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The Christian story starts off briskly in St. Matthew's account with a place and a date: "When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King." St. Luke ... pins the thing down to a piece of government finance. God, he says, was made man in the year when Caesar Augustus was taking a census.... About thirty-three years later (we are informed) God was executed, for being a political nuisance....
Possibly we might prefer not to take this tale too seriously -- there are disquieting points about it. Here we had a man of Divine character walking and talking among us -- and what did we find to do with Him? ....We bribed one of His friends to hand Him over quietly to the police, and we tried Him on a rather vague charge of creating a disturbance, and had Him publicly flogged and hanged on the common gallows....
So there we have the outline of the official story -- the tale of the time when God was the underdog and got beaten, when He submitted to the conditions He had laid down, and became a man like the men He had made, and the men He had made broke Him and killed Him. This is the dogma we find so dull -- this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and hero.
It is the dogma that is the drama -- not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death -- but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death.
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Of course the story doesn't end there....
A blessed Easter to you all!
Quotes excerpted from "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged" and "The Dogma is the Drama", by Dorothy L. Sayers
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