Easter 2013


There are tales of people who have been near death, even who’ve been what we may call “clinically dead,” who can relate their experiences. The latest that caught lots of attention was the story told by a 4-year old boy named Colton, the son of a pastor in Nebraska. They put a book out called “Heaven is for real” which I haven’t read, but a lot of people apparently have. The story goes that after a life-threatening operation, Colton talked about having been in Heaven. He spoke of meeting his sister who had died in miscarriage and whom no one had ever told him about. He knew details from meeting his grandfather, dead 30 years, that he couldn’t have known in any explainable way. He also talked about a horse that only Jesus could ride and God’s really, really big chair.

It’s a neat story. These stories are actually pretty common. My Dad is a doctor and once in awhile he would ask a patient if it was okay if our family prayed for them. We prayed for one lady for a long time. I came to feel a special spiritual bond to this woman I’d never met. One day Dad was sitting with Mom on the patio behind the house enjoying the Shawnee Forest. What happened next was something pre-cognitive; Dad sensed a particular presence at some instinctual level. It was so powerful and so immediate that before he’d even thought it through he spoke her name: “Emma?” A few hours later he got the message that she was dead. She’d said goodbye on her way. It was a gift.


Do stories like these prove anything? Here’s the thing. If you don’t believe in God or Heaven or eternal life, a story like this won’t convince you. You’ll assume there’s some other explanation, or some power of suggestion, or just plain old exaggeration and wishful thinking. And if you do believe in God, heaven, and eternal life, then you don’t need stories like that. Your faith isn’t based on second and third-hand anecdotes about inexplicable phenomena. So it isn’t that they really even make much difference as “proof.” But they do point us toward the mystery of Easter.

Christmas is more accessible, easier to get a hold of, because it’s all about God coming to meet us, God taking familiar form, God joining us where we are. Christmas is about God coming into our lives. But Easter is about us going into God’s life. And that leaves us in conceptual darkness. It’s something far past the reach of our knowledge, past even the reach of our imagination. And that can make death a thing of fear.

Hamlet spoke of it: “the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns.”

Death is the undiscovered country, and some may tell stories of a glimpse or a taste, but no traveller who has truly entered that country returns.

Except once someone did. That’s the incredible claim that we’re here to make. I’m going to quote Benedict XVI at length because this is really, really good. He writes:

“The Christian Faith stands or falls with the truth of the testimony that Christ is risen from the dead. If this were taken away, it would still be possible to piece together from the Christian tradition a series of interesting ideas about God and men, about man’s being and his obligations, a kind of religious world view: but the Christian faith itself would be dead. Jesus would be a failed religious leader, who despite his failure remains great and can cause us to reflect. But he would then remain purely human, and his authority would extend only so far as his message is of interest to us. He would no longer be a criterion; the only criterion left would be our own judgment in selecting from his heritage what strikes us as helpful. In other words, we would be alone. Our own judgment would be the highest instance. Only if Jesus is risen has anything really new occurred that changes the world and the situation of mankind. Then he becomes the criterion on which we can rely. For then God has truly revealed himself.”

He’s saying that without the Resurrection, Jesus might be an inspiring source of some nice ideas, might be a good example of how to live, but nothing would really be changed. And we’d still be left to our own devices. Benedict went on to say, “Whether Jesus merely was or whether he also is - this depends on the Resurrection.”

And that’s really the heart of the matter. That’s the question. Whether Jesus merely was, or whether he also is. You have to answer that yourself. Is Jesus an idea, an historical figure, an inspiring example? Or is he the life of your soul each and every day? Is his Cross something bad that happened twenty centuries ago