The Meaning of Easter
Before we ask, "What is the meaning of Easter?", we must ask, "What is the meaning of Jesus?" Much has been written about Jesus, and many ways of undertanding his mission have been proposed. Some people have suggested that he functioned as a sort of scapegoat or whippingboy; that is, he lived and died in order to give God the Father someone to punish in place of us. This idea does not work very well, though, since it says things about God better left unsaid because they just are not true. It makes God out to be some sort of vengeful monster. (For a longer discussion of this, read the off-site article, River of Fire.)
Some people have suggested that Jesus' main mission was to teach and serve as an example. He certainly did this admirably well, but if we leave it at this level, he death becomes perhaps pointless, and his resurrection rather odd. After all, most great teachers do not rise from the dead!
Jesus' real purpose was to do what only he could do. Only he was fully God and fully human. (hard to believe, perhaps, but that is precisely what we Christians believe him to be.) Only he united God nature and human nature fully in his own person. He came to join us back to God. He did this partly by teaching us wisdom and giving us an example of how to live. But maily he did it by having a foot on each side of the chasm, so to speak. By being firmly rooted in both the human and the divine, he bridges the gap. If he were only God playing "dress up" he would be worthless to us -- we could not identify with him and he could not understand us from the inside out. If he were only a very good human teacher, he still would be of little use. After all, we have many other good human teachers who teach us all the right lessons.
So what about Easter? Well, it is the living proof that this God-Human combination works. It shows us beyond any doubt that Jesus' sacrifice, his journey into the deepest and darkest depths of the human experience, actually did some good. He truly became one of us by dying like all of us. That might have been enough; the God-Human did a grand gesture and did not wimp out at the hard part. But then -- Resurrection! Proof that it had some eternal meaning.
The glorious event of Easter means that there is hope. Death is not the final word. Life is part of the great cosmic plan, and death is not.
Jesus died. God himself had the most profoundly human experience of all: despair, death, separation from God (yes, that is what it means). In other words, hell. God went to hell. Being only God, he could not do that. But as the God-Human, Jesus, he could and he did. But he did not stay there. He rose. When Jesus left hell behind, he took with him our human nature. He gave our humanity a precedent for leaving hell. He trod a path for us to walk with him. And it didn't even stop there. He not only rose and returned to earth, he also ascended, went to heaven.
Do you get it? God "went up with a shout
" from hell to heaven. And he took our human-ness with him. And where he goes, we can go. The journey from hopelessness and death to joy and life is now possible!
That is what Easter means. This is Good News!
