"Easter – A Very Special Day"

Photo by Aniket Bhattacharya on Unsplash

As a child growing up Roman Catholic, I remember hearing my Sunday school religious education teachers always telling us that Easter was the most important religious holiday. I could never figure out why – because Christmas was so much more fun particularly since it involved getting a lot of presents. To me, Easter seemed boring. As a child I could even grasp the religious importance of Jesus, as the savior, coming into the world – but why was his crucifixion and death so important? It all sounded so horrible.

Endlessly, various nuns and religious education teachers would tell us that after he died, Jesus opened the gates of heaven. Well – that sounded OK, but why were they closed in the first place? It was only much later in life that I began to understand the teaching that, supposedly, the sin of Adam and Eve, by eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, closed the gates of heaven. (It was not an apple BTW).

Then in a moment of mercy, God sent his son to die at the hands of humans so the gates of heaven could be reopened and then, people could go to heaven after they died. In a nutshell, this is the absolute central theme of Christianity – the idea that Jesus died for everyone’s sins, including, the original sin from Adam and Eve.. (The atonement theory). (Judaism was based on sacrifice.)

In any case, this is why Easter, and not Christmas, is the most sacred of holy days for Christians. The basic story of Easter, as described in the Gospels, is probably roughly accurate. Jesus came from his home in Nazareth in Galilee to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. During the previous three years, Jesus had developed a healing ministry that was well known in the region of Galilee which is about a hundred miles north of Jerusalem. (Nazareth is still a small city in Israel.) What Jesus had been doing during the first 30 years of his life remains a great mystery. We just do not know.

As a charismatic itinerant rabbi, Jesus was known by the Roman authorities and the Jewish high priests of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. These high priests were selected by the Roman authorities in an effort to maintain order among the rebellious Jewish population.

At the time, the lands of Israel were known as the Roman province of Judea. The Jews hated the Romans as they had most of the other captures of the lands of Israel over hundreds of years. Jerusalem was the capital of the Roman province and the historical Jewish capital. It was a hotbed of simmering resentment where revolt against Roman rule could break out at any time. This is why the Romans were quick to take action against any person who might incite agitation or revolt.

There is little doubt that Jesus was a very charismatic person. Accordingly, Jesus was considered a dangerous subversive by the Romans because of his appeal to so many people. In consequence, he was arrested soon after his arrival in Jerusalem, and he was brought before the local Roman ruler Pontius Pilate. Pilate was apparently not very interested in Jesus, but the Jewish priests wanted him executed because they felt Jesus’ teachings undermined their authority. So – Jesus was then murdered by the Romans following a hearing before the Roman Pontius Pilate. His execution took the form of crucifixion which was the Roman punishment for political prisoners.

As to whether or not Jesus was put in a tomb after his death, we really do not know for sure because this would have been very uncommon. The gospels certainly say so. Typically, the Romans did not bury people who were crucified. Instead, they most often left people hanging on the cross to be eaten by buzzards and dogs as a lesson for all to see. So, there is no certainty about the rest of the Gospel story with Jesus being placed in a tomb. Of course, the gospels say Jesus was laid in a tomb, so it is quite possible he was.

In any case, the Jews who were followers of Jesus believed that following his death, he was still among them. Some claimed to have seen him but did not recognize him. Some believed that he had actually been raised from the dead. For some, the real “Kingdom of God” that Jesus often spoke about was to be found not here, in a world fraught with corruption and Roman persecution, but in an afterworld which would be a place of paradise; a land where disease and despair, decay and demise would be wholly absent from eternal blissfulness. This notion of heaven (and hell) was actually an Iranian Zoroastrian idea that had found its way into some sects of Judaism during the two-hundred rule of Israel by the Persians in the 5^th and 6^th century BCE.

The focus on heaven and the Easter passing of Jesus from Earth to heaven is, of course, a central theme in Christianity, but I believe there are far more important aspects of Jesus’ life to consider. First and foremost is the example that Jesus set by his actions and his deeds – what I would call his ministry.

