True meaning of feast of Easter: Human life as experienced by God

Actors playing the role of Jesus (C) and Roman soldiers (background) re-enact the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus in a street play as part of Lenten observance during Holy Week in Manila on March 24, 2016, ahead of Easter. PHOTO | AFP

Kenyans are enjoying a long weekend as Christians celebrate the feast of Easter today. It is one of the most important dates in the Christian calendar: The death and resurrection of Jesus.

Most Christians have prepared for this day by means of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, for a period of 40 days, in what is called “Lent”. Even if the Christian fasting is different from the Muslim custom of the month of Ramadhan, Christians are invited to take up personal expressions of self-control and temperance. Some fast from chocolates, others from tea or coffee, still others from Whatsapp! Many Catholics abstain from meat on the Fridays of the season of Lent.

The final week of this period is intense. The Sunday prior to Easter is celebrated as the Palm Sunday, when the triumphant final entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem is commemorated.

On Thursday, his last supper is celebrated. Friday marks the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Finally, starting from Saturday evening through Sunday, the resurrection of Jesus is solemnised.

These events are marked by elaborate liturgical procedures, particularly in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions of Christianity. Incidentally, this year, the Catholic and Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter on the same day; this may not be the case every year!

Why all this fuss around Easter, anyway? Is it just meant to mark the commemoration of the historical events surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus? Or are they merely part of the set of rituals inherited by a religious tradition? Or are they about my own life experiences?

These celebrations invite me to contemplate an important aspect of my existence, namely, that human life is full of paradoxes: health and sickness, happiness and suffering, life and death. What Christians believe is that God, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, shared in human nature. This is the mystery of incarnation.

Not only did he live as a human, but also went through the experiences of the paradoxes of human life in its suffering and joys, pain and relief, death and life. To make the experience of the life-contradiction even more dramatic, the death of the Son of God is untimely, unjust, and most unkind. They call this, “the paschal mystery”! This is what is being celebrated during Easter. 

The human suffering of God

Human suffering ranges from physical pain to spiritual emptiness. This spectrum of experiences include human betrayal and abandonment. Death is the ultimate form of human suffering. During the course of the past week, Christians have contemplated on these experiences, even as they have walked with Jesus in his own experiences.

Jesus experienced human betrayal. He was abandoned by his close band of friends when he was captured as a criminal by the powers that be. In fact, it was one of the guys in his inner circle who agreed to help the authorities to get him arrested in exchange for 30 pieces of silver.

Another man in the inner circle, who was to be the leader of the whole band, disowned him. People who had received favours from Jesus were voiceless amidst the crowd that wanted him crucified. Jesus was falsely accused by people of his own ethnicity and religion to be killed by the colonisers.

Jesus experienced acute human pain. The Roman method of putting a criminal to death by crucifixion defied all contemporary discourse of human rights. As the Christian Biblical tradition has it, Jesus was scourged, tortured by a crown of thorns on his head, made to carry the cross on which he was finally nailed naked.

Jesus experienced spiritual emptiness. It seemed that the God, whom Jesus often addressed as his own father, had abandoned him. As he was hanging on the cross in anguish, he has a moment of doubt. He cries out: “Oh God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Above all these, Jesus experienced death. Untimely death!

Raising human condition

Jesus’ death was not the end of the story. He was never buried, he was sown. His death was not a full-stop but a comma. He never became a past tense.

The story goes on. Christians believe that God raised him from death. His resurrection is an experience of the vindication of a just person who was unjustly condemned. His resurrection is an expression of a hope that death will not be the end of human possibilities. This is Easter!

Amidst the experience of human betrayal there is a promise of vindication. In this election year in Kenya, there is a lot of trading and bartering of affiliations and loyalties. The feast of Easter invites us to a broader perception of our belongings without fear of betrayal. We belong to one humanity.

Amidst the experience of physical pain, there is a promise of healing and meaning. Living in the contemporary “Panadol culture”, our tendency is to be paranoid about physical pain. For sure, physical pain is to be avoided, but we don’t have to panic about pain, contributing to more psychological distress. The feast of Easter invites us to embrace sickness and pain as we do with health. 

Amidst the experience of spiritual questions, there is a promise of the power of God who acts in His own time. In the contemporary situation of rising secularism and atheism among African urban elite, the silence of God does not imply his absence. God is so powerful that He can afford to lie hidden and silent.
Amidst our phobia for death, there is hope of after-life.

It is this embrace of paradoxes of human life that Christians celebrate this Easter, because the human realities have been uplifted by the experiences that the Son of God himself went through.

The author is a Catholic priest and the DVC-Designate for Academic Affairs at Tangaza University College, Nairobi. He blogs at www.sahayaselvam.org