Saturday, April 15, 2006
Easter is for beggars
Some people, when you asked them about their view of Christianity, point to suffering as the main reason they cannot believe. People suffering seems to indicate that God either does not care, or that he is unable to do anything about it. In both cases he is not a God one would want to believe in. The message of Easter squarely deals with both of those objections, if we look closely. Easter has nothing to do with bunnies or coloured eggs, but celebrates a historical event, when a man was condemned to death, primarily because of his claim to be God, even though he clearly was a man. For the religious people of his time, that was impossible, for God was not a man, and a man could not be God.
Christianity puts this belief on its head. We believe that God does care about suffering, but not like somebody giving a donation for tsunami relief, rather like somebody moving to
When God becomes a beggar, the fate of beggars changes forever: those living on the streets receive a new dignity, and God living among them fills their lives with his light and presence. In fact God becoming one of them means they stay beggars no longer. God did become a man and shared in our humanity, frailty and suffering, yes even in our mortality, but the story does not end there. After being laid in the tomb, he came to life again, he rose.
The one who became a beggar returned to his former state of heavenly glory, still wearing the beggars’ clothes: so from now on any beggar has access to the life of God as well. When Jesus rose and returned to heaven, he did so as a human being, and now all of us are invited to share the life he leads with God. As the Bible puts it “God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. He's set us up in the kingdom of the Son he loves so much”.
So happy Easter, “fellow beggar”!
