Many choose Easter to mythicize Jesus

Every Easter season is observed in the popular media by stories that politely reduce Jesus of Nazareth to a mythological character. Arguments range from "He didn't exist" to "He wasn't who his followers thought he was."
Ironically, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists escape this kind of revisionism. Anyone arguing that Mohammed, Abraham, Moses and the Buddha were merely mythological characters would be laughed out of court.
Jesus is vulnerable to the revisionists because he claimed to be the son of God and backed up his claim by conquering death for all time and for all peoples. Easter is the celebration of his success. To avoid confronting the consequences of Easter, many seek safety by arguing that the resurrection never happened.
This Easter season Jesus is the subject of a blockbuster film, "The Da Vinci Code," based on the 40-million-copy fictional bestseller. Author Dan Brown's plot has Jesus and Mary Magdalene as husband and wife, producing a child whose bloodline continues to the present day. Brown's book is fiction, reflecting an obscure legend. Nowhere does Brown argue that his yarn is based on fact. But it's safe to predict that many filmgoers will prefer Brown's account to those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul.
The film will be welcomed as yet another invitation to mythologize Jesus rather than take him seriously.
An essential centerpiece
Easter celebrates an historic event: the conquest of death and the promise of eternal life. It is the essential centerpiece of the Christian faith. "If Christ did not rise, your faith is futile, and your sins have never been forgiven," Paul affirmed. He said of Christians: "Truly, if our hope in Christ were limited to this life only, we should, of all mankind, be the most to be pitied" (1 Cor. 15:17, 19).
In Oscar Wilde's play, "Salome," Herod approves of Jesus' healing of the sick in his kingdom because cures are morale boosters. But when told that Jesus also raises the dead, Herod blusters, "I forbid him to do that. I allow no man to raise the dead" -- realizing that his power to inflict death has been thwarted.
Although Jesus predicted his resurrection, not even his closest followers expected it to happen. And when the risen Christ appeared in public, he was clearly something other than a figment of their imaginations. He spoke, walked and ate with them. There were more than 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrected Christ.
Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham, England, warns Easter preachers this year that the Resurrection does not excuse Christians to focus on eternal life to the exclusion of life on earth. Rather, "Jesus is raised, therefore God's new creation has begun and we have a job to do. ... What we do in the present by way of justice and mercy and grace and liberation ... will not be lost but will be part of the eventual kingdom that God will make."
Rather than fantasize about Jesus' fictional love life this Easter, we might better reflect that "there is no greater love than this -- that a man should lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13).
Scripps Howard