Easter.  The morning itself is straight forward enough.  A soft light suffuses through the thin grey cloud cover.  The green of spring under velvet light, light without shadow, no sharp edges, strikes me as as it should be.  Things are not as they should be.  Shadows abound, there’s blood, and one must take unceasing care if one is not to be hurt.

We are in the depths of a plague condition; the social distancing continues; only essential businesses operate; self quarantine at home is the safest and most responsible form of action.  It is unclear how long this ought to continue, or whether the Federal government has the will any longer or the institutional resiliency to “hold the course” until the spread of the virus is halted, and further infections can be identified by testing, and sick persons treated.  It is “all up in the air.”  It is surreal to recognize that the future course of my society hangs in the balance.  There is nothing to be done which will trigger a short cut, the proverbial “get out of jail free” card.

Easter morning naturally brings to mind the churches, the locale of customary Easter Sunday worship services.  I attended those services throughout my growing-up years, into young adulthood.  Christmas and Easter are high holy days in the mind of all evangelical Christians.  They are approached with exalted expectation.  From a clergy point of view, this is the service, that the Faithful anticipate all year, have continued to pay for.  The church has bills like any other institution, never mind the circumlocution “the Lord will provide,” the parishioner keeps the lights on.  So, I fully understand the reluctance of some Evangelicals to forego services on account of the virus this time around.  (Not unlike asking Macys to take a holiday the day after Thanksgiving.)

I confess I felt satisfaction, some schadenfreude that the churches would remain closed on this morning, my dark joke. Truth be told, Jesus is, and has always been dead, and he is not a god.  And that is the good news!  It is good news because there is no point in worshiping Jesus, or any other quasi divine figure who promises to become “our savior” if we will pledge allegiance to him.  It means that we must take Jesus words, and his demeanor, his style of encounter with people, with life — seriously, or not.  If seriously then we learn to forgive ourselves, for the boneheaded mistakes, for the decisions hurtful to ourselves and to others made because we just didn’t know any better, we were ignorant.  Then we work at forgiving others for what they did to us for the same reasons.  It means that we hold out a hand to our scared and confused neighbors.  Yeah, like you and I they pretend, — but are similarly scared and confused.

Getting back to Jesus, he was killed by the Romans, because they thought he was a trouble maker, and they needed to “sacrifice” someone to pacify a restive crowd that was on the cusp of becoming a mob.  The Romans were the archetype MFP* empire.  They used terror as a standard method for extracting “concessions” from the peoples, the societies that came under their rule.  Crucifixion was inhumane, horrific and conducted in public.  Force, killing is the means by which empires retain their subjects, and that remains to this day.  The United States does not maintain 800 military bases in 70 countries without reason.  The garrisons ensure that trade policy advantageous to the dominant power is observed (enforced).  The profits derived from global trade is equivalent to the taxes that flowed to Rome, collected from the colonies.

So Jesus died, a not untypical example of “justice,” law and order dispensed by a great power.  Jesus’ message:  such justice is flawed, untenable, and that we are capable of something better, a “new” way of understanding ourselves, and of conducting our public affairs.  While being sentenced to die, Jesus even reached out to Pilate, the Roman procurator with the option of a different way of life.  No one is disqualified from the offer.

The offer of a better way continues in the soft light of this Easter morning.  There is no need to worship Jesus, (or anyone else).

Let us be human.

To properly conclude on a triumphant note, here is this anthem by Blood, Sweat, and Tears, lyrics written by Laura Nyro when she was 16.

And When I Die
(originally by Laura Nyro)

I’m not scared of dying
And I, don’t really care
If it’s peace you find in dying
Well then, let the time be near

If it’s peace you find in dying
Well then dying time is near
Just bundle up my coffin
‘Cause it’s cold way down there
I hear that it’s
Cold way down there, yeah
Crazy cold, way down there

And when I die, and when I’m gone
There’ll be, one child born
In this world
To carry on, to carry on

Now troubles are many
They’re as
Deep as a well
I can swear there ain’t no Heaven
But I pray there ain’t no hell
Swear there ain’t no Heaven
And I’ll pray there ain’t no hell
But I’ll never know by livin’
Only my dyin’ will tell, yes only my
Dyin’ will tell, oh yeah
Only my dyin’ will tell

And when I die, and when I’m gone
There’ll be, one child born, in this world
To carry on, to carry on
Yeah yeah

Give me my freedom
For as long as I be
All I ask of livin’
Is to have no chains on me
All I ask of livin’
Is to have no chains on me
And all I ask of dyin’ is to
Go natrually, only wanna
Go naturally
Here I go!
Hey hey
Here come the Devil
Right behind
Look out children, here he come
Here he come, heyyy

Don’t wanna go by the Devil
Don’t wanna go by the demon
Don’t wanna go by Satan
Don’t wann die uneasy
Just let me go
Naturally

And when I die, and when I’m dead
Dead and gone
There’ll be
One child born, in our world
To carry on, to carry on

*Mother-Fucker Power empire