Easter as the Triumph of God

 

Easter             Sunday                                                                                               April 4, 2010

Text: 1 Cor. 15:19-26                                                              The Rev. Dr. Ross M. Wright

 

Last week, the blogosphere was all abuzz over an article by a Roman Catholic writer, Elizabeth Scalia, entitled: “Today, On Good Friday, Here’s Why I Remain Catholic.”[1]   In it, she addresses the question “How do you maintain your faith in light of news stories that bring to light the dark places that exist within your church?”  She writes:  

 

I remain within, and love, the Catholic Church because it is a church that has lived and wrestled within the mystery of the shadow lands ever since an innocent man was arrested, sentenced and crucified, while the keeper of “the keys” denied him, and his first priests ran away . . . the truth that dark and light, innocence and guilt, justice  and injustice all share a kinship, one that waves back and forth like wind-stirred wheat in a field, churning toward something – as yet – unknowable. 

 

This dual reality is present everywhere, she continues: in our country, our government, and in our own families.  And at this point, Ms. Scalia reveals that she is the victim of abuse by her father, whom she both loves and fears.  This dual reality is also present in each of us.  

 

She can remain Catholic, she says, because the cross of Jesus is God’s acknowledgement of human suffering.  “There, on the wood of the cross, we encounter Jesus, son of Mary, who knows shame, betrayal, abandonment, scorn, jeering, ridicule, unimaginable pain and sorrow, and submitted to them.”  The Lord endures all this as a way of saying: “I know what you are feeling.  We are in this together.”  And so, she concludes, with arms outstretched, she attends the Holy Week services.  Listening for a word from outside time, “I make my way forward, in bright hope.”

 

When I read Ms. Scalia’s article, I was moved yet left with a nagging sense that something is missing here.  Precisely what is missing became clear to me as I read the barrage of vehement protests to her piece.  One blogger responded acidly that: “it is arrogant to suggest that the rest of us should have to live in a world where the leader of your cult is above the law. . . .  simply so that Catholics can continue to trot forward ‘arms outstretched, listening for the Word . . . in bright hope’ . . . .  There’s a fine line between hope and denial.”

 

Another blogger accuses her of “looking at the world through rose-colored glasses,” of trying to move forward with blinders on with the “hope that . . . what?  Hope that abuse like this will miraculously stop by itself?  Or hope that we will al simply forget about it?”

 

What is missing in her message, I believe, is a vision of hope which includes the triumph of God over evil; a vision of a new, healed humanity; a vision that is as powerful as the abuse is devastating.  This robust Christian hope includes the promise of vindication – God’s final and ultimate vindication over evil.  To be fair, she writes on Good Friday, not Easter.  But the New Testament never presents the cross in isolation from the resurrection.  It is only in the light of the resurrection that the cross is good news. 

 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead witnesses to the victory of God, the triumph of God over the principalities and powers of darkness.  Without this vision of God’s triumph, Ms. Scalia’s hope runs the risk of sounding hollow to her critics.  On the cross, God says more than: “We are in this together.”  The crucifixion is God’s protest against death and against everyone who plays into death’s hands and threatens life.  And the resurrection expresses God’s passion for life.[2] 

 

Listen to how the message of resurrection hope rings out in Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians:

 

If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.  For since death came through man, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a man; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. 

 

Paul uses two images here to impress upon us how we will share with Jesus in the triumph of the resurrection. 

 

The first is the image of the first-fruits: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.”  Think about the beginning of the harvest in late summer.  Or, if you plant tomatoes in your garden, think of the first tomatoes that appear on the vine.  They are a sign that more are coming – lot’s more.  Jesus’ resurrection body is the first of a crop which will include us.  For we will have resurrection bodies “like unto his glorious body.” 

 

The second image is that of Jesus as the new Adam: “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”  Easter morning begins the recreation of the entire human race – a fresh start.  One of the bloggers who responded to Ms. Scalia complains that hope will not restore the lives of the people who were abused.  Well, it all depends on what kind of hope you’re talking about.  The resurrection of Jesus is the inauguration of God’s new kingdom, moving us toward the final day when Christ will be all in all.  The train has already left the station.  Hope that is grounded in the resurrection of Jesus Christ waits for the day when God will recreate us, along with the entire cosmos; when he will wipe away the tears from every eye; what has been stolen will be restored, including childhoods lost to abuse.  We are capable of the most unthinkable acts of cruelty – Ms. Scalia makes that point well.  But the cross and resurrection witness to the assurance that the worst that humanity is capable of cannot extinguish the light of God.

 

Christian hope does not sentimentalize death or try to come to easy terms with death.  On the contrary, death is “the last enemy to be destroyed,” to quote Paul.  And Christian hope witnesses to the resurrection of the body.  To quote the late David Watson, who looked death straight in the eye before succumbing to cancer:

 

It is not as disembodied spirits that God promises us eternal life, but as personalities expressed in a new kind of body. . . .  Just as a message is still the same message, whether it is spoken in words or flashed in Morse Code, so according ot the bible, we shall be the same person, whatever the material form in which our personalities may be expressed.[3]

 

The idea of the immortality of the soul – a disembodied, passionless existence – is Platonic, not Christian.  I love W. H. Auden’s poem, entitled, “No, Plato, No.” It begins:

 

I can’t imagine anything

    that I would less like to be

than a disincarnate Spirit,

    unable to chew or sip

or make contact with surfaces

    or breathe the scents of summer

or comprehend speech and music

or gaze at that lies beyond.

No, God has place me exactly

   where I’d have chosen to be:

the sub-lunar world is such fun,

   where Man is male or female

And gives Proper Names to all things.[4]

 

Now, I am going to be a little provocative here, so please don’t be offended.  Do you know the poem, “Do not stand at my grave and weep”?  It has become popular at funerals and undoubtedly has brought comfort to many:  

 

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am in a thousand winds that blow,

I am the softly falling snow.

I am the gentle showers of rain,

I am the fields of ripening grain . . .

 

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there; I did not die.

 

I think if Paul heard that poem, he might respond something like this: “You know that poem about our loved ones not dying, about their being present in the trees and stuff?  Well, if there is no resurrection of the body, then we might as well pack it up.” 

 

The resurrection of Jesus is a unique event.  Nothing in history has ever happened like it, as far as we know, and there is nothing in our experience or knowledge that can grasp it or confirm it: not the rustling of the leaves,  not the sunset, not any observable reality in this world.  And yet, what happened to Jesus will happen to us: “And we shall be changed.” 

And so it goes.  Now listen to Paul:

 

            And so, today we join Ms. Scalia and believers throughout the world who strain forward toward the new heaven and the new earth, when the righteousness of God will be vindicated; when work will have meaning and no longer be in vain; when we will no longer bear children for calamity; when we will build houses and live in them – no more foreclosures; when the person who lives to be a hundred will be considered a mere youth.  

 

 

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