Divine Comedy

Comedy (definition): a drama in which the central motif is the triumph over adversity, leading to a successful conclusion. In the literary sense, Easter is comedy: Easter is a drama in which the central motif is the triumph over adversity, triumph over crucifixion, over humiliation and death, leading to a successful conclusion, leading to resurrection, leading to the death of death. However, since the earliest days of the Church, Easter has been understood as more than a comedy...Easter has also been regarded as a joke. A supreme joke. The best joke in all the world and the last and best laugh ever. For us, these two millennia later it's not easy to get the joke because we know the ending. There's no surprise. So in an effort to recover the surprise of Easter, I am invite you now to travel with me back in time, to the beginning of what we now call the Common Era, to the time of the Roman Empire to a land called Palestine: there was a gruesome, if inconsequential, incident of capital punishment. The Roman Empire executed a peasant with an attitude...a peasant who refused to pledge allegiance to the Empire, refused to regard Caesar as a god. From Rome's perspective, this peasant's death was inconsequential and matter of fact. It was routine. There are really no records to speak of--other than the hand-me down stories told by his little band of followers--there is no record that in killing Jesus of Nazareth Rome had wrestled down a mighty insurrection.