The Nobody From Nazareth

Easter is a little confusing for me. I mean, I know I live in two worlds, the western world and the Arab world, but Easter, and the schedule is confusing. For the west, yesterday was Easter. Here in Jordan—not yet, we have to wait five more weeks until Orthodox Easter when the 6% of Jordanians who are Christian celebrate Easter. All last week I was home in the US, seeing the Easter build-up in stores, hearing the excitement in people’s voices—I remember in Kroger’s the other morning in Cincinnati, a clerk offered me a “Happy Easter,” and I guess I didn’t reply loudly enough, and she just said it again twice as loud and twice as enthusiastically!

But then I got on the plane Friday night and returned to Jordan, just a few miles from the original Easter location, and it’s not Easter at all here. Easter here was a regular school day, no sun-rise service, no alleluias, no ham dinner for sure, and no weighty baskets of treats. Just a little confusing.

But then again, wasn’t the original Easter pretty confusing???

I mean, can you blame them? Can you blame the disciples’ confusion on that Sunday morn? The confusion of the Marys at the tomb? Can you blame them that disorientated by grief they falter and fumble? Can you blame them that in the aftermath of Jesus’ gruesome death, and with the discovery that his body is missing, they fail to rise to the high occasion of that day? Who can blame them for running to and fro like confused chickens with their heads cut off?

Fear and grief do strange things to people. They can rob you of reason. They can wring the sense out of you. They can leave you raw: twitching and trembling ... and without direction.

Let’s put that Easter confusion into better context: it was only but two days earlier that they had witnessed a train-wreck. They were helpless onlookers, bystanders as Jesus and the Roman Empire hurtled toward each other. They watched—as if in slow motion, I am sure, awful frame by awful frame—as their dear Palestinian peasant collided, head on, with the mighty Empire of Tiberius. Jesus collided with its armies and arms, its prisons, powers and prickly potentates.

It was no contest. None! Jesus was crushed. And the empire muscled on ... oblivious to the human wreckage it left in its wake.

Or, maybe not ... this really is confusing. Could Jesus actually have survived? Think of how his followers must have grappled with that on that Sunday morn. They were trying to wrap their minds around what all they had witnessed in that last week.

But they can’t. They’re not up to it. Not yet. It is too big ... too much for them. It is unbelievable, unimaginable ... inconceivable that Jesus could survive such a collision. So confusing!

I gotta tell you: if you asked me back then to wager on the contest between Jesus and the Empire, yep, my money’s on the Empire. Hands down! Would we have ever imagined the Empire with the edges of the frontier in Palestine would eventually collapse and crumble under its own excessive weight and hubris???  Infected by corruption, dependent upon intimidation, it began to rot from within.

And Jesus? Yeah, what about that guy? What of the Nobody from Nazareth? Whatever became of the Palestinian peasant, the Cow-town Carpenter who faced down an Empire? Whatever became of him? Take a look! Yesterday hundreds of thousands stood in St. Peter’s Square in Rome because of that guy. Seventy people attended my family’s church in Cincinnati because of that guy. Millions in the western world went to church because of that nobody. 

And, here’s the kicker: look at last Friday… Guess what mighty thing happened... what mighty-empire-like thing ... closed on Friday in honor of the Palestinian peasant, the Nobody from Nazareth? Wall Street! Shut down. Lights out. Doors closed. Computer monitors blank. Trading ceased!

The fact that Wall Street closes each year on Good Friday is nothing short of breathtaking.

And as I flew back from Cincinnati to Jordan on Friday into Saturday, at the same time that the original Easter mourning would have taken place, I thought about what survived from that original confusing Easter morning… Jesus did. And with Jesus, love survived. And peace. And life. And kindness. And justice. And grace. And, mercy... do not ever forget mercy.

The Roman Empire is history.

In the annals of history, Time is divided by him. The luminous brushes of Michelangelo and Raphael and Caravaggio... inspired by him. Bach and Beethoven riffed on him. William Wilberforce and Sojourner Truth, Desmond Tutu, Chavez and MLK Jr ... learned from Jesus. They learned from Jesus the sweet taste of freedom ... not only freedom from oppression (as if that were not enough) ... but freedom from hate. Freedom from fear ... even fear of death.

Last week when I arrived in Cincinnati I came to my family’s home of 51 years at 2460 Montana Avenue alone. My father was in the hospital—severe rectal bleeding the result of long-ago months of radiation treatment. It wasn’t life threatening exactly, but it wasn’t good.  And seeing my father—the most stoic and powerful man I have ever known—in the hospital made me a little afraid. As I spent those nights at home, alone for the very first time in our house without either parent, it was a little confusing, too. But confusion can give way to joy.

My father came home a few hours before I left to return to Jordan. And he sounded better on the phone yesterday as we reminisced about Easters of long ago. And he sounded even better today as he left home for the first time since his trip to the hospital. My sister drove him over to her house to fix a leaky bathtub. Yep, Papa Ken is fixing things again. Life is back to normal, but perhaps a little more transcendent today.

Yes, as I flew back from Cincinnati to Jordan about 65 hours ago, at the same time that the original Easter mourning would have taken place, I thought about what survived from that original confusing Easter morning.   Jesus did. And with Jesus, love survived. And peace. And life. And kindness. And justice. And grace. And, mercy.

Love and peace and life and kindness and justice and grace and mercy…all qualities I have witnessed in the person of my father as well.

Confusion gives way to joy.