EASTER 2009
EASTER 2009
Christians all over the world rejoice. “The Tomb is Empty” “He has arisen.” What the disciples and his followers then as now could not grasp, what in their human understanding they struggled to comprehend, the cataclysmic and mysterious entry of Almighty God into history, an event occurring in their presence. It would take appearances at an early morning breakfast, a supper in Emmaus, and even placing their hands in His wounds to start the process of belief, a process than is ongoing, even now. He was crucified, He arose, and He will come again in glory. We confess publicly what we believe, what we want to believe, and sometimes, when we are not at our best but honest, what we hope some day to believe.
For, we live in a time demanding certainty, a “beyond a doubt” kind of proof, requiring overwhelming evidence before our suffocating skepticism can be removed. If we’re being truthful, that kind of verity doesn’t happen often, if ever. So, we live in a surreal world of suspended disbelief: operating our lives by rules and laws we opine as “proven” or beyond discussion,” but privately remaining skeptical, perhaps with age, cynical. I understand these early disciples difficulties with belief just as I cast a dubious eye at the opposite: the easy Christian triumphalism of our times, a distorted shape of our faith that seems to deny both the difficult lives of the saints and the reality of God’s good creation infected by sin, a world that as I write is suffused with unspeakable evil, if only we have eyes to see.
But on Easter we the followers of Christ affirm and confess that this narrative, God’s narrative, starting with His creation and passing through Golgotha does not end as tragedy. We affirm with Polycarp, St. Francis, Mother Theresa, and the uncounted martyrs whose blood soaks every corner of the earth that evil exists and the master of this world marches with seeming abandon; but, with the open tomb, God’s love is greater. Just as the disciples of old needed Christ’s grace, the embodied Trinity, to mitigate their disbelief, we, especially those of us in the west, need our denial blinders removed and our mythical safety breached. We need a reality testing for an evil that is far more pervasive than our minor peccadilloes—this story isn’t just about us. We need to see the enormity of brokenness for which Christ was crucified.
But on Easter we affirm that contrary to all human reason, against all man’s history, in defiance of mankind’s just deserts, all creation has been ransomed. We calculate with incomplete understanding the price paid, Christ carrying our sin to the place of no hope, and can barely comprehend the love. But beyond all of my hope, beyond all of my reason, the tomb is empty—He Lives.
The narrative of Christ and all humanity must ultimately deal with the reality of the cross and the empty tomb. He was born; He was crucified; He rose, and He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. This surely is no tragedy; God is in process of reclaiming His good creation—He is alive.