Easter is a unique event rooted alike in history and human existence. Historically it commemorates the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus was tried under the Roman law, found innocent and crucified. On the third day thereafter God raised him from the dead. Easter is hence an event that celebrates God's authority over the power of man.
Existentially Easter illumines a profound aspect of human existence. The clue to this is found in a question that Jesus asked his disciples, "If a son asks for an egg, would you give him a scorpion?" Jesus uses "egg" and "scorpion" as symbols. Scorpion has a sting in its tail. It symbolises an attitude to life that is fixated on the past. This breeds only regrets and grievances. It disables us from sowing manfully in the present to harvest joyfully in the future.
The egg in contrast, is a symbol of hope that points from the present to the future. It sits, innocent and brittle, on your palm. But its full scope — the seed of life within— will come to light only in the future. An egg seems nothing much. But it holds the seed of a miracle— the miracle of life. Egg symbolises an attitude to life that enables us to look beyond the despair-breeding odds and evidence of the present to the joy of newer possibilities in the morrow. These possibilities, though not seen now, can be intuited in the inner light of faith and hope. "Weeping," says the Bible, "may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning."
Easter, in this existential sense, is a foretaste of the unending goodness of life. This works at two levels. First, this applies to our temporal life. The scope of everyone and everything we have is greater than what it seems. Second, this applies to our eternal destiny. To us death seems the end of life. "It is an un-travelled land from whose boundaries," as Shakespeare says, "no man ever returns." But that does not mean that there is nothing more to death than burial or cremation. We do ourselves an injustice by assuming that death is the dead-end of life.
The experiences that comprise the life of Jesus belong to the stuff of our humanity. Jesus was fully human. For this reason alone, if not for a hundred others, we need to understand the meaning of Easter as a spiritual light that illumines the essential human predicament and destiny.
Rev. Valson Thampu,
New Delhi
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