His people

It is Easter.

Weather is never certain. Roads are generally full. Chocolate is everywhere and the holiday promises usually more than it can deliver.

But today the reason behind Easter is less familiar to us than ever before. The very fact that it still inspires a national holiday speaks more of tradition than familiarity, and the distance New Zealand culture has travelled from its Christian roots in the last 50 years or so.

Easter, however, has shaped the very foundations of our culture no matter how much distance there is between where it came from and where it sits today. How so?

Photo: Getty Images

Three things we still value highly and would probably all claim as an important part of today’s culture illustrate this well.

Our investment in and ongoing development of a massive series of institutions devoted to justice, health and education.

Our investment in the assumption that political or institutional might doesn’t imply right.

Our recognition that weakness and disability is as much a part of our humanity as ability and strength.

The Christian festival of Easter celebrates the unjust torture and death of an innocent man following a completely bogus trial and conviction, culminating in his rising from the dead and the creation of the Church, the name given to the community of his followers.

Roman Law did not help save Jesus from Roman military expediency and rule. Nor did the Jewish Law save Jesus from political expediency.

Most of the Christian societies which arose afterwards were and are still greatly committed to the development of a judicial system which endows every individual with inalienable rights before the state.

It is no coincidence that the law and its institutions have been developed most significantly in the Western world with our strong Christian heritage.

A similar argument could be made for the importance of education and health agencies.

Secondly, Jesus died alone claiming a revelation from God which was offensive to his own people and an irritant to the political power of the day, Rome.

He died not because he broke the law but because he raised a better vision of it.

He died because he was one person against two societies, Jew and Gentile.

The church has fought to establish in so many areas the understanding that might doesn’t mean right and that it is wrong to muzzle those with an opposite view and especially of an opposite view to the majority.

So committed are we to this view that we invented the discipline of scientific investigation, the cornerstone of which is the ability of anyone to question accepted truth.

We hear much about free speech these days but little about the man whose free speaking led to his murder by both his state and his society.

Finally, we now value highly those whose bodies and minds are, in some way, disabled.

We work to support them into productive lives, to celebrate them in sports and in the arts. We see them as the epitome, in some sense, of the human spirit as they work to overcome their own particular struggles.

These are people who lead the way in bravery, courage and the joy of life and we know we should do everything we can to enable that. The early church saw this in its leader’s love of the least, the forgotten, the lost and the lonely.

Jesus deliberately valued these people.

He encouraged them, spoke to them, and healed them.

In no small way he died for them since much of the offence he caused was because of the sort of people he chose to spend time with.

And this is now a part of who we are as a people.

Whether we know it or not, accept it or not, we are called to be Easter people.

When we value justice, or education or health, when we question the accepted version of what’s right and when we see humanity glorified in those who are disabled, we are his children.

We are then the people Jesus hoped we might become through his death and resurrection.