On Resurrection
wherein I come out as Christian-ish
“Anyone can be sentimental about the nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer. If you don’t believe in Easter,” Owen Meany said, “Don’t kid yourself—Don’t call yourself a Christian.”
—from A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
Today is Easter Sunday. Or “Resurrection Sunday,” if you grew up in a fundamentalist church that believed language had magical powers to “open doors to Satan,” as I did.
We weren’t allowed to call it “Easter,” because Easter is a pagan term. (Yeah, I don’t get it either.)
Growing up in the rural South, Resurrection Sunday was equal parts religious celebration and child beauty pageant. Even families with very little means, like mine, found a way to get new dresses for their little girls, and usually for the mothers, too.
The church ladies judged each other first on the children's Resurrection Sunday regalia, so that was the priority. My boring straight hair would spend the night before in curlers, and I'd wake up many times from the pain. That part I didn't mind, because I hated my limp, boring straight hair and felt jealous of the lucky girls with curly hair. (I related so well to Ramona Quimby, from the children's book series, who was jealous of her friend Susan's curly hair).
On Resurrection Sunday morning, the church parking lot would be much more full than usual, and the unusually-dressed-up, freshly-scrubbed-boys, who normally wore clean jeans and sneakers with collared shirts, would be in suits. The girls would be in their new dresses. Little girls normally weren’t allowed to shout and be rowdy, but Resurrection Sunday was an exception. We shouted the greeting and response to each other with gusto, waving and, in my case, shaking my head so the fake curls would bounce.
“He is risen!”
“He is risen indeed.”
Wherein I Come Out As Christian-ish
In college, I had a friend who was Jewish by heritage but had never practiced the religion in a serious way. Her parents had her bat mitzvah’d (the adulthood rite that Jewish children undergo at age 13) and that was it. I asked her why her family bothered with the bat mitzvah if their religion was never that important in their lives.
She said that her parents felt like they had to bar mitzvah her brothers and bat mitzvah her “or else Hitler won.” But they didn’t keep a Kosher home and it didn’t mean very much to them in general. Her parents said that if she wanted to make Judaism more of a part of her life, they would respect that and support her. She didn’t. She had the party for her bat mitzvah and then she was done. She didn’t even use the university’s policies to miss class on the High Holy Days.
Then she told me about a book—I can’t remember the title, but I vaguely remember it was a book about writing—where someone said that Jews like her weren’t really Jews. They were Jew-ish.
That has stuck with me. As our society gets more and more appallingly deranged, as deviance of all types, particularly sexual, becomes the norm—we desperately need the cultural aspects of Christianity. We need people who for whatever reason cannot or do not believe the stories in the Bible to be historical—people who neither know nor care if Jesus was a real person and recognize that death is permanent— to adopt Christian ethics and morals again. To become, essentially, Christian-ish.
Owen Meany was right. (See the quote at the start of this essay, and read the novel if you haven’t—it’s brilliant.) The resurrection is the main event. If you don’t believe in Easter, don’t call yourself a Christian.
I don’t believe in the resurrection and I will never call myself a Christian.
I am a Buddhist atheist and I am Christian-ish.
Why I Will Never Fall for 2 + 2 = 5
My most memorable and favorite Resurrection Sunday story is going to be appalling to some of you, which makes me hesitate to tell it. So please, nobody feel the need to tweet or email and tell me how sorry you are, ok? I’m over it and it’s funny. I laugh almost every time I remember it, and have for years now.
The year that I was seven, our pastor was trying something new—keeping the kids in “Big Church” for some sermons, instead of splitting us off into “Children’s Church.” In between praise and worship and starting his Resurrection Sunday sermon, he called all the children up front, sat on the edge of the stage, and told us the story of the resurrection, in general terms. Then he invited questions.
A certain budding mathematician who was trying very hard to earn adult approval raised her hand.
“Pastor! Pastor! You know what? We do our days wrong!”
“What do you mean, Holly?”
“You said Jesus rose again on the THIRD day, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Then He couldn’ta been crucified on Friday! From Friday to Sunday is only TWO days. He hadta been crucified on *Thursday*. We should do Good *Thursday* instead of Good Friday!”
The pastor’s face froze in his attempt at a kindly smile.
The congregation was deathly silent.
The pastor said, in a strangled-seeming voice, “No, Holly, Jesus died on *Friday*. Now we’re going to go on—”
I thought that he must surely have just not heard me right. I already had hearing problems and wasn’t able to modulate my voice very well, so thinking that he didn’t understand me, I repeated my analysis, louder. For good measure, I counted on my fingers. “Thursday to Friday is one day, Friday to Saturday is two days, Saturday to Sunday is three days!! See, Pastor? Jesus died on THURSDAY!”
To the adults in the room, “louder” read as “obnoxiously, stridently, rebelliously demanding to be heard.”
I beamed, waiting for my praise and approval at having discovered something very important, like the time I noticed the wrong “there” being used in a book.
The adults in the room—namely my parents and the children’s pastor—responded the way that rural Southern adults who think a child has been obnoxious, strident, and rebellious in church, on Resurrection Sunday, and furthermore humiliated them by blaspheming the Bible and the pastor, both, respond to such things.
The next day, in the school that our church sponsored, I sat gingerly on my bruised backside, squirming in the in-school suspension desk.
They parked these desks just outside the pastor’s office where he could glare and threaten a session with “the rod of correction” if he caught you not working. I finished my schoolwork by 10am and spent the rest of the day writing lines:
I will respect my elders and never contradict them.
I will respect my elders and never contradict them.
I will respect my elders and never contradict them.
I probably wrote that sentence 20,000 times during my week of punishment.
And when I was done, on Friday afternoon, the pastor called me into his office for the end-of-suspension “Have you learned your lesson?” chat. He was glad he hadn’t had to spank me and that I had written my lines neatly, but he hoped I had learned not to disrespect him or the Bible.
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Then he asked me, “When did Jesus die?”
“Friday.”
“When was He resurrected?”
“Sunday.”
“You can go.”
Ever since that incident, each and every time I’ve opened a calendar, I’ve counted the days between Friday and Sunday, reflected that for the story to make sense either Jesus died on Thursday or was resurrected on Monday, and laughed.
Love, Beauty, and Humor are Real Resurrection
Resurrection is the source of hope in Christian mythology. In my own life, most of my hope goes into love, beauty, and humor. These forces are powerful enough to overcome despair, which means that they are needed now more than ever, and will continue to get more important as the world gets worse.
My dear friend Kate sent me an Easter basket a few days ago, filled with lovely grown-up things like spring towels for my kitchen and a mug with purple flowers that perfectly matches my decor.
These are the tools for staying sane in our crazy-making world: find your people, love them, let them love you. Look for any opportunity to share beauty and humor. Let these things make you strong. Things are getting worse and we need all the strong people we can find.
Whether you call it Easter, Resurrection Sunday, or just April 17 — I hope you enjoy it!