Easter recedes in the rear view mirror, or does it?  It depends on your point of view.

I viewed a youtube video of a worship service, a Good Friday service.  You know, Good Friday is what we call the day when Jesus is forcibly removed from the street and made to stand trial for insurrection before the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate.  Christians gather for a special commemoration of that story on the Friday before Easter.  You have to have an insiders appreciation of the meaning of what happened in order to call it “Good” Friday.  Many met such an ignominious, awful fate under the rule of Rome.  Nothing unusual about Jesus.  He was a disposable colonial subject, a trouble maker dealt with by a standard procedure.  

Not that different than what happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis.  A Black man accused of a crime, is dealt with in public by an agent of governing authority.  The system functioned as intended, to shape public opinion by making an example of a Black man. 

But that is not my main point.  I’d like to say by my backward look at Easter in the 21st century this:   How locked-in-time it is to regard this man of negligible status and paltry means, Jesus.  — to be a deity.  In the world of late antiquity, the Greco-Roman world, belief in all manner of gods and goddesses, satyrs, deified natural forces, and even belief in a deified Caesar were common, widespread beliefs.  I am dumbfounded, viewing the Good Friday worship on youtube, that for many of us time has stood still, and this remains unchanged.   A man, similar to the rest of us, is palpably worshiped as a god…  And make no mistake, that is the point, and nothing else of Christianity, — of Catholic, and of the myriad Protestant forms.

Albert Einstein spoke of time dilation.  That is what happens if you could observe the movement of the hands of a clock placed on a table accelerating past you.  The clock hands move slower, and slower as the velocity of the table becomes faster and faster.  When the table with the clock approaches the speed of light, the hands almost stop moving.  Aging, the passage of time, what we call change is cancelled.  Time dilation is another way of saying it.  It is real, verified by experimentation.

That is what I observed while viewing the youtube of the Good Friday service: transported two thousand years retrograde into the past, and to a time when  “that” is unchanged. Time dilation.

Oh, lest we forget….  Jesus published that we are obligated to consider one another as “brothers and sisters,” negating the status/distinction implied by wealth, or implied by political advantage, or that implied by accident of aristocratic birth, etc. (you’ve heard it before)  The teaching has little to no impact on our failing society of great economic disparity between the well-to-do, the beneficiaries of capitalism and the majority who scrape along, doing what they can for scraps.  And there’s education that is meager, a good education priced out of reach for many working families.  The security of health care is only for those who can afford the sky-high premium.  etc, etc….

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Wishing not to end on a strange negative note, I offer these photos of fond memories of an Easter weekend that recedes into the past.  The buttercups are among the first flowers to blossom in the springtime.  What magnificent iridescence!  Also views of two of our grandchildren.  A highlight of Easter is the hunt for eggs, and the consumption of special treats.  Our youngest grand daughter finding an egg, adds the egg to her collection.  And the older grand child offers a view of his enjoyment of a blue marshmallow peep. 

Happy Easter!