Dialogue: Christ still at the centre of Easter

By GARTH GEORGE

I have seen it as ironic for some time now that the year's longest holidays - Easter and Christmas - remain firmly attached to the two principal festivals of Christianity.

After all, if you believe much of what you read and hear, Christianity has no place in modern New Zealand - it's conservative, reactionary and old-fashioned, its practitioners a bunch of bigoted, narrow-minded, judgmental, superstitious, hypocritical spoilsports.

So it amuses me that all those people and organisations who never miss a chance to discredit, denigrate and demonise Christianity and Christians will happily take tomorrow and Monday off. Hypocritical? No, of course not - it's just a public holiday.

They will tell you that Easter was, in any case, originally a pagan festival and was adapted by the Church to suit its purposes - in such a way as to indicate that that somehow demeans the celebration of the crucifixion and resurrection.

They remind me of some words of the 19th-century philosopher Herbert Spencer: "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

But no matter how vehement and dogmatic the anti-Christian message becomes, it can never cast doubt on the timeless validity of the story of the first Easter, which provides the very kernel of Christian belief. For it is a story of faith, hope and love, and those are things too big to be confined to Churches and their adherents.

At this time of the year, Muslims celebrate Eid-al-Adha, a commemoration of the time when the patriarch Abraham - Jesus Christ's ancestor - was told to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, for whom he had waited well into old age. As it happened, at the last moment God stayed Abraham's hand. There are few greater stories of faith in the history of mankind than that of Abraham and Isaac.

And at this time, Jews celebrate the Passover - as Jesus Christ did on the night before he was crucified, at the Last Supper - commemorating the time when God wiped out all the first-born of Egypt except for those living in houses on which lamb's blood had been smeared on the lintels of the doors. Here, too, is a wonderful illustration of faith in God to do the right thing by his people.

You won't hear the humanist-rationalist-atheist element offering any contemptuous caterwauling about those festivals, though. No Christ, you see, to have a crack at. It's him they can't abide.

But most New Zealanders are, and will remain, indifferent to the true meaning of Easter, just as on the first Good Friday some 2000 years ago a largely indifferent populace went about their lawful (and no doubt unlawful) occasions while Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, was betrayed by one of his disciples, hauled before the highest religious council of Israel and falsely accused of, and convicted of, blasphemy. He was ridiculed, spat on, punched and kicked.

Later in the day, he was hauled before the highest secular tribunal, again falsely accused, sentenced to be crucified and subjected to more ridicule and violence.

A handful of his followers watched as he was mercilessly nailed to a cross and hung up to die; a few more out of morbid curiosity looked on with callous nonchalance; most just got on with life.

But his followers, who are still but a few, will tomorrow take time to reflect on the profound redemptive, sin-shedding mystery of the Cross, which is at the heart of Christian belief and which provides the raison d'etre for the observance of Easter.

As the weekend proceeds, they will remember, too, in joy and wonder, the resurrection of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who took all the sins of the world upon himself so that all mankind could be reconciled to a passionately devoted God, the creator and sustainer of the universe.

Christians throughout the world will, with renewed faith and hope, thrill afresh to those timeless words of Jesus recorded by the apostle John: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved."

But they will be conscious also of Jesus' words which followed seconds later: "And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil."

Thus, this Easter, as at every Easter, the gladness and gratitude of all true believers will be tinged with sadness.

* garth_george@nzherald.co.nz