living as easter people

Easter Sunday

Readings: ACTS 10:34A, 37-43; COL 3:1-4 or I COR 5:6B-8; JN 20:1-9

I want to start today’s reflection with a heartfelt, “Thank you!” to all of you who have been on this journey with me.  It’s been an honor to be able to do this for Spiritus, and I fully acknowledge that there are so many people who could have written fantastic reflections that would have brought us to very different spiritual places.  And those would have been just amazing!  I hope what I have offered was somehow helpful to your spiritual journey, and I am grateful to all of you who commented, re-posted or offered some feedback somehow.  Truly, thank you.

I also want to say thanks to Davis Craig who made it possible to link the blog to the Spiritus Christi website and provided much needed tech support along the way.  I appreciate you, Davis.

And now onto the readings.

Today is the day we wait for all year long. It is the day of wild cards and unpredictable events that set the unexpected in motion.  It is the day we recognize that death is never the final word.

The gospel gives us the classic empty tomb reading from John.  I do not say “resurrection” because, thus far in the story, no one really knows what happened to Jesus.  They just know that he’s not in the tomb.

In this reading, and in many other circles, Mary Magdala is considered the “apostle to the apostles” because she is the one who ventured forth in the dark to the tomb (at great personal risk) and then brought the news back to the apostles.  None of Jesus’ other close friends had her courage.  In many ways, this story undermines so much of the patriarchy found in church circles because it places women in the most important roles (there’s even more testimony in Luke’s gospel about the importance of women in the company of Jesus and in early church leadership).

 Once the apostles hear from Mary about what happened, John and Peter run to the tomb to check things out.  Yet they still do not understand the fullness of what is happening.

For me there are some very profound lessons in this Easter event that I keep returning to each season.

First, what happened to Jesus is a mystery.  All we know from the historical record is that Jesus was gone from the tomb and then was experienced anew by the people closest to him.  Parker Palmer, the great Quaker theologian echoes this when he says that, “Every religious tradition is rooted in mysteries I don’t pretend to understand, including claims about what happens after we die. But this I know for sure: as long as we’re alive, choosing resurrection is always worth the risk.” 

Second, resurrection is not an individual phenomenon.  It’s a communal reality.  It’s not something only happening to Jesus.  It is something we all participate in.  His death and resurrection are meant to be participatory.  His pattern will be our pattern.  We too must die to our selves, our agendas, our preferences, and our plans in order that something else can emerge.  Jesus didn’t do it for us.  He showed us the way.

Resurrection is also about God sending a message to humanity about death not having the final word over creation.  It’s about second chances, rebirth and new life.  It’s about God making a way out of no way.  Theological writer, Walter Kunneth says that, “We may say without exaggeration: at the tomb in Jerusalem the ultimate choice will be made between two totally different world-views.”  A resurrection world-view alters how we move through the world, what we focus on and how we do what we do.

Third, resurrection is actually a common phenomenon.  It happens everywhere and all the time because everything “dies” and becomes something else.  Spring shows us this every year.  We also know that matter is neither created nor destroyed, so we, ultimately, know that death leads to another life.  In our lives and relationships we all keep experiencing little deaths and little resurrections.  It’s a deep paradigm that we live into time and time again – not just at Easter.

Finally, when we live with the possibility of resurrection, it takes us into uncharted territory.  Jesus’ resurrection was a wild card that no one could have predicted, and it set in motion a reality that no one could have predicted.  This gives me great hope because it says that even when we might not be able to envision a change, one might be in the works.  I have always loved Arundhati Roy’s beautiful words and connect them to our Easter experience, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Jesuit priest John Dear says that resurrection people “have nothing to do with death. We do not support the forces of death. We do not bring death to anyone. We resist militarism, seek to dismantle weapons, and try to transform our culture of death. We are people of nonviolence, forgiveness, compassion and peace. We see the coming of Christ’s reign of life and resurrection where there is no more death, no more war, no more violence, no more tears.”  This is our mandate.

Julia Esquivel, an exiled poet from Guatemala, titled one of her books, “Threatened by Resurrection.”  I love this idea.  What gets threatened by resurrection?  Hopelessness.  Fear.  Discouragement.  Anxiety.  Death.  All of these get threatened by resurrection because we know that they will not necessarily prevail.  We may not always have a guarantee as to what life will look like, but we know that life will win.  Esquivel goes on to say, “Join us in this vigil and you will know what it is to dream! Then you will know how marvelous it is to live threatened with Resurrection!”

Today we are invited to keep embracing and choosing resurrection in our own lives and in the lives of others.  May we live as Easter people!

(PS – I will be writing occasional reflections throughout the year, so please feel free to stay with this blog as we move throughout the year)