Jesus’ life became preoccupied with healing the sick, visiting with the outcasts of Jewish society, and sharing the sacredness of a meal. Jesus apparently loved to eat. Biblical scholar and former Catholic priest, Dr. John Dominic Crossan puts it this way:

“In his early years he comes, as yet unknown, into a hamlet in lower Galilee. He is watched by the cold hard eyes of peasants living long enough at subsistence level to know exactly where the line is drawn between poverty and destitution. He looks like a beggar, but there is something different in his manner.

He speaks about the rule of God, and they listen as much from curiosity as anything else. They know all about rule and power, about kingdom and empire, but they know it in terms of tax and debt, malnutrition and sickness, agrarian oppression and demonic possession.

What they really want to know is what can this kingdom of God do for a lame child, a blind parent, a demented soul screaming her tortures at the graveyard that lies at the edge of the village.

Jesus walks among them, heals some, talks to others. He is invited as honor demands to the home of the village leader. He chooses instead to stay in the home of a dispossessed woman and share meals with the downtrodden. In the morning he leaves them and they wonder aloud about this kingdom that he has spoken of, a place with no apparent proper protocols, a place which he has said is for not just the poor, like themselves, but for the destitute as well.

To those first followers from the peasant villages of Lower Galilee who asked how to repay his exorcisms and cures he gives a simple answer – simple that is – but hard, very hard to undertake. You are healed, healers he said. So, take the kingdom to others, for I am not its patron, and you are not its brokers. It is, was, and always will be available to anyone who wants it. Dress as I do, like a beggar, but do not beg. Bring a miracle and request a meal. Those whom you heal must accept you into their homes.”

To us, these seem like common sense words but in the time Jesus lived in, they were wildly radical. This is hard for us today to appreciate. Jesus was calling for a kind of social egalitarianism.

In Crossan’s words, “this deliberate conjunction of magic and meal, miracle and table, free compassion and open commensality, was a challenge launched not just at Judaism’s strictest purity regulations, or even at the Mediterranean’s patriarchal combination of honor and shame, patronage, and clientage, but at the civilization’s eternal inclination to draw lines, evoke boundaries, establish hierarchies, and maintain discriminations.

Jesus did not call for a political revolution, but he possibly envisioned a social one. He gave no importance to the distinctions held in the ancient world; those between Gentile or Jew, male or female, slave or free, poor or rich. He didn’t attack these distinctions with words, he just ignored them in practice in the way he lived his life.

To me Jesus, and what little we know of his life and work, set a profound example for what real ministry is. I guess I personally see ministry as selfless love put into action and done so in the context of the sacred. There seems little doubt that Jesus exemplified this by his words and his actions.

Through my youth and until young adulthood, I considered myself a deeply spiritual Roman Catholic. Time and time again, as I was growing up, I thought about becoming a priest, but my struggle with theology held me back. Why did I want to become a priest? Because I wanted to use my life in service to others and in the context of the sacred. I wanted people to know that I was helping others, not just because I thought it was the right thing to do, but because I wanted “co-create with God” – to image creation which I perceived and still do as ultimately loving and good.

As I grew into adulthood my inquisitive mind asked ever more complicated theological questions and my doubts about Christian theology grew. As my seagoing travels around the world introduced me to more and more religions I began to realize that all religions possess truths. I also realized that all religions, although sacred, are human made – attempts by the created to explain and relate to a creator or the universe at large. I may longer believe in the God described in the Bible, but I do see a definite sacredness and a kind of divine consciousness that permerates the universe as a whole. And I find human life to be a sacred piece of this.

For several years, in my twenties, I claimed that I followed no religion – and I must say this left me lost and alone. When I attended my sister’s wedding in 1985, I entered my first Unitarian Universalist congregation. When I discovered the openness and diversity of Unitarian Universalism, with regard to theology and spirituality, I was hooked and I soon realized, again, that I had a religious calling.

I was clearly influenced by the life of Jesus in my youth and young adulthood. I might not now agree with the theology about Jesus – but the life of Jesus was, I think, profound. As I have learned more about other religions, I began to see enormous parallels between the life of the Buddha, for example, and the life of Jesus. But it was studying the life of Jesus that inspired me to consider a life of ministry in the first place.

Today, I still see ministry as selfless love put into action and done so in the context of the sacred. And that applies not just to ministers or priests or rabbis or monks or shamans or other types religious leaders but to anyone and everyone who projects love and compassion into the world.

