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Thoughts on Easter From a Non-Christian
The story that changed the world
My mother raised me Roman Catholic, but as Steve Earle said, somewhere along the way I strayed and I never looked back again. So I’m not religious, at least not in any structured way.
Still, I find the Easter story deeply moving, because it’s a human story and not a God story.
Yeshua-Jesus on his cross, torn, broken, and slowly suffocating to death, the adoring crowds and hallelujahs gone, wondering if he had, after all, been abandoned.
His mother waiting below weeping, wishing she could have changed this fate and knowing she couldn’t have.
The disciples watching soldiers drive nails into the hands and feet of their master, and waiting in vain for an army of angels to save him. Then hiding in despair and terror, expecting at any moment to hear men in armor coming up the stairs to take them to their own doom.
The thief on the cross beside him, extending a final kindness to the dying messiah, and receiving, perhaps, eternal life in return.
Even Pontius Pilate and the Roman soldiers who just had a job to do, but wondering if they had done the right thing. Was this man possibly more than just another Jewish rabble-rouser?
