A week before Easter a Sunday School teacher in Georgia asked her class if they understood Easter. One young boy waved his hand and responded , saying, “Well, my dad says it’s opening day for the Braves and Marlins.” With kindness, the teacher responded, “It’s true baseball is opening on Easter, but I was fishing, so to speak, for something else.”
After the class groaned, one girl said, “This is the day we get to wear some new clothes, and go hunt the Easter eggs and look for the Easter Bunny.” “That’s right,” the teacher said, “but there’s even more than that.”
One boy waved his hand in the air, yelling, “I know the answer. After Jesus was crucified, he was buried in a tomb.” “I can hardly believe it,” the teacher thought to herself. “Someone seems to get it.” The boy went on, “And three days later, Jesus rose from the dead, and opened the door of the tomb and stepped out.” “Yes!” the pleased and excited teacher responded, “Go on.” The young boy finished with a flourish, “And if he sees his shadow, we will have six more weeks of bad weather!”
Our laughter perhaps masks a little discomfort. It is not simply that confusing Easter with Ground Hog Day is a tad offensive even if humorous. It is that it is difficult even for Christians to keep Christianity’s claims about Easter straight.
I can’t think of a claim that has more disturbed and confounded the world than the claim that a murdered Jesus was resurrected by the Creator. Soren Kierkegaard once called the stone in front of the tomb of Jesus the “philosopher’s stone” since it gave philosophers something to think about. St. Augustine once said, “It is your own mystery” in reference to the Eucharist and the risen Christ in our midst. In lots of ways, given our difficulty in getting Easter right, “it is our own mystery.”
Modern people don’t much like the notion of a “mystery.” Whenever I tell my academic colleagues that I am something of a mystic, the response I get rather like telling them I am in favor of large corporations and low wages; “what are you, some kind of backwoods bozo?” the facial expressions seem to suggest. Now they usually pass it off with some kind of euphemistic language but the body language says, “A mystic? How did you get tenure?”
What kind of autopsy, literally in the case of the death of Jesus, ought we do of the events of Easter morning? What would we have seen if we had had a high resolution video camera in front of the grave, very early on Easter morning, say about 3 on or so? Suppose Tom Brokaw were on site, giving us a word-by-word account of the goings on.
Would the camera record anything? Would Tom be astounded or disappointed? The camera, on the typical view of many, would see nothing unusual because cameras can’t have faith. Brokaw would find a newsworthy event all right—some would say—nothing discernible happened because one must see with the eyes of faith to “see” the Resurrection.
Interestingly enough the Christian scriptures never play Eyewitness news camera for us. There are no eyewitness accounts of when, where, and how it happened. And Jesus was rather selective in his appearances. A rabbi once observed, “If God was so intent on saving us with Jesus, why didn’t he call all the Jewish leaders after the resurrection so they could see they were wrong. Then there would be no doubt today?” A fair question from the good rabbi.
I ran across this sermon that occurred in a Christian church that I will not identify. The reasoning of the pastor went something like this:
There were no eyewitnesses to the resurrection.… Given that, how are we to know about Easter? How can we ever figure out what really happened, and what it’s supposed to mean? I guess it all comes down to a matter of faith. ... You heard me say that I’m a real skeptic at heart, but you’ve also heard me admit that I learned long ago not to rule anything out, just simply because my feeble mind can’t grasp it. … let me tell you where I come down on this Easter thing. ... For me, the significance of Easter does not depend on the physical resurrection of Jesus.… In fact, a “miracle” such as that one almost negates the power to me. What does resonate with me is that Jesus, who died an excruciating death on the cross, was somehow experienced as very present and alive to his closest friends.
Now I happen to like this passage a lot because it serves up some claims one can engage quickly. I think I could have an engaging argument with this fellow. As a professional academic, I like all sorts of views to be expressed and relish a good discussion with lots of points of views. And I hope we have lots of points of views here about lots of things. But I would gently submit the pastor did not do as well as the young boy in the Sunday School class in getting clear on the Christian understanding of Easter.
