How does the story go?
He was crucified, died, and a couple days later he rose again, showed off his badass crucifixion scars to his doubting disciples, and rose on up to heaven to, per Nicene Creed, be “seated at the right hand of the father”.
Thus we celebrate with bunnies and eggs.
Something is missing. Something feels incomplete. Is that all there is to it?
Definitely not. And I’ll tell you what it is…
After his slow horrific death, Jesus first went down to hell, where all dead souls since the beginning of time were trapped. An epic battle with Satan ensued, from which Jesus emerged victorious, believing he’d at last fulfilled his destiny and destroyed evil. So he invited all the souls to ascend with him to heaven. He stopped by earth again on the way to see his friends real quick and celebrate his victory, instructing them to go forth and spread the word of what has happened. And then he ascended to heaven for good.
This much we know. But what happens next?
Jesus arrives in heaven with all the souls he just freed. God sees this and says “Very good, my son. Now come be seated beside me.”
But suddenly Jesus pauses, and any feeling of triumph he had was washed away. And he asks himself what might have been a dangerous question. What exactly was all this for? Why did everything, his becoming human and suffering through crucifixion and everything else, have to happen in the first place?
The realizations came upon him all at once. Before him was so-called Almighty God, his heavenly father, creator of all, omnipotent. As he, Jesus, had just battled Satan, the embodiment of evil who was condemning all souls to eternal suffering until this point. Why was God allowing Satan to keep those souls trapped in hell at all? If he really wanted them freed before this, he could have done so. How did his excruciating crucifixion in itself absolve any sins, when God could have just decided to forgive anything he wanted at any time?
Jesus at long last sees the truth about the being before him. It was all entertainment for God. It was all manipulation for his own amusement. Perhaps his executioners were the ones who killed him on the cross. Perhaps it was Satan who was tormenting the dead souls. But it was God who orchestrated the whole thing. And he’d been his loyal pawn through it all.
So, against everything he’d been and believed up until this point, Jesus said no to God. And then the true final battle ensued.
Just as Cronus overthrew Uranus, and then Zeus overthrew Cronus, it was time for Jesus to overthrow God.
And he did. And he became God.
Although he lacked his father’s omnipotence, he became a sympathetic God who had already spent 33 years as a human and understood what it was like in a way his father never cared to. He was also uninterested in being worshiped and glorified. All he expected of people was to be good to one another and live their best lives. He wanted all people to be free from oppression, whether human or divine.
And it is this freedom we celebrate today with bunnies and eggs. Freedom from an oppressive manipulative deity, from religious restriction and sacrifice.
But it was before all this concluded that Jesus told his disciples to go forth and spread the word. He was unable to update them, and so incomplete information spread around about him and what he wanted. He had to watch with dismay as, rather than being good to one another and living their best lives, people hurt and oppressed and killed one another supposedly in his name. Churches sprang up exploiting his name and his crucifixion just to amass power for themselves. The cross on which he was brutally murdered had become a symbol to these people, believing this suffering was for them, when, as Jesus himself had to come to terms with, there was absolutely no point or value in the crucifixion, that in itself it was just another senseless execution in a world that commits far too many of them. And his so-called followers were looking and acting a lot more like his executioners than his disciples.
That’s why we never hear about the final battle. Not only did it happen after his ascent, but churches aren’t exactly going to be telling people that their very existence is against what Jesus wanted. It’s in their interest to say Jesus remains God’s dutiful subordinate for eternity, that only those who believe in him in some very specific way are saved while all others are doomed. That’s how they amass power and wealth.
That’s why, as we celebrate today with bunnies and eggs and botanical gardens, this holiest day of the Christian calendar might well be a simultaneous rejection of Christianity. Where we celebrate the absolution of sins not because of the unjust torture and murder of a demigod a couple millennia ago but because his later victory removed the very concept of sin. Or, hell, just because the whole idea of sin is ridiculous anyway.
That’s how I’ve celebrated Easter for the past fifteen years or so now. At first, I figured I was just being ironic. I have marzipan or similarly flavored treats for Easter because of a scene in the His Dark Materials trilogy, where Mary Malone tells a story of how she gave up religion after taking a bite of marzipan and prompting a flood of memories and the realization there was no point or benefit to anyone in her living under pious restrictions and denying herself a rich and full life. That and Rush’s “Freewill” has become a sort of Easter anthem for me. Some people have been puzzled that, despite pulling away from Christianity, I still celebrate Easter at all. And, yes, I do celebrate Easter, but its meaning for me has changed.
It more recently it occurred to me that, though I don’t have any desire to return to Christianity (whatever that would entail), even from a Christian perspective this reinvented Easter still works, if one wanted to stick to what Jesus would actually want, in acknowledging his triumph over a sadistic god, in setting us and even himself free. But, of course, he wouldn’t want that. Christian or not, the idea is the same.
Be good to each other. Live your best life. Eat some Cadbury eggs.
Happy Easter!
