Shrouded in expensive cellophane, turkey dinners, knee-deep in presents, absorbed by family and blinded by tinsel, most people can comfortably celebrate the Christmas Season, as inebriated atheists; shrugging off the Virgin Birth, by singing inane songs about a jolly obese man in a red suit. Yet Easter is far more problematic.

For many in our materialistic society the inherent difficulty with Easter is that despite the ever-increasing number of chocolate rabbits, Easter is still too religious, its message too disturbing for many to even consider. Easter has the unfortunate habit of raising difficult questions about life, about living and dying. At Christmas the atheist, if they so wish, can celebrate the birth of a famous person, at Easter, either this famous person rose from the dead or not, and if He did, one can no longer be an atheist.

So what is the meaning of Easter? Christians are called to be an Easter people, that is to celebrate that "this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life". [John 3: 16, The New Jerusalem Bible] The well-known passage from St. John's Gospel holds within it, the keys to much of the Christian Faith: that there is a God, that He loves us, that He loved us to the point of sharing our physical conditon with all our sufferings, and that by His Resurrection He wished to see us rescued from the finality of death. Easter demands faith, for to fully celebrate the Easter message as handed down to us by the Apostles, one must affirm that the man known even to the atheist as Jesus of Nazareth, a Carpenter's son, was indeed fully man, but at the same time, the anointed one, Jesus the Christ: "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made". [The Nicene Creed] As adversity reveals character, so Easter defines the Christian.

Rudolf Bultmann (1885-1976)

Yet we should also consider theologians such as Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976), a man who fired an enormous broadside at Easter when he wrote and promulgated: "An historical fact which involves a resurrection from the dead is utterly inconceivable".

St. Gregory of Nazianzus (325-389)

One of the most brilliant minds of the early Church, St. Gregory of Nazianzus (325-389) in Oration 28 came to the conclusion that: "Faith rather than reason shall leads us, if that is, you have learned the feebleness of reason to deal with matters quite close at hand and have acquired enough knowledge of reason to recognize things which surpass reason". For this Eastern Father, there are so many things in this life which we do not know the cause, but still believe in, so why should we set ourselves the task of giving to God only those attributes which are limited by our own ability to comprehend. Any God that can be fully comprehended by an individual, is in fact, a being less than human. In an earlier tract, Oration 27, St. Gregory even informs his audience that as too much rain can drown the soil, and too much light blind the eye, so there are so many things about God which we cannot fathom, which would overpower us, even if we tried to grasp them. Perhaps that is why humanity needed the Incarnation, God coming as one like us, so that we could in fact see the face of God and live [cf: Exodus 33: 18 - 23].

Christ, God incarnate, was 'theophany' or Divine Revelation in its purest sense, and the miracles which took place, were in essence the steady revealing of the power and presence of God in the world. The miracles, it would seem, were specifically graded in order for those who witnessed them to understand, yet even so, the Evangelists quote Christ saying with near exasperation: "Do you still not understand? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand and the number of baskets you collected? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand and the number of baskets you collected? 'How could you fail to understand that I was not talking about bread?'" [Matthew 16: 9-11, The New Jerusalem Bible]. Eventually St. Peter understood that Jesus' miraculous actions went far beyond those of mere mortals and that in front of him now, stood now something greater than death, 'the living God' [cf. Matthew 16: 13 - 17, The New Jerusalem Bible].

Theologians such as Bultmann may in turn deny: water changing into wine, or a man walking on water, or the curing of the lame, or the feeding of the five thousand, excusing each as an allegorical device; but in so doing the point is missed behind each of these supernatural events. God is in, and beyond nature, and these miracles which Christ performed led eventually to the greatest of them all — a resurrection from the dead, the conquering of decay and senescence, and the destruction of Time. Theologians who limit themselves to the material and the rationale, carve images of God according to the arbitrary confines of their own intellect. Too often they seek conspiracy theories in empty tombs, rather than echo the hope that the greatest fear humanity has, that of death, has in fact been conquered. For as Christ informs us: "for God everything is possible". [Matthew 19: 26, The New Jerusalem Bible] Further, my body and soul cry out to be saved, not allegorically, but fully and in reality.

Belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ may be a matter of faith, but as the Oxford scholar Ian Wilson (1996) in Jesus the Evidence writes, it is also a matter of common sense, for there are more sources testifying to the Resurrection of Christ, than as to sources attesting to the life of Julius Caesar. Wilson (p. 152) concludes: "Overall then, while there is undeniable reporting flaws regarding Jesus' claimed resurrection, and at a time distance of nearly two thousand years knowledge of exactly what happened is beyond us, the evidence that something like it actually happened is rather better than sceptics care to admit. And quite incontrovertibly, belief in it spread like wildfire very soon after the crucifixion".

To deny the bodily resurrection of Christ, is in fact to reject the single hope for humanity, that God is merciful, merciful to the point of partaking in our suffering and rescuing us from despair. The best that those who deny the Resurrection can offer in its place is a God disinterested in the fears and sufferings of humanity; a God who began the world, but who now sits idle.To deny the resurrection is also to say, that all that is good, honest and beautiful in this world, comes eventually to nought and is essentially futile. To accept that Christ resurrected is to join in the chorus with those who witnessed first-hand his Resurrection and sing: "Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting". The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin comes from the Law. Thank God, then, for giving us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord [1 Corinthians 55 - 57, The New Jerusalem Bible]. To accept the Ressurection of Christ is to live as an Easter people, a people who live with trial and with tribulation, but who live in faith and in hope.

As such, being an Easter people, Christmas is far more than the birth of a famous teacher and preacher; Christmas is the commemoration of that day in history when a child came into this world who was: "light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end." It is because of these tenets of Faith that Christmas is a celebration.

To celebrate Christmas without a firm belief in the Purpose of the Incarnation is comparable to that individual who goes to a wedding merely in order to eat the food, or attends a wake, motivated by free alcohol. Without doubt these individuals are fulfilling some need, but that need is short-term and not one that embraces the totality of a Mystery that goes beyond the now, beyond the day, beyond themselves, beyond their family and friends. To celebrate Christmas without a total acceptance of the purpose behind the life of Jesus of Nazareth is like the man who on seeing a speck of gold on the surface, rushes off with this pittance, forgetting to stake a claim for the neverending stream of nuggets that lie just within his reach - just below the surface.

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©2007 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

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