The Easter Monster
If you could forget thousands of years of religious imagery and tradition for a moment, what would you think if I told you a story of a charismatic cult leader who told his followers to eat his body and drink his blood? What if this blood-cult grew in such numbers they gained status as a legitimate religion, ritually drank "blood," and wrote hymns about being washed in blood, consuming blood, and loving the precious blood of their leader? Wouldn't you assume you were hearing a horror story? Wouldn't your imagination drift, at least a little bit, into vampire territory?
It is pretty disturbing when we extract the story from its fancy church clothes. This is not just because our post-modern sensibilities are offended by the grotesque imagination; the same statement would have carried the same shock when it was first spoken, maybe even more so! According to John's gospel, this is the point where Jesus goes too far, and many disciples start leaving the movement. Jesus wasn't afraid of people's horror; he even seemed to invite it. It might be the very doorway to connecting with him.
Jesus had a friend named Thomas; they were friends before he became famous as a healer. So devoted was Thom that when Jesus started making some noise and getting death threats from the conservatives and liberals of the day, Thom was the first to sign up for the advance team! When Jesus needs to go to Bethany (because his friend Lazarus died), a town where there is a known threat to Jesus' life, Thom says, "ok, let's all go die together then!" Thom profoundly loves Jesus. When he witnesses the horror of Jesus' public torture and murder, it breaks his heart, and he separates from the rest of the crew. Days after, he hears the terrifying story that the friend he loves has returned from the dead and wants to see him.
Again, try and shake the sunday-school picture of this in your mind. What have hundreds of years of storytelling taught us about dead people who come back from the dead? Is that ever a happy thing? Are the people in those stories ever able to resume their lives together as usual? Of course not! This troupe is as old as a genie in a lamp! We wish for those we lost at the time we lost them. We want the friend we lost, the lover who died, or the child that ran away back! We want an unbroken heart! We want an undisturbed life without crisis! Instead, What comes back in the place of their long-lost loves? Not a monster, but a monster-adjacent being. A zombie! Zombies are not alive again; they are merely undead. They carry the form of humanity without the essence of humanity, the counterfeit of life. Zombies take lives to try and fill an insatiable pit of gore. They want to eat brains.
Monsters are different than zombies. Monsters come bearing a message. They may be frightening to see. They may offend our concepts of "natural" and "human," but they come with signs and promises of life. Thom discovered this in his encounter with his old/new friend, a monster-Jesus.
According to Monsterologist and Theologian Dr. Heather Macumber, Monsters are any creature in the sacred Jewish and Christian texts that cross boundaries in their bodies. Humans with wings, Lions with horns, lambs with human faces, and definitely murdered rabbis that walk around, talking, and cooking breakfast for their fishing buddies qualifies as a monster.
On the evening of the encounter, Thom is confronted with the crisis of mortality and the complications of life after death. Jesus appears to him with the horror of resurrection. A human body that retains the wounds of trauma and suffering and still lives. Jesus invites Thomas into an experience with his body (both bodies). "Put your fingers into the holes in my hands. Put your hand into the wound on my side" This body carries the signs of life—God's eternal vulnerability and human-ness. The body is the message. The horrible, beautiful message!
Strangely, the invitation Thomas gets is the opposite of what Mary, another close friend of Jesus, gets after The Resurrection. "Don't touch me, Mary," Jesus tells her right after she tries to embrace him out of joy and relief. Even though it would bring her immense comfort, he stops her. He is not the same Jesus she knew anymore. He has come back from the dead, and everything is different. Her teacher, her rabbi, is gone, and now she is the one who must carry the mantle of leadership. He gives her the responsibility to take the message to her brothers about the resurrected Christ. She will announce the resurrection and the healing of the world, and as history has shown time and time again when a woman's body carries the message, she is also made a monster.
Perhaps there is a little room in your Easter celebration for the monstrous this year. You could ask yourself the question, what horrifying messenger has Christ sent you this year? What misunderstood friend is your fear trying to bring you to? Is it fear about your body? Your mind? Your heart? What's actually inside that ugly-looking egg? Are you ready for how a resurrection really feels?