So, for me the Spirit of Easter is ministry symbolized by the life and work of Jesus. What better time to celebrate such a day - a time when the bitter coldness of winter melts slowly into the warmth of longer and gentler days - A time when the stark barrenness of dormant life is eclipsed by the brilliant green of new leaves and splashes of color in trees and flowers - a time when we feel almost as though there is a new source of life teaming through the world around us, and perhaps, even in us.

Jesus, like the Buddha, like Mohammed, like so many other great spiritual leaders reached some special kind of wisdom. Of this, we can be sure because the actions of his life portray a spiritual conviction of the most radical kind and one, like so many other mystics, that was dominated by love and compassion.

There are, of course, those who claim (like Albert Sweitzer) that Jesus’ main focus was to preach the imminent end of the world and the establishment of God’s new kingdom. There are many Biblical references which suggest this. Indeed, Jesus probably did preach this because apocalypticism was a common theme in Judaism at the time. Jesus was a follower of John the Baptist and he certainly thought the world was ending very soon. To me, this, in no way, undermines the message of love contained in Jesus’ words and deeds.

And so, to the ultimate question. Was Jesus God? (Crossan’s answer in Seminary – “Probably not the way you think.”)

I believe that Jesus sensed and felt a part of the interconnected web of all existence of which he knew he was a part. He knew and he acted as though he realized all people were sacred and, therefore, deserved to be treated as such and he was willing to die for this belief. We really have no proof, one way or the other as to whether Jesus believed he was God. The first three gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), do not say that he did say he was God. The Gospel of John which was written three generations after the death of Jesus certainly does say that Jesus claimed to be God. Some scholars argue emphatically now – that references to this in the Gospels were added by the Gospel writers generations after the death of Jesus. Others believe the scriptures clearly point to this and obviously, Christianity upholds this. It is a matter of faith.

Unfortunately, all religions become products of politics, twisted reality, intrigue, selfishness, and they become subject to the power structures of their society and culture. Christianity is no exception and two thousand years of history have created more than forty-thousand Christian sects, some with radically different rituals, practices, and beliefs.

What is astounding, however, is that the simple message of love and compassion that lies at the heart of Christianity, as manifested by the life of Jesus, has never been eradicated no matter how often various Christian theologies have tried. Try as they might, theologians and politicians have never been able to make Jesus’ religion completely “exclusive” because Jesus’ message was, if anything, “inclusive.”

Through the centuries, when men and women have opened their mind and hearts to the inherent truths within Christianity, they find themselves returning to the simple messages of Jesus – love your neighbor as yourself whoever that person is, no matter their background or station in life - find the sacred in life – that which is God and love it as it has loved you.

Christianity has produced power hungry rulers and popes who preferred battle over worship services – but Christianity has also produced the St. Francis’ and Mother Teresa’s of the world. I cannot help but think that the later are those who truly walked in the ways of Jesus.

For all the faults one can find with Christianity, and the list is endless, the world is a better place for it. Among religions, it may not hold the exclusive lock on charity, compassion, and love, but it has certainly made them part and parcel of our western culture. In fact, it is hard to imagine what our world would be like without Christianity. We might still be worshipping idols. Slavery might still exist on a large scale and belief in the inherent dignity of every human being might be a ludicrous concept. Frankly, with its message of egalitarianism, I believe Christianity enabled modern democracy to thrive.

In the early part of the 19^th century the great Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, exclaimed in a sermon which was listened to by hundreds of persons, (including many visiting ministers from conservative congregations) that “if Jesus had never existed, Christianity would still hold great truth and be an invaluable religion.” The outraged visiting conservative clergy aside, Theodore Parker was right. The messages of universal love and compassion espoused in Christianity hold an inherent truth and wisdom and they have enabled humanity to make the world a better place.

What is important in the Easter season is to remember that it was a remarkable human being who promoted these truths so long ago under the most unlikely of circumstances.

In a way, Jesus did create a new beginning because the example of his life set in motion forces that profoundly altered the world and how we humans view it. Through remembering Jesus’ life and his death, he continues to offer us profound insight and guidance on how to live our life and how to see the sacred in all things and in all people.

This is a sacred thing and it makes Easter a sacred day for it is a day of hope and a day of a new beginning.

Reverend Christopher McMahon

UU Chatham

April 5, 2026