What Easter means this year

The trees are bursting into bloom, but the air still carries a chill. Spring has not yet arrived, although its calendar start date passed by over a week ago.

It's Holy Week and the stores are full of pastel Easter finery and baskets of candy.  It's incongruous.  I haven't felt it as sharply before this year.  As a minister, I've been able to bounce between the hectic pace of worship services remembering the final dark moments of Jesus' life and then return home to celebrate with family over ham and chocolate eggs.  The sadness always held space for the faith of Easter's resurrection.

It's different for me this year.

Within a span of a couple of weeks, my husband and I learned that two people dear to us received terminal cancer diagnoses.  It seems so unfair that two young people full of life, faith, and joy have been struck with such grief; and all who love them bear the pain as well.  We watch helplessly as they walk a journey that, without a miraculous intervention, will end in death.  I am angry and sad, and yet it is not truly about me.  It is not my cross to bear, except to walk the journey with them, to pray, to hope, to support, and to grieve.

I pray for a miracle.  I pray with angry words and tears to a God who I believe hears but remains frustratingly silent.  I try to have faith...I believe!
(Help my unbelief.)

There can be no Easter without Good Friday, though, and sometimes we can only find our way to hope by journeying through what seems hopeless.  The very word "compassion" means "suffering with", and we are with others in their times of pain and grief just as we are with Christ in his suffering and death.  But then we are with him, too, as he is raised to new life.

May it be so.

How many times have I shared my story of the darkest times of my life?  There were times when I wandered through the wilderness, lost, fearing that God had abandoned me.  And yet those were the times that I can look back on as the transitions when my faith was strengthened, when God rescued me as I finally found the faith to let go and trust.

I can only see those times as good in retrospect, after coming through on the other side of the valley of the shadow of death, resurrected.  When I was in the valley I couldn't hope.  I kept walking in the darkness because I knew no other way.  In the same way, we journey through a Holy Week that takes us through betrayal, fear, persecution, abandonment, pain, and cruel death.  But we know that isn't the end of the story.  Though the terrified and confused disciples couldn't foresee it, even though they had been promised it, new life was just a few days away.

 "The life was the light of the world.  

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it." (John 1:4-5)

Good Friday only becomes "good" when we have seen the light and light of Easter, when we have encountered the risen Christ.  And haven't I experienced that resurrection time and time again?  Why is it so hard to believe?  But this is why we journey through this cycle again and again.  It all comes down to death and resurrection; this is the substance of our faith.

May we believe in the light that overcomes the darkness.  May we trust in the life that is stronger than death.  May we live in the love that casts out all fear.  May we shout in defiance,

"Death has been swallowed up in victory.  Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."  

(1 Corinthians 15:54-55, 57)

May it be so.

Why I Believe in the Resurrection

As I plan for Easter, resurrection has been on my mind, particularly after reading NPR's piece on Bart Ehrman's new book, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee.  Ehrman is a historian who has a religious background but is now agnostic.  He is interested in the parts of religion that can be evaluated from a historical perspective.  He discredits resurrection, along with other miracles, as they cannot by proven.  He is not alone.  Along with many scholars, some progressive Christians question the validity of the resurrection story.  But there is something powerful in this gospel that keeps us hanging on, as it is the essential crux of our faith.  What is the point of Jesus' death if we can't look beyond it to the victory of "O Death, where is thy sting?"  And how do we make sense of the many deaths in our own lives without holding on to the hope of something beyond it?  After all, we see resurrection all the time, in the changing of seasons and the life cycle of a butterfly.  We see it in the way life reorganizes itself, and in the dawn that always follows the darkness.  Diana Butler Bass tells a story of visiting a liberal Episcopal church one Easter and hearing a parishoner ask the bishop, “Bishop Corrigan, do you believe in the resurrection?”, with the assumption being that surely he could not.  The bishop responded firmly and without pause, “Yes, I believe in the resurrection. I’ve seen it too many times not to.”

Don't we witness resurrection every day?

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22-23

We all long for resurrection:

-from the winter chill and darkness that still sneak in
-from the fear of change and the fear that things will remain the same
-from our relentless work ethic that pushes us to exhaustion; that makes busyness a status symbol and rest a tool of the lazy
-from our reluctance to accept accountability and our ease at pointing blame
-from the critics that overpower the small voice telling us that we are beloved, that we are enough.

But resurrection is possible.

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

John 11:38–45

Many believed, but not all.  They were all witnesses to a something that defied explanation.  Some were moved, just as we are when we:

-see our connectedness through shared stories
-understand that hope is greater than fear, and love wins out over hate
-take a difficult step and the earth holds steady beneath us
-embrace our humanity, in all its strengths and weaknesses
-believe there is more than we can ever understand, and find that freeing

I believe in the resurrection.  I've seen it too many times not to.