By: Jim Taylor

        This is a rare Easter morning. Rare, because Christian churches of both the western and eastern families celebrate Easter the same day. Even more rarely, Easter coincides with the Jewish Passover – as it did originally.

        On that morning something happened that is still the core of Christian faith. It’s not the only significant event – the church over the centuries has built up a pantheon of beliefs about Jesus’ birth, miracles, teachings, and departure.

        But without the Resurrection on Easter morning, all the rest pales into folklore, hero worship, or delusion.

        Elijah also ascended into heaven. Moses did miracles. David inspired loyalty. No one equates those actions with divine status.

        Christians differ on their interpretation of the Resurrection. Some insist on the physical resurrection of Jesus.Others argue that the real resurrection happened to Jesus’ followers. Something changed them from bumbling cowards who huddled behind locked doors, bemoaning their loss, to fearless prophets who went out ready to tackle the world—even at the risk of their own death.


Something happened

The distinction matters enormously to some people.

        I’m happy to let them cling to their own convictions. Because in practice, what matters is that there was a resurrection of some kind. The end was not the end. A movement supposedly stamped out by the execution of its leader erupted into new life the way spring tulips burst out of barren ground.

        Indeed, if there is no resurrection – if resurrection does not continue to happen in the lives of people today – then faith has nothing to look forward to. Faith has no hope.

        But resurrection is not a mass movement.

That first resurrection – physical, symbolic, whatever – did not happen in a crowd scene.

        The crowds came on what we call Palm Sunday and Good Friday. Not on Easter morning.

        During the week before the Passover, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Most people expected their long-awaited Messiah to arrive on a war horse. At the head of disciplined forces, ready to expel the hated Roman army of occupation. Covered in fine robes, laden with loot.

        Instead, he rode a humble beast of burden.

        Unless you have seen the burdens that donkeys carry in most of the world, you cannot appreciate their humility. Donkeys are the half-ton trucks of the truckless world.

        In Ethiopia, we saw haystacks swaying down the highway. Only at close range could we see the legs of a donkey tottering along underneath.

        In the Middle East, sad-eyed donkeys carry refrigerators. Firewood. Carpets. Fifty-gallon drums of chemicals. Entire families…

        He rode a donkey.

Wearing a peasant’s cloak.


Heady experiences

The biblical record sounds as if Jesus were hailed as a king. I suspect that for many who had flooded into Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover, he was entertainment.

        I have only once been part of what be considered a mob. As a natural introvert, I avoid crowds. But I happened to be downtown the night before the first Grey Cup game played in Vancouver.

        So were several thousand others.

        It was a heady experience. There were so many of us that we could disregard traffic lights. We surged across intersections, bringing traffic to a standstill. We poured along sidewalks sweeping up uninvolved people the way a tsunami picks driftwood off a beach, bearing it along with us, dropping it blocks away, exhausted.

        I imagine the streets of Jerusalem were something like that on Palm Sunday.


Fickle moods

Some of the people cheered. Some jeered. It became a game. Jesus lacked fine robes, so they tossed their own finery at him. They flung it on the ground. They waved palm branches, as if this man on a donkey were a conquering hero.

        Instead of an army, he had a multitude ready to party. A mass of people, surging through narrow street, waving palm branches in the air, cheering, laughing, singing, shouting “Hosanna! Hosanna!”

        Just a few days later, many of the same people displayed a different mood. Urged on by instigators, they shouted for blood.

        Instead of “Hosanna!” they yelled “Crucify him!”

        Or, in more modern words, “Kill him!”

        Gospel and legend both affirm that a few people on that procession to the hill of execution offered compassion, sympathy, even assistance. But most of the mob probably resembled the kids who gather around a fight in the school yard. The same way that crowds gathered to watch a hanging in medieval London, or television viewers clustered around their sets to see Timothy McVeigh executed a few years ago.

        They jeered. They mocked. They laughed when he fell down.

        They certainly didn’t throw their clothes on the ground before him and shout “Hosanna.”


To the lonely few

Both mob scenes contrast with Easter morning.

        The four gospels tell slightly different versions of the Resurrection. But they all agree on one point – the first witnesses were a small group of mourning women.

        In the chill light of dawn, even before they expected that the soldiers guarding the tomb would be awake, they went to the tomb. And they found the stone rolled away, the tomb empty.

        The male disciples didn’t believe them. They called the women’s news an “idle tale.” Only two – Peter and John – bothered checking it.

        Later, Jesus appeared to male disciples. But still always in small groups. Two disciples, walking a dusty road. A handful, behind locked doors. Paul, riding towards Damascus.

        There’s a lesson for us. Demagogues harangue huge rallies. Protesters organize mass marches. Politicians try to ride public opinion polls the way surfers ride a wave.

        It’s a natural human instinct. We want to be popular. We want to be successful. We measure that success with numbers – whether those numbers deal with seats in a legislature or attendance at worship.

        But the resurrection came to a small and lonely few.

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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