'Tis the Season

This time of year, it is impossible not to notice all the crucifixes that adorn the front lawns of the many christian churches.  The celebration of Jesus' gruesome execution largely serves to render his life and his message as inconsequential.   These seasonal monuments, scattered throughout my community and juxtaposed against the backdrop of the institutions that reinforce these paradigms serve mostly to sadden me not for his loss, but for ours.

Surely he endured the manner of his death to send a message, but was the message sent the same as the one received?  The message of his life (as best we can tell from what biased remnants of record we have of it) was to distill the totality of religious law into two simple commandments:  Love God and Love Each Other.  How can this not be considered screaming for us to transcend definition and move toward meaning on our way toward realization?  Many christians frame his resurrection as proof of his divinity.  This is far too simplistic an approach.  He took his divinity (and all of ours) for granted and his resurrection was a metaphor – one we missed – for a paradigm shift away from dualistic, definition-based dogmatic law to a realized community of love (agape).

Given a “do-over”, maybe he would have foregone a memorable death as a means to communicate his message.  Maybe he already has taken a mulligan or two and we missed those, too.