**40 - Pregnant Pause**

Fun fact: in Catholicism, despite having a fairly bumpy start to life on Earth, Adam and Eve are venerated as saints. St. Adam and Eve’s day does indeed fall on Christmas Eve. It seems appropriate that Christmas Day falls in the divide between the first sinners, who are also the first saints, and St Steven’s day on the 26th, since he was the first Christian martyr, so holds claim to being the first saint to go marching in. That also makes December 25th the logical point for that proverbial union, Adam and Steve.

Today is Easter Eve, another day sandwiched between significant dates of holiness and life beyond death, but Easter Eve has a confusing identity like the ‘ beige week’ between Christmas and New Year, when nobody ever knows what to do. Good Friday is good but miserable. It’s actually full of hope, but the disciples and other mourners didn’t know that, and Christians tend to hold all the hope and gladness for tomorrow, as if holding in a joyful trump, or declining to give birth to an Easter Egg until it matches the calendar.

What does that make Easter Saturday? It’s not a second Good Friday, as nothing notorious happened on it. It’s not taken as a compromise between grim-dark Friday of death and sunny Sunday of life eternal, a time of perfectly ambivalent moods - though it sometimes feels that way.

So what was the first Easter Eve about? What was Jesus actually doing but being dead? It was a sabbath, and we know from Genesis God takes that as a day of rest, but I don’t think he needed a rest-cure. Jesus notably did work on Sabbath days, curing the sick, which courted quite a bit of controversy. But not this one. Maybe everyone else needed to keep the sabbath before being surprised with a resurrection which causes a lot of running around and such. This may also have been Jesus’ first proper day- off since his ministry began. Then again, I’m not sure how restful death can be.

What does the Bible have to say? There’s a Christian belief in the Harrowing of Hell, which is primarily drawn from Peter’s first epistle 3 and 4

“He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, ...", And later "For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does”

That is Jesus went down to Hell, Hades or Gehenna and preached to everyone who predeceased him, and led them to escape and spiritual resurrection - or, any who would willingly follow him. That’s assumed to have happened on Easter Saturday, while he was down in the depths of death. I always reckon it’s more likely to have been on the Friday, in the short hours between Jesus’ death and sunset. After all, he told the thief crucified beside him that he would be with him ‘today in Paradise’. That gives him a death around 3pm, according to Matthew 15, and good time to descend to the dead, go, preach, lead everyone from St Adam and St Eve to St Thief to paradise, just in time for sabbath and a decent rest and a slap up meal and a celebration that lasts all day before a Sunday resurrection. I am aware this takes some imaginative liberties with scripture that would probably see me punched in the face if I said them at the theological Council of Nicaea, but I hardly think it’s my biggest reach of the season.

Another idea came up in a conversation about this with Ava - that the time in the tomb was a pregnancy. Jesus’ first arrival on earth was just as miraculous as his resurrection, and came with a pregnancy. Why not another incubation before rebirth. Jesus is no Baby Jesus - a very passive being, but I can see him emerging from an egg, of a metaphorical sort. Easter eggs are very much a relic of this time of year as a pagan festival of new life - the shared roots of Easter and oestrogen are things I find particularly pleasing, so why not see not-yet-risen Jesus as egg Jesus. It has a pleasing vibe.

To transgender people, ‘egg’ has another meaning. One is an egg before coming out. Before openly, or even really inwardly being your newer, truer self. This is a sidelong perspective I admit, but Easter as a joyous coming out of the egg. Jesus emerges. He is changed, physically, wonderfully, but his heart and his spirit are very much the same. His friends are initially doubtful, some barely recognise him, on the road to Emmaus — but discovering that their friend, their Lord, their beloved is alive and himself, and more these things than ever, it is a glorious time. Jesus is out, and Jesus is about. He still goes by Jesus, cos you can’t have a deadname when you’ve conquered death.

Today is a day in the chrysalis between the old life and the new. Jesus was not a ghost or an apparition - he proved this by eating fish. He was transformed, as we may all be - both now, by the renewing of our minds, and come the resurrection when we arise again, ourselves. Colossians tells us he was ‘the firstborn of the dead’. He is out of his egg, and we will be released from ours. ‘Suddenly, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. The perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. Then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting?!’

So says 1 Corinthians 15. It’s a way off, but it’s something to look forward to, I think.

And that’s the end of Ben-Them for this year, and maybe forever. Tomorrow is Easter Day, and Easter ain’t Lent. Far from it! Eat an egg, be an egg, burst forth in glorious day. Love God and love one another, protect trans kids, be generous even to neighbours you do not like, and I’ll see you again, dear friends, whether we’re alive or we’re double-alive in the bosom of Christ. Amen! Amen.