Despised and Rejected

                     He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. (Isaiah 53:3-4)

                I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.― C. S. Lewis

                This year, I haven’t seen as many of the “other gods died and resurrected” and “Easter is a pagan holiday” as I have in the past. That’s a good thing. I think the people who post such things are trying desperately to make Christianity less attractive, cheaper, and less important. If they are, they’re only responding as the Bible says they’ll respond. They despise and reject Jesus. They especially don’t want to look at His pain, or the cause of it. I know people who couldn’t go see The Passion of the Christ because of the beating and crucifixion scenes, and I can’t entirely blame them.

                But as I mentioned yesterday, I’m finding Easter difficult this year because Easter isn’t around me the way Christmas is. I listen to lots of Christmas music for a month before Christmas. I can’t say I’m really focused on Christmas, though the hymns and songs I listen to are Christ-centered. They’re pleasant background noise that keeps me just a tiny bit connected to the season. We don’t do that at Easter. Easter is almost deafening in its silence.

                At Christmas, we have an itty-bitty boy child born in a manger. And everyone says, “Ahhh. Isn’t He cute?” Then they turn their attention to the ugliness of covetousness and greed. On St. Valentine’s Day, our attention is turned to lust. On St. Patrick’s Day, it’s directed toward drunkenness and dissipation. And then, suddenly, at Easter, the trauma that marks the day is hidden behind bunnies, chicks, eggs, and pastel colors. I see a strategy involved. Where we might find beauty, we’re given our basest ugliness. Where we are meant to understand the atrocity, we’re given warm fuzzies.

                And I think this is partly because we naturally turn away from the ugliness of the politics and crucifixion, but it’s also because we are the source and cause of the ugliness. Any bit of fluffiness is preferable. We naturally shrink away. We may go to movies where people are tortured and brutally killed, but that’s “fun.” We know that’s not real. We cheer when some action hero miraculously emerges victorious from a battle we knew he’d win, but somehow we also knew he could not actually win. But when it comes to considering the cross and our part in what happened, somehow, we sense that it’s different.

                I’m not suggesting that we should join the crowd at the scene of the crime and knit as we gawk and cheer. What happened on Good Friday should never be allowed to become entertainment.  But neither do I think we should  float through the season as I think I have. ASAP, I need to pull out some music that is fitting to the week, that will remind me of what happened and why.