Easter is Nonsense

Easter is the epitome of the illogical turn of events.

People don’t just roll away massive unmovable boulders. People don’t escape from inescapable tombs. People don’t cheat death.

And yet one person did. A person unlike any other. A person who claimed to be 100% man, yet 100% God — math that makes no sense.

Today makes no sense.

In an “enlightened,” science-driven world, we need an explanation for everything. We need to prove exactly how many millions of years have passed since the last dinosaur peed on earth. We need to chart every star and galaxy beyond our tiny insignificant rock. We need to understand and analyze why sunsets are so beautiful.

The thing I love about Jesus is that He took all logic and threw it out the freaking window.

It made no sense that He could heal the blind and leprous. No sense that He could turn five loaves into five thousand. That He could raise Lazarus from the dead.

Raise Himself from the dead.

At some point, mustn’t our limited insignificant selves concede the ability to explain everything in the universe? From big bangs to eruptions and earthquakes? To make complete sense of Jesus and who He claimed to be?

If we could make total sense of Jesus…

Would He simply be a Superman sent from another dimension to save us from our natural disasters and criminal overlords?

Would He only be a genie in a lamp we could summon whenever the going got tough, granted with unlimited wishes rather than the standard allotment of three?

Would He merely be a man who in just three years impacted and still impacts more people than the rest of humanity stretching across all of time?

It makes no sense that an innocent man who befriended and healed and loved like no other should suffer and die alongside thieves. Makes no sense that if He was indeed who He claimed to be, that He wouldn’t just fling Himself from that cross and bypass such intolerable torture.

Why on earth would Jesus die for humanity?

Humanity who screamed CRUCIFY HIM, begging the government to trade Him for a murderer.

Humanity who steals from strangers, binges nightly on pornography, sleeps with prostitutes, kills in neighborhoods, gossips and curses and bullies others to the point of suicide.

Humanity who hates the name of Christ, wants nothing to do with Him, lives more devotedly to television and sports and sex and countless other loves.

This is who Jesus died for? You, me?

Easter makes no sense.

And yet it’s the countless paradoxes represented in the meek and mighty, servant and savior, lion and lamb, God-Man of Jesus Christ that set hopeless humanity free.

Our sinful selves put Jesus on a cross; He owed us nothing. But He literally said to hell with logic.

Fittingly, it’s because of the nonsense of Easter that life makes sense.

Thousands of years ago, unrelenting illogical love was nailed to a tree. Then locked within a tomb. But that kind of radical love would be no match for a mere boulder.

Today celebrates the unleashing of this illogical love. For thousands of years it’s roamed free, transforming presents and futures alike, desperate to bring sense to our otherwise hopeless, meaningless lives.

I don’t know what’s more nonsensical: such lavish love, or the refusal of His arms just begging to wrap around you and never let go.