Easter - isn't it wonderful? Cute little bunnies & chicks, lots of very expensive, environmentally & nutritionally ruinous chocolate and the DIY superstores' biggest retail weekend of the year! More fancy cooking, more pressure to spend money we haven't got on things we don't need...

Actually, it's far, far more than that. It's a dark & desperate tale of betrayal & agonising death, of hopeless despair and bewilderment; then of disbelief, dawning joy, the return of hope and the promise of eternal life. More drama, political and supernatural goings-on than the longest blockbusting fantasy novel, all packed into a few short weeks and still relevant 2000 years after the event.

To pick up the tale that begins with the Christmas story towards it's inevitable, much-prophesied end:-

•   Jesus, Son of God and long-promised Saviour of Mankind, has been touring the countryside gaining more and more fairweather followers as he slowly reveals his true identity and purpose to the eager crowds. But the people of Israel are desperate for a leader to help them struggle out from under the jackboot of Roman oppression and he seems to many to be the one they're waiting for. He tries to tell his closest companions that his mission is considerably bigger and longer-term than they can conceive of, but they only hear what they want to hear.
•   His ability to perform miraculous healings and feed thousands of people when there only seemed to be enough food for a few (something I often envy!) allied to his unerring political instinct has rung warning bells with both the Jewish ruling elite and the Roman conquerors, always alert for signs of unrest and troublemakers. He enters Jerusalem on a wave of hysterical public adoration.
•   Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus' inner circle of trusted confidants, suddenly realises that he isn't talking about leading an uprising to free the Jews from the Romans, but about freeing the whole of mankind from oppression forever. In his opinion, Jesus has well and truly lost the plot, and the rot sets in. Judas goes running to the Jewish religious authorities and their Roman allies. After agreeing what it's worth to them (30 pieces of silver, enough to buy himself a plot of land) he leads them to Jesus when he's relaxing after a private meal with his friends, prepared to swear that Jesus has hinted that he is The Chosen One (blasphemy!), that others have called him King of the Jews (political dynamite!) and that he has encouraged rebellion, intolerable to the Romans.
•   The High Priests, unable to come up with a convincing charge, stage a ghastly mockery of a trial, insulting and eventually assaulting him to get him to speak; whatever he says will be enough to condemn him in their eyes. He is marched off to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, who is not impressed by the seriousness of the charges and tries hard to persuade them to release him. When this fails Pilate has one last cliffhanging chance to save him; a Roman custom allows the public to decide between a free pardon for Jesus or for Barabbas, a popular thug. Losing interest in a man whose supernatural powers seem to have deserted him and who isn't even defending himself, the fickle mob decide they'd rather have Barabbas, the charismatic wide boy. Pilate symbolically washes his hands to show that he believes they have made the wrong choice, but is forced to send Jesus to be flogged, ritually humiliated & put to death by crucifixion, a very barbaric, slow and painful end.
•   He lasted 6 hours on the cross, enduring the savage taunts of his disillusioned former followers. As his sacrificial agony ended in death under a pall of darkness that fell across the land, the earth itself shook and cracked the walls of the Temple...
•   Stunned into despair and disbelief, his inner circle of followers slowly regroups and discover that Joseph of Arimethea, a wealthy merchant & sympathiser, has found the courage to ask Pilate for his body and has had it decently prepared & installed in a rock tomb. But when they start to trickle to the tomb to grieve, they find the huge rock that should seal it has been pushed away; there is no body inside, just the wrappings. One of his women followers, who stayed with him throughout his ordeal on the cross and saw him die, begs the gardener to "tell me where you have put Him" before realising through her tears that it is He Himself she is talking to, alive and miraculously whole once more, though somehow still too tenuously attached to the world and full of supernatural power to be touched just then...

  And there you have the Easter story; part of the most gripping, gut-wrenching epic rollercoaster of a story ever told, and it's true! Find out more in a church near you, or visit Re Jesus...

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