Metal Easter
As it’s my tradition at Halloween to listen to a Christian heavy metal song called “All Hallow’s Eve,” so it is at Easter that I commemorate the good news with this, from Barnabas:
The music is bad but at least the lyrics are an abomination:
I killed Jesus Christ
Yes I did it’s true
Oh I killed Jesus Christ
And you were with me too
My personal liturgy isn’t meant to be sacrilegious, though. For me its nostalgic; I really loved that song when I was 14, and anyway I think the Gospel, offensive in any time signature, is truly an amazing story. For God, having decided not to flood the world again, needs to save creation from our own evil — our sin this time not hating the truth but systematizing it — so he makes the smallest action possible. He becomes one of us, one whom we — recognizing his power for an actual justice — need to kill. In that death some of us would see horror and in that horror be baptized.
I don’t think my summary captures the story nearly as well as Cool Hand Luke (and if you want further evidence of our need for grace, just read the comments to this trailer).
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