Happy Easter! Have A Marshmallow Peep!

Sorry, Jesus. It's going to be a Secular Easter this year. Ashes on the forehead to start things off. No lenten observances. No 'All Glory, Laud, and Honor' on Palm Sunday. No Holy Thursday stripping of the Altar. No Easter Vigil services. (And the Easter Vigil is my favorite. It's like, church as Graduate School Seminar. It's the longest service in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. The endless scripture readings! The church in darkness slowly filling with light! The confirmations! The music! ...a feast for the senses!)

What's up with this church-going guy? You may well ask.

Y'know, blame Mel Gibson. And his movie.

Christ's Passion--the story in the gospels, not the movie--has actually loomed large for me my whole life. It's all there. Life as absurd, meaningless struggle, in which weakness (and meekness) is overcome by the crushing machinations of inhuman fate, ending in death. And Easter is God saying, 'No. That's not the way it has to be. Love matters. Love is stronger than death. Love is the reason to live.'

But this year, it all seems to have been... well, I was gonna say 'tainted,' but that doesn't quite cut it. More like, dyed blood-red by one man's obsessional attempt to spiritualize his sado-masochistic fantasies.

Now, I find a lot that's spiritual in sado-masochism. And I certainly view it in the Christian context as well. But I think the difference is that I acknowledge and embrace my sado-masochism. I know that's the 'me' part that I lift up to God to be made Holy. I think Mel sees his sado-masochism as being God in and of itself.

If'n I were to go and plop down $8 to see the Passion, I think I'd watch it for the sado-masochistic content. In fact, I know I would. Even if Vin Diesel wasn't cast in the lead role. But it's not about Jesus. It's not about spectacle. It's not like watching 'Braveheart,' where you come away thinking, 'Gosh! That guy was really brave! I really hate those English guys!' The Christian experience calls on you to walk the Via Dolorosa along with Jesus. To become him, as you carry your cross, rejected, condemned, and alone, all the way up the hill to Calvary, there to die with Christ. If we want to rise with Christ, we need to die with Christ. And that--that dying and rising--is beyond the scope of any human concept or construct, including S/M and certainly including a movie for chrissakes, to encompass.

It's like turning the Passover Seder into a show on the Food Network. Yes, it's a meal. But that's not the point.

Nope. This year, I'm gonna surprise my Dad with an easter basket (I'll be up late tonight dying the eggs) and then I'll fix us a nice dinner.

But hope y'all have a Happy Easter.

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