Easter means lots of things to different people. In Australia, the land of the long weekend, we often see it as the best weekend of the year—four days off in a row. Autumn means cooler nights, sunny days, the opportunity to go for bush walks and to enjoy sitting outside in our favourite cafes. Time spent with family and friends and enjoying some chocolate is a priority. So is this all it’s about?
I wasn’t brought up in a tradition of faith as such. I went to Sunday School with my sister—even though our parents didn’t actually go to church. We suspected they just wanted a couple of hours alone on Sunday mornings. We also had religious education at school (albeit a State school)
As a child I remember saving up all my sins, and when we had an Easter service at school, I would try and confess everything I could remember—even though I didn’t really understand what sins were or who or what God was.
The ideas of sacrifice, forgiveness and new life were what penetrated my mind as a young girl and they have stuck with me always. I think they are the perpetual truths that people think of at Easter. They go across cultural and racial divides and speak to everyone.
As I contemplate Good Friday and look forward to celebrating Easter Sunday, sacrifice, forgiveness and new life are on my mind again, as they have been every Easter. But, over the years the idea of love has become part of the list. Love, wrapped up in sacrifice, forgiveness and new life, interrupted my understanding of Easter.
I used to be afraid. Feel guilty. Feel inadequate. That was my understanding of Easter, but love interrupted my understanding. Real sacrificial, forgiving and renewable love makes Easter what it has become in my life.
I like Bono’s perspective on this:
Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.
That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep shit. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.
The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That’s the point. It should keep us humbled….its not our own good works that get through the gates of heaven…
If only we could be a bit more like Him, the world would be transformed. All I do is get up on the Cross of the Ego; the bad hangover, the bad review. When I look at the Cross of Christ, what I see up there is all my shit and everybody else’s. So I ask myself a question a lot of people have asked: Who is this man? And was He who He said He was, or was he just a religious nut? And there it is, and that’s the question. And no one can talk you into it or out of it.”
All text taken from Chapter 11 of Bono on Bono: conversations with Michka Assayas, 2005 (Hodder).
Your God might not be my God, but I’m sure that if you have any sense of faith you will know in your heart that there is something in a lot of us that draws us to God. It’s been a long time, but when I was fifteen I decided to give God a chance and I haven’t look back. My faith looks different now. My understanding is different too—things I was absolutely certain of no longer seem so important and others that weren’t so important have become bigger. But, what I do know is that my life began when I chose to put my hand in the hand of God and run with all my might into the next adventure.
Love interrupted my life. I hope it interrupts yours this Easter.
