Video: What South Park Teaches Us About Easter

by Mike Friesen

What I love about this clip is that it exposes the sentimentality that we as Christians have been caught up in over our holidays. For us, these holidays have more to do with consumerism and consumption than actually reflecting and being transformed by the event itself.

If we don’t learn what Easter is really about then we will fail to become what the Church was meant to be, a people set apart. It is the job of the Church to be aware of the world, and to remember who they are, so we can in fact celebrate what it really is. Not reduce it to a petty nothingness. Most people I meet these days, at least my age, do not know the implications of the cross or the resurrection.

If we, like Stan, fail to question our social practices, and the implications of this event, we will lose a great personal and social transformation.

“The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you’re now invited to belong to it.”-N.T Wright

“The risen Jesus is the final revelation of the heart of God-a God who teaches love rather than hate, forgiveness rather than blame, nonviolence rather than violence.”-Richard Rohr

“What happened on that day became , was, and remained the center around which everything else moves. For everything lasts its time, but the love of God- which was at work and was expressed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead- lasts forever. Because this event took place, there is no reason to despair, and even when we read the newspaper with all its confusing and frightening news, there is ever reason to hope.”-Karl Barth

“Yet his end became his true beginning. His public death was followed by Easter appearances…and with these appearances the new beginning was inaugurated…The disciples who had once fled then returned to Jerusalem and proclaimed publicly the raising of Christ from the dead and the open horizon of his sovereignty. This about-turn from disappointment to certainty and from deadly fear to a faith which is not afraid of death is the real proof of the reality of Christ’s resurrection…

’The empty tomb’ itself is not a proof of Christ’s resurrection, for it could have been empty for a different reason, if the body had been removed by other people. It is the proclamation of the resurrection by the disciples in Jerusalem which is proof of the empty tomb…With Christ’s resurrection from the catastrophe of Golgotha the new beginning has already been made, a beginning which will never again pass away because it issues from the victory over transience.”-Jurgen Moltmann

Amazing thoughts by Miroslav Volf on the cross:

http://vimeo.com/37749858

Read More on Mike’s Blog ‘Christianity for the Rest of Us.’