Surely part of the reason why Christianity is fading in Europe and to a lesser extent in the U.S. is that Christians have become timid creatures, rather like a golfer whose fear of slicing has gotten the better of him; he has lost his nerve. “Where I come down on this Easter thing,” the pastor wrote. “Easter thing”? That “thing” is the central claim in Christianity. If Christ was not raised from the dead then, as St. Paul remarks, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But notice his words,“there were no eyewitnesses to the resurrection.”
That’s true, but lots of people claimed to see a resurrected Jesus. No
one alive now witnessed my 100-year-old grandmother’s birth, but it is
quite reasonable to infer—since you can see her and she is fully human—that
she was born the usual way. We infer the resurrection of Christ from his many
resurrection appearances.
Something extraordinary happened that morning, something singular, something so remarkable that it generated the most powerful movement the world has ever seen. In a word, the simplest explanation for the advent of the Christian movement, the writing of the New Testament, the birth of the church, a changed empire and eventually world, is that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Not spiritually, not metaphorically, but physically. Jesus was raised literally from the dead.
But Jesus was not merely resuscitated to what he had been before the crucifixion. The body of Jesus was raised and transformed dramatically, the Scriptures insist. But the claim is even larger. One theologian has said, “Christ died, rose, and became a people.” So, we are not simply people who remember a resurrection. We are a resurrection—the Body of Christ.
Many times the New Testament calls the people of God oikonomos tou theou, which can be translated “the House of God.” We use words like parish to denote our household of faith but you should know that in the Greek the word para-oikos, on which the word “parish” is based, means “beyond or outside the household.”
So a parish looks outside of itself to carry the astonishing news of an Easter Resurrection to a skeptical world—and some of those skeptics, we must be candid, are Christian laity and clergy. We work in this parish for those who are homeless, literally and figuratively. That is the parish. And I believe para-oikos is an ongoing resurrection; we are the resurrected Christ in the world. To the serious, skeptical question, “Where has Christ been all these years?” a good part of the Christian answer is “the Church.”
In this past year we have gained new members, had members move away, and had members of our extended family fall asleep in the Lord. We feel these additions and these loses to our para-oikos. That is part of the joy and pain of the human condition. Yet the Easter Christ provides the continuity on which we can count. The radiant, magisterial, beaming Christ of God stands as God’s response to every hurt, every evil, every affront to justice, that the world has seen fit to commit.
This is the resurrection story and promise. The power of it is that we are still in Christian joy even as we ache over the transitions and the continuing hurts and even evil. We are not relatives, yet we are a family. A family shares origins and destinies, embraces the losses and the gains together. We have a common origin and a common destiny. We can sit back and say, “let the years roll, let all these events happen, the Lord is in our midst! Turn on the CNN, say hi to Tom Brokaw, let the news come: this is still the day the Lord has made.”
When we bring the bread and wine as well as money forward on this Easter day it is not simply bread and wine and money. It is us. That is why St. Augustine wrote, “You yourselves are the mystery laid on the table.” We offer ourselves at this altar and Christ at this altar offers himself to the Father who recognizes his children and says, “Ah, my beloved, you are here for me at the altar and I am here for you come what may.”
When we say, “Christ is risen, the Lord is risen indeed,” we are not just reading ancient history, we are singing from our transformed souls, telling the world of our condition—even after all we have been through. “Christ is risen, the Lord is risen indeed!”
Whether our years be many or few; our sorrows many or few, in a remarkable way, these numbers don’t matter as much as we might have thought. We can afford to be rather casual about what the world worries about endlessly. Our resurrected alleluias are promised to see us through all, come what may. So let the songs begin, let the words of liturgy rush down from the hills like mighty winds. Let the never-ending party begin; the banquet is set and our invitations have arrived. Sing alleluia to the Lord!