On Easter, when we tell and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, and remember all the different stories about people who saw him in the garden and thought he was a gardener, or in the locked room and thought he was a ghost, or on the road and thought he was a stranger, a question may rise in our minds: is it true? We want to know if something did indeed really happen, and, if so, what exactly was it that happened? Is it true or is it not true? But this is the wrong question, I think.
The better question, in the season of Easter, is what does it mean? And not just what does it mean? but what does Easter mean, for you? What does the resurrection mean, for this world in which we live? Let’s not tie ourselves up in the business of proving that it happened and move on to being changed by Easter and what it means to us.
One of my favorite writers, the Rev. Frederick Buechner, talks about the meaning of Easter in this way: “the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well. And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time whn all was not well but as one who has faced the cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God. In the end, God’s will, not ours, is done. Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life.”
To me, Easter is sort of a wild, visionary day, because in the midst anger, injustice, war, and hatred, we proclaim that Jesus, who was the love of God living among us, lives God’s among us still. All the cruelty and blindness of humanity could not kill God’s love. And if we see this world with more than our eyes, then we will not just see the gardener, the stranger, or a faint imaginings. We will see love. And that world is a different kind of world in which to live.
No comments:
Post a Comment