Easter 2024
I do not want to think about Easter. I’m tired, drinking chamomile tea in a Turkish coffee shop. A woman with two grand-daughters walks through the door, festively. She dragged her teal-Easter-dressed and cat-eared grand-daughters through the coffee shop, each with a fuzzy Easter basket, proclaiming “Happy Easter!” to the people working on their laptops. One of the girls offered me a chocolate. I took it. “Thank you!”
Today, at the church I work at, the sermon drew attention to the truncated ending of the Gospel of Mark (considered by scholars to be the earliest written gospel), where the witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection made no proclamation. They stood silently in fear, refusing to tell anyone. No proclamation according to Mark (who, by assigning proclamation of Jesus’ status as the Son of Man or Messiah to demons and Pilate, while Jesus constantly hushes his disciples about that title, seems to be averse to that identity for Jesus...). So I imagine how paradoxical it is that the event of Jesus’ resurrection transformed from a silent refusal into a proclaiming text. And then, I imagine (hypothetically, imperfect) Christianity, like Judaism, as a faith with no evangelism. No chocolates from no children.