Easter is one of the days when the most experienced pastor
steps into the pulpit with a desert for a mouth. Its gravity is too much. At
the same time, I can handle all of the Easter gimmicks. Most of them center on
new life, after all. I do object to them showing up before Easter, but that is
another cultural clash between the calendar and the church progression of days.
I do have some concern that putting up Easter symbols before Easter serves to
downplay the terrible events of Holy Week. “Jesus no longer belongs to the past
but lives in the present and is projected toward the future; Jesus is the
everlasting "today" of God.” Pope Francis
I do agree with the objection that the Easter symbols lack
the gravity of the season. Easter is not an expected turn of the page, like the
spring. It is a most profoundly anti-natural event. Nature slides into entropy and
death. Tombs are not the wombs of new life. Death comes to all, not new
life. for that reason, I have grown to
cherish the Easter reading of Mark 16:1-8. (As a spiritual exercise, go through
the initial gospel accounts of Easter morning and look at how the narrative
blossoms with details.) “Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole
world by coming forward from the future into the present.” (NT Wright)
I knew a Catholic priest how got into a bit of trouble for
giving a heart welcome to the alumni on Easter. It seems right that this is one
Sunday that draws people to worship. In many churches we read two ancient
affirmations of faith, the Nicene Creed (325) and the Apostles’ Creed (a more
flexible document whose present form is from the 800s perhaps). That creed
speaks of the resurrection of the body. In other words the tradition about the
empty tomb and later appearance accounts emphasize that it is Jesus who is
raised. Paul speaks of a spiritual body (I Cor. 15) to try to speak of the
transformed post-resurrection. It does not speak the way we do about a soul, a
spiritual element, leaving the body, sometimes castigated as a mere shell, to
find its proper place. (It is intriguing that those who pound on a bodily view
of resurrection seem so cavalier about its meaning for everyone else).
The appearance accounts do give a sense of a transformed
body, especially John. They all point to the continuing identity of one
recognized as Jesus of Nazareth. I struggle with this and think of resurrection
for all as the maintenance of one’s lived identity, the one that is bound up
body and soul, mind and hear together. Crossan has a new book on resurrection
and point strongly to a neglected facet of the faith-Easter points toward a
general. Here’s another spiritual exercise. If you can’t get the book from a
library, go to Google images and look at harrowing of hell. There you will find
Jesus, the Victor leading people out of the grasp of death’s domain. In some,
he has Adam by the hand, and in at least one, he grasps the hand of Eve. In
some Eastern Orthodox depictions, Jesus is carrying the sick into the
afterlife. Usually, Jesus has a cross. After all, the Healing One is the
Crucified One, is the Risen One.
If Easter candy can remind us of the sweet savor of life,
even with all of its troubles, then I can live with its weak symbolism. If
bunnies help us with the fecundity and viridity of God’s creation, then I am
fine. I would merely ask that we take some time to reflect on the enormity of
the message of this day.
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