Sunday March 23, 2008
Easter doesn\’t make sense, but it matters
It\’s Easter morning. And once again, people who have not been to church since Christmas will sit in uncomfortable pews, listening to a message that contradicts their own experience but that somehow they need to hear, each year, as predictably as a mortgage payment coming due.
Amazing, isn\’t it? The resurrection defies everything we take for granted. Not one person in those pews has had a loved one return to life after burial.
People who lean towards the liberal end of the theological spectrum – I include myself – tend to explain the resurrection symbolically.
It doesn\’t really matter whether Jesus literally rose from his tomb on Easter morning, we say. The essential fact is that something happened to Jesus\’ disciples. Something changed them from bumbling cowards to courageous evangelists.
Instead of huddling behind locked doors, dreaming of the good old days, they went out to change the world. Peter and John even ventured into the Temple itself to lecture the priests about what they had done to Jesus.
That\’s what matters, we liberals claim. Not the physical details.
But… but…
Coming back
The belief that spread like a grassfire through the countries of the Mediterranean basin was not a philosophical concept, or a symbolic gesture, or a wishful feeling of a continuing presence after death. It was the conviction that a real person had come back from the other side.
Greek culture believed that death meant crossing the River Styx to the other side, an exile from which there could be no return.
As late as 1675, British author John Bunyan echoed a similar vision. In Pilgrim\’s Progress, Mr. Valiant-for-Truth waded into the river of death, “and the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.”
If the resurrection is merely symbolic, all of us have known it. Alcoholics “hit bottom” before they bounce back towards sobriety. When we grieve the loss of a child, a parent, a spouse, we cannot imagine life without them – but somehow, life returns.
But none of us have ever experienced a physical resurrection.
Oh, we\’ve longed for it. After our son died, 25 years ago, I knew he was dead. I held his body in my arms. I felt it cooling, stiffening. I scattered the ashes that had once been his flesh and bones into the ocean from a rowboat.
But still, driving up the street to our home, I couldn\’t break the habit of checking the sidewalk, to see if a long lanky blonde kid in a bright blue windbreaker could use a ride for the final few blocks.
Whenever our back door opened, I expected to hear his voice call out, “\’Ullo, \’ullo?”
But it never did.
A real presence
So I cannot help being moved by the story of Mary, in the garden. She had been to the tomb. The body was gone. She believed grave robbers must have stolen it. Blinded by her tears, she sees a person.
“Tell me,” she pleads, “tell me where you have taken him, so that I can go to him one last time!”
And a familiar voice says, “Mary, Mary…”
Anyone who has ever lost a loved one will know exactly how she would have felt.
About this fact, the Bible is unequivocal. It was not just Jesus\’ spirit – whatever that is – that rose from the tomb on Easter morning. It was his human body. A body that spoke, and walked, and ate bread. A body with unhealed wounds.
The biblical narrative challenges our sentimental assumptions that the charred victim of a house fire, the maimed carcass from a car accident, the pain-riddled cancer patient, will be miraculously restored to perfect health on the other side.
Jesus wasn\’t.
But apparently his wounds didn\’t matter any more.
Reader identification
Communications theory stresses that readers pay attention only when they can identify themselves with the message. They must be able to say, “Hey, that\’s me!”
In some of my past books, I have suggested that the crucifixion offered that identification. In a world where the mighty fist of Rome could crush anyone, anytime, everyone could see themselves in the story of a person who had done nothing wrong but got punished anyway.
The injustice still resonates in the lives of, say, South American peasants and American gays.
It\’s a comforting theory. But it won\’t stand scrutinyr.
The earliest writings about the resurrection are not the gospels, although they are the story that we customarily read at Easter. The earliest writings we have are Paul\’s letters.
“If Christ is not risen,” Paul told his tiny colony of Christians in Corinth, “then our faith is totally in vain.”
It was not the experience that people had had that captured their imaginations. It was the experience that they had not had.
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In the universal reality of death – often brutal, often early, often needless – the yearning for a different outcome triumphed over practical experience.
And so Paul could write (paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in The Message), “Who\’s got the last word now, hey, Death? Death, who\’s afraid of you now?”
My head tells me that a physical resurrection is nonsense. It doesn\’t happen. Death is final. Period.
My heart says, “If only…”
Perhaps that\’s why I go to church on Easter morning. Not to hear something new – I\’ve heard the familiar Easter story at least 70 times.
No, I go because I need to be reminded that reality is not limited to either/or choices. Both/and is also possible. Rational analysis and emotional yearning are both legitimate ways of responding.
As my granddaughter loves to tell me, “Grandpa, you don\’t know everything!”
Easter reminds me not to get complacent about what I think I know, and what I believe.
As Hamlet told his friend, “There are more things between heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Happy Easter. May it challenge your understanding too.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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