Easter: God's Greatest Comedy

"Jesus is a comic hero. I mean, no offense." my professor is standing at the head of the class, looking slightly worried. She really and truly is afraid of offending someone, unlike the guy last week who made references to "Christian Mythology" and I frowned at him, in that moment forgetting the countless times I've made reference to "Cree mythology" and "Greek mythology" and "Hindu mythology", and then I wasn't sure who to be angry with, me or him or both or whoever created the word 'mythology' and started tacking it on to peoples' belief systems in the first place.

But this is interesting. Jesus is a comic hero.
Last week I had reflected a lot on the idea of book-writing. If, according to our mythology, God created everything, then he must've written all the books too. So why do we go around thinking the Bible is the only book God is trying to communicate with us through? Or maybe that's just me. It's fun to picture it, though. Like, what was God thinking when he got together with Chuck Palahniuk* and wrote Fight Club?

We often split literature into two main genres: the tragic and the comic. Tragedy is not just about people sleeping with their mothers and killing themselves, and comedy is not just a string of jokes about various bodily functions. Anything that begins happily and ends badly is tragic; anything that starts badly and ends well is comedic.

Take the creation myth: now that's a tragedy. It begins with God cheerfully shaping a world out of blank space and putting all sorts of beautiful creatures upon it. Then he fumbles it all and creates humans. A tragedy for God. And for us, what begins as a (presumably) happy marriage between Adam and Eve ends with them being booted out of paradise and sentenced to a lifetime of quarreling, painful births, and the general frustration of being stuck with the same person for all eternity (there weren't many places to find new friends back then). The birth of our ancestors was a great tragedy.

Take the Easter myth: The land lies in ruins. The ancient laws have been completely misconstrued. People in power are using God's word to abuse their lesser beings. There is only one man who can set it all right. He can comfort grieving widows, he has the power to protect adulteresses, and he really knows how to stretch meals. And then he is killed in an extremely brutal fashion. Tragic? But death is only the beginning. Three days later, the man is walking around again and making fun of everyone who had thought he was dead. There it is: Jesus is a comic figure, transcending death at the last minute. Easter: God's greatest comedy.


*You know I spelled his name correctly on the first try? Five points for Amy!