For all its gruesome trappings - envy, venality, betrayal, religious politics, mock trials, weak bureaucrats, mob violence, agonising crucifixion, hasty burial - the biblical record of the first Easter is essentially a love story.
It is the climax of the story of a father's love for his children, a love so intensely passionate that he was prepared to sacrifice part of himself in order to reconcile his children with him.
The story began thousands of years before when the father, being lonely, decided to create a man and a woman to keep him company. He set them up in a magnificent home in which every need was provided for them and from time to time he would come into their garden and talk to them.
He loved them dearly and, like most fathers, he knew that there was more to the world than met their innocent eyes. There was a tree in the garden that was particularly dangerous, so he warned them that they mustn't on any account eat any of its fruit.
But being children, the moment he mentioned it that tree became irresistible to them and, sure enough, very soon temptation got the better of them and one talked the other into having a taste.
The father was not pleased. In fact, he was so angry that he withdrew himself from them, tossed them out of their home, punished them severely, and told them that from then on they could look after themselves.
But as the decades, the centuries, the millenniums passed he continued to grieve for his lost children and to watch over them. He tried all sorts of ways to get them to behave but nothing worked. He and his children remained estranged as, time after time, except in the hearts of a few, his enduring love for them was spurned.
So, in desperation, determined to restore his relationship with his children, he decided to visit them in person ...
"Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends," Jesus of Nazareth told his disciples at the Last Supper, on this night 2000 years ago, the eve of the first Easter. And within a matter of hours he had been put to death - brutally and excruciatingly - nailed to a rough wooden cross and left to hang.
His close friends and acquaintances, watching the betrayal and barbarity, were left bewildered, their hopes shattered and their dreams turned into nightmares. They had seen the life laid down; but where was love and friendship?
They, and the world, were yet to understand that the death of Jesus - God become man - was the supreme act of sacrificial love on the part of the father so that his passionate desire for the restoration of his friendship with his children - by now all mankind - might be realised. They were yet to learn that the consequences of their initial disobedience had been wiped out once and for all.
Jesus had, throughout his life, always shown what it meant to be a true friend. Indeed, he was accused by those who feared and resented his influence of being a friend of no-hopers. He would have loved that. It was the very reason thousands of ordinary, everyday people were so powerfully attracted to him.
His was a personality that radiated a profound love for others. The friendship he offered to all who would accept it was incandescent with patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, good temper, honesty and sincerity. He had, in fact, in his every word and deed, revealed to mankind the unconditional love that is the very nature of a perfect father.
Then came the resurrection, Jesus' triumph over the powers of evil, that mysterious victory which sealed the father's covenant with all his children who would believe from that time forward. And hope and faith and love and joy and peace surged afresh in the hearts of those to whom he had revealed himself, as it has to billions since. The friendship of the father with his children had been eternally restored.
Nineteen hundred years later, the hymnist Joseph Medlicott Scriven wrote:
What a friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear ...
In his arms he'll take and shield thee Thou wilt find a solace there.
Today those loving arms are still wide open - inviting, welcoming. And a father's loving solace is there for the taking.
* garth_george@herald.co.nz
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.
Latest from New Zealand
Member of sacked council runs for mayor: 'There isn’t much I would do differently'
'The city needs to move forward and leave all that behind us.'