On Easter
The Easter season brings out immense paradox for me. I have wonderful memories of the Easter Bunny and adorable baskets and egg hunts, and watching the flowers fight their way out of the soil into the sun and all the other beauty of life’s renewal in the Spring. But while I feel that Spring is utterly joyfully spiritual, I struggle deeply with religious images of Easter.
I’m not alone - lots of others are writing about how they wish their UU churches would either be more or less Christian on this particular holiday depending on their personal religious bent. Lots of ministers I’m acquainted with have grappled with writing their Easter sermons and stories for all ages, wondering how to deal with this very particular set of religious stories in sensitive, yet spiritually meaningful ways.
I struggle with these stories and images because I have been damaged by their violence. And I have not yet healed, even though that damage is now 20 years past.
The summer between sixth and seventh grade, I went to Lutheran Camp Perkins for a week with my friend Sara, for the second summer in a row. This was a pretty impressionable time for me - I was still settling in to living with my dad after most of my life with my mom, and I didn’t have a group of friends to relate to on any more than a superficial level. I was a pretty lonely kid. Neither set of parents ever talked about religion much at home, though I did go to church with my step-mother to sing in the choir and play hand bells.
Anyway, camp. It was a beautiful place, with lots to do outside and all kinds of fun overnight trips to go on. We had a sing-a-long every night, with the counselors playing guitar and singing “Jesus loves me” and “Kumbayah” and all those trappings. It was positive and fulfilling and I soaked it all in - these people were absolutely positive that God loved them and they were saved and going to spend eternity in Paradise. I felt loved and accepted and like I finally knew what I was supposed to believe.
The last night of camp, we got to stay up past the regular curfew, and we gathered in the common hall for a special presentation. We sat in a big circle on benches, bean bags, the floor, laps of counselors - one big happy family. And one of the counselors told us the story of the Crucifixion.
In all the gory details he could muster.
He told us exactly how much the cross weighed, and about how Jesus’ feet were torn and bloody walking on stones.
He told us that the whips his captors used had bits of metal and stone plaited into them, and ripped huge hunks of flesh out of his back.
He told us that the crown of thorns was more a crown of spikes, at least three or four inches long, and how deeply they cut into Jesus’ scalp.
He told us the words the crowd was shouting at him as he walked, torn and bloody, with this giant cross and the thorns, and he shouted in our faces to demonstrate.
He told us about the nails going through Jesus’ hands and feet, and showed us what must have been sharpened railroad spikes to illustrate the point.
He told us how long it took for Jesus to die, and how much pain he was in the whole time, and how much blood he lost at every stage.
And then he told us that this horrible suffering would be all for naught if we didn’t confess that it was for the sake of our sins. That it was our fault that this man had gone through so much pain and torture, that he did it all for us and we better be grateful.
I was sobbing within about five minutes of the story’s beginning.
Another counselor said to me, “It’s good that you can feel Jesus’ pain, that you’re open to God’s message.”
Those gory, violent images and the violence of their presentation have stuck with me for twenty years now. They are the stuff of my nightmares. And now there’s a cinematic version of them all, too!
And that feeling of deep, personal shame and guilt forced upon me that night is also an integral part of me that has never healed.
I don’t think that I grasp the entirety of human experience any less because I choose to turn away from the glorification of violence, torture, death, shame, and guilt. I don’t feel the need to experience these things, even vicariously, to know that they exist.
I understand that millions of other people feel very strongly about the power of the message in the Easter story. It is powerful, and affecting.
To me, though, the message of Jesus is best told in how he lived, and how others have lived in his example. The violence of his death, and the added accompanying message of shame and guilt have damaged enough people over the centuries, to my mind.
Which is a long way of saying that I’m more than happy to talk about sunshine and all the pretty flowers in church on Easter morning. And for my children to be excited by the giant egg-laying, basket-leaving Easter Bunny.
Comment by george_cullinan
April 18, 2006 @ 10:39 pm
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