In these deeply troubling times, we must have hope that the sun will shine again and that before too long we will find our way out of a hell of our own making. The story of Easter provides the perfect material to buoy us up, Christian or not. The message of Easter is a timely and very powerful one since it tells us that Jesus, after a flawed judgment, public humiliation and vilification, extreme torture and being nailed to a cross where he died and then got buried in a tomb, rose up to live again.
Christians believe that Jesus suffered his ordeal to save us. You can regard the story metaphorically if you are not a believer and it loses none of its strength as one of overcoming unimaginable odds. We might descend into very dark places and experience a kind of death or death itself but we can overcome and triumph, and if not we ourselves, then those we love and believe in, for whom we make huge sacrifices. Jesus, the prophet, messiah, son of God, or fictional character is the exemplar.
It is a message so full of hope of redemption and resurrection that Easter is the most celebrated Christian feast and has endured for millennia. The genius of the Easter story, like so many of the stories in the holy books of Western religions - the Torah, the Bible and the Quran, is the complexity and unravelling of the story itself. It has multiple chapters and is the final one about Jesus's time on earth. Along the way, he has experiences that lead him to understand what is wrong with society and the need to fix it. He slowly comes of age and like any young idealist, he dares to challenge the status quo, only to learn that he is mortal and expendable. The cards begin to stack up against him because like in real life, whether BC or now, the good will have their detractors; the bad, their devotees.
The story has an intricate plot and mystery. Where does Jesus go when he disappears for 40 days and nights alone in the wilderness? I have read that, contrary to the Bible's account, he went to India and learned to perform miracles, like walking on water, although he is not credited with walking on hot coals as some Indians do as a religious ritual to show faith in a particular deity. While Jesus was in the wilderness he fasted and prepared for his fate, fighting off temptation and then being ministered by angels, that is according to the scriptures, but one can speculate.
Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, believed in the existence of Jesus but not as the son of God and regarded the Bible as a holy book, along with the Torah. Muslims consider both as previous revelations of God and are foundations of the Islamic faith. According to my Egyptian Arabic lecturer at university in London, the setting of Jesus's time of preparation before his suffering and crucifixion may have influenced Muhammad, so that the Quran was revealed to Muhammad by God while he was also in the wilderness - a cave in Mecca. For both men, the experience of being alone for an extended time in the desert severely tested them, leading to transformation and they retu
