Easter Sunday: The Resurrection of the Lord

From Death to Life

The older I get, the less concerned I am about the historical facts of my faith.  Don't get me wrong, if I could know some historical fact regarding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, I'd jump at the opportunity; it's more a matter of accepting the inherent limitations of living a life of faith regarding the type of knowledge faith reveals.  I see so many folks trading their faith for a type of intellectual dishonesty that makes bizarre claims in an attempt to find an empirical backing to what they claim to already believe.  Harold Camping comes to mind, as do the like-minded who, based on this man's "mathematical" calculations, predicted the end of the world and the Parousia on a specific date.  The time came and went.  Nothing.  Another date was set; it seems his calculations were a bit off the first time.  The time came and went.  Nothing.  Finally, Camping admitted he got the whole thing wrong and is no longer going to make any further predictions.  Humiliated, alone, pilloried in the press, Harold Camping takes his first step towards resurrection: crucifixion. 

There is no other way to resurrection than through crucifixion.  This is the substance of my faith when I proclaim each Sunday "He was crucified, died and buried.  On the third day, he rose again in accordance with the scriptures."

Crucifixion forces our hand breaks our plans for an orderly and carefully controlled life and puts us at the feet of the cross, or on it.  We will likely never have empirical, historical evidence of Jesus’ bodily resurrection, but one thing is eminently probable: Jesus was killed on the cross by Roman and religious authorities who were threatened by the instability of challenged metaphors: Jesus said he was a king and Jesus said he was the Messiah.  The only possible way Jesus could walk to the cross was a faith born not in what would come after, but in the sustaining relationship of love he had with the Father.  Jesus' fear, and feeling of dejection in murmuring the 22nd Psalm "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" ends with the 31st Psalm: "Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit." 

The Resurrection is what happened after.  The disciples witnessed it according to the accounts of Scripture.  But what my faith finds its foundation upon are the resurrections I've experienced in others and in myself that have their origin in The Resurrection. This yoking of death with birth is an incredibly rich source of imaginative literature and art. Easter is the "difficult birth" of a faith borne on the cross of a two-thousand-year-old man who claimed to be a king and Messiah; but the millions of new lives hewn from the roughness of the Cross is witness to a deeper and more profound truth than an historical event, and the Resurrection has lived long after Jesus walked the earth.

Good Friday of the Lord's Passion

Faith: FAIL. God Punished.

Good Friday is when we recall that even Jesus' closest disciples fled into the night and sought refuge away from the Roman and Temple authorities for fear that they, too would be arrested; faith: FAIL. Today is a day we move deeply into meditating on our need to tell God, as Jesus, hanging on the cross to pull off another miracle, save yourself and save us! No? We’re out of here! I’m not going to end up like that!!

Peter’s famous denial three times echoing Jesus’ earlier query, also three times: “Do you love me, Peter?” Peter responded then: “You know that I love you!” Now, fearful of his life, he replies “I know nothing of this man you refer to!” This is the disciple the Church was founded on. Peter, the so-called “Rock” by Jesus, crumbles into sand at the crucifixion.

The cross is a spectacle of human folly, failure, and faithlessness. Yet, despite this, as T.S. Eliot wrote: “We call this Friday good.”

Its goodness lies in God’s total submission of his love for humanity in the person of Jesus. It is the goodness inherent when we willingly suffer for another person, perhaps a stranger, or even an enemy. Today, we contemplate how we might respond when being asked to suffer for another, or whether or not suffering sends us scurrying into the night, renouncing God.

“How could God allow such suffering ?” many ask and imply this is the cardinal weakness of Christianity. Perhaps the better question is “Why would God be willing to enter into our world of suffering?” The mightiness of God isn’t a lifeboat dropping out of the sky for survivors floating in a tempest; it is God dropping into the water next to us to show us the way to dry land.

God with us, “Emmanuel”, means God suffering for and with us. God does not want to “save” us as much as he wants to be with us. We want to be “saved”, just as Jesus wanted to escape suffering; its only natural. No one suggests that to follow Jesus we should seek out suffering, but rather following Jesus we will enter the suffering of a suffering world with a resounding affirmation: “Yes” to being with the poor and hopeless, the excluded, imprisoned, tortured, and sick. “Yes” to the suffering of the world, and all its messiness and dysfunction. The cross’ affirmation is entering into the heart of the suffering world and walking with those who suffer to find God calling us into his arms stretched out onto the cross, now embracing us in all of our horror and pain, failure, and humiliation. Today we come to the cross to be embraced by Jesus’ crucifixion in order to be resurrected with the Christ.

Posted originally in March, 2013