Easter

Christmas is relatively easy to explain to a baby: when mean people came from another country to take away the land of people who had lived there for thousands of years, the people who lived on the land dreamed of someone who would save them from the bad people.  One night, they thought that this great revolutionary leader had been born, so everyone celebrated and gave presents to the baby who was going to free them from the Romans.

Yesterday, as Helena and I rode to the playground, we saw children processing through Santa Fe, carrying a cross toward the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  "Girls and boys," she said.  "Doing what?"  And if Christmas is easy to explain, Easter is a whole lot harder.  Oppression and Salvation can be explained through "mean people" and "freedom", concepts that a baby understands.  But the idea that this great leader failed in liberating Israel, that he never planned on making a violent revolution like Simon (the Zealot) and Judas (Iscariot, or Sicarius; the Zealots and the Sicarii were the two most violent (almost terroristic) groups in Judea at the time) had wanted, that he was convicted and nailed onto a cross...  I had no hope of explaining any of these things to Helena Iara.  I tried, of course, but I could tell that she didn't understand.

Even harder to explain, for a baby who doesn't know what death means, is that Jesus died and was resurrected, and that the "failure" of his movement actually gave it more power, and turned it into a universal movement for liberation, and not just a limited anti-colonial struggle of Israelites against the Romans.  Let alone the way that the crucifixion of Jesus leads to a critique of the idea of sacrifice and the incarnation of God-as-Holy spirit in the community struggling for justice and freedom.

As we rode the bike through downtown, Helena seemed to have turned me off, but her final words as we approached the park seemed to suggest that she understood at least something of Easter.  "Green," she said.  "Playground.  Play!"

It's spring, and time to play in the green grass with friends.  That's not a bad summary of the point of the whole Christian project.