come to life, rolled away a massive stone, knocked out some guards, neatly folded His clothes, and gone for a walk in the garden in order to frighten and confuse some women? Even His own followers do not want to believe it – until they meet with Him, too.
What does it all mean? Lost in the symbols of crosses and death and life and their mysteries, arises a Man who lived, died and lived again. Not a mere man, but the Man. Fully Man, yet Fully God. The face of God shown to those who would seek their Creator.
The cross may stand there on the horizon, dark, looming and shocking. Its great shadow is cast across thousands of years. Many still come to its feet to mock the Man who hung there, spitting on Him, tormenting Him, telling Him to rescue Himself. They do not want to see that at its base is a door. A door that opens through to a world of light and life. And that Man is there, waiting, welcoming all who would dare to enter through the cross and into the living realm on the far side.
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