Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead is one of the defining events of Christian faith. The tragedy of Good Friday – humanity taken into God in the person of Jesus Christ, God’s revelation of perfect humanity, executed on the Cross by the Roman state under pressure from his religious enemies – the tragedy of Good Friday is reversed and divine power overcomes death with life. Christ is risen from the dead!
The women, some of Jesus’ most faithful followers, make the discovery; the tomb is empty and they begin to see and hear (but not yet touch) the resurrected Christ. The marks of suffering are still there; continuity with the past is still there. But death has been transformed into life. The resurrected body is not Jesus coming out of hiding after someone else died on the Cross (as some came to claim) nor a zombie-like revived corpse, nor an insubstantial ghost or poltergeist but a new kind of body: a divinely and spiritually resurrected body; a body beyond our human experience, prefiguring the resurrection bodies of our deaths.
Death has been overcome, transformed, indeed, even given meaning. Therefore, Christ’s resurrection is a summing up, a culmination, of all that has gone before. God has taken all of humanity into the divine with the revelation of his divine and human son, Jesus Christ. Part of being human is dying. And so Jesus, in his full humanity, takes on death; he suffers a cruel, unjust and excruciating death on the Cross, what we would call today torture by the state, egged on by corrupt religious authorities not afraid to use the state for their own ends. But God triumphs over earthly powers; divine life triumphs over earthly death, and Christ is risen.
So here is one result of Easter morning: No death, no tragedy, no sorrow (past, present, or future) is beyond the loving power of God. Nothing is beyond God’s capacity to bring life out of death. Therefore, we set our face forward to life, not backward to death. Like Jesus, we all bear the marks of death: perhaps a dearly-loved one who died much too young, perhaps a deeply-regretted mistake of the past, perhaps a disappointing or failed relationship, perhaps ill-health or ourselves’ moving closer and closer to death. But the message of Easter, Christ’s Resurrection is this: “You are still alive! You are being brought back to life! Even in the midst of death is life! Christ is risen! You are risen!” And so we sing and ring our bells, we greet one another with good cheer, we put on our best clothes, we shell out too much money for the Easter dinner lamb, we celebrate with friends and bring in and welcome the stranger. Christ is risen! We are risen!
Thus, the three days from Maundy Thursday evening, though Good Friday to Easter morning (sometimes called the Triduum) are a unity, not to be picked apart and treated alone. One of the dangers of the liturgical year is the temptation to confine certain themes and emotions to certain times of the year and not to others. It is not the case that in Lent and on Good Friday we are sad and on Easter Sunday and in Eastertide we are happy, end of story.
Rather, Christ’s death and resurrection, the Paschal or Easter mystery, are present with us every day, indeed, in every hour and minute of our lives. We are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection; the Eucharist is a re-presenting of Christ’s death and resurrection. All of the sacraments, including marriage, are an experience in death and resurrection, In our daily lives, happiness and joy are intermingled constantly with sorrow and disappointment. Death can come any moment. But the message of Easter, “Christ is risen!”, means that in the end, life triumphs over death, and though there will be tears, in the end resurrected life triumphs and “all tears will be wiped away”.
Resurrection is a gift of God; it is God’s action that raises Jesus from death. But our receptivity to life and resurrection, rather than letting ourselves sink into death, this receptivity itself a grace of God, helps resurrection spread. If I act like I am being crucified on a cross every day, I will not be a very pleasant person; but if I let resurrection take over, always looking forward to the future hope, joyful resurrection will spread.
This immediacy, this living of death and resurrection every day, extends to other themes of the Christian year. In the Anglican hierarchy of holy days, Easter comes first, then Christmas, then Pentecost (or Whitsunday). They were the days the faithful were expected to receive communion. If we understand Easter as the overarching Pascal mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, rebirth and resurrection in and from suffering become a daily reality in our lives, not just celebrated on Easter Sunday. And so it is with the other great holy days of the church, and they are all interconnected.
In the John Donne poem about Good Friday that I read on Good Friday, I was struck by the invocation of the Incarnation, that is, of the Annunciation and Christmas, toward the end of the poem:
If on these things [that is, Christ’s death on Good Friday] I durst not look, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was God’s partner here, and furnish’d thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom’d us?
Donne’s reference to Mary reminds us that the Cross would not have made sense had Mary not contributed her humanity to the divine in bearing Jesus as her son.
In the Incarnation, God is perfectly present to us in the humanity of Jesus, born of Mary. That presence – being present to one another as God was perfectly present to us in Jesus Christ – is also enjoined upon us every day, not just at Christmas. Being present to one another means listening, encouraging, not giving each other lectures, celebrating, trusting, and growing together – all in Christ’s death and resurrection.
Likewise, Pentecost. The Holy Spirit has not be hiding in all this salvation history, suddenly to pop out of the box fifty days after Easter. The Holy Spirit, who St. Augustine describes as the perfect mutual love of Jesus and his Father, has been present all along, infusing the story, from creation to the prophets to the Annunciation, Jesus’s baptism, Jesus ministry, his death and his resurrection. On the first Easter night, in John’s Gospel, the resurrected Christ sends out the disciples with Holy Spirit and the power of forgiveness. Out of Resurrection come mission, lead and directed by Holy Spirit.
And so our lives are infused daily with the Cross, Resurrection, Presence and the Holy Spirit, leading us into all truth. That should be an attractive mix which should draw others to ourselves. But, alas, there is still sin in the world and we sometimes fail: we snap, we are grumpy, we like to be right, we like to be the centre of attention, we are reluctant to share and be generous.
Yet this day addresses all these sins and many more: “Christ is risen, we are risen!” – our sins, even our day-to-day ones (which are sometimes more difficult than the big ones), are forgiven, we are given the power and gift to overcome our failings, we are called to forgiveness, reconciliation and new friendships, we are given the power to forgive and forget and move forward in love. Hope is an offspring of resurrection.
Finally, Christ’s Resurrection is cosmic. As human flesh is renewed, so is all of nature; and there is a call for Christians to work towards social and political institutions that reflect the resurrection values of God’s rule. As we are sent out to work for justice and peace – a just social and political order, fair treatment of those on the margins, peace around the world – we shall experience death, suffering and violence; yet in the end resurrection and new life will triumph. We may not have much opportunity to work directly on the international stage: but at least we are called to support resurrection, peace, justice and loving presence in our political decisions, in our charitable giving, in our local advocacy and in our friendly and helpful relations with “the other” who is present among us.
May God strengthen us in our commitment to work for resurrection for those who live in violence and poverty, for those why have only known suffering, displacement and death in their lives. May we take up (or continue to bear) the Cross, may we be genuinely present to others, may we be open to the Holy Spirit, that Resurrection may spread.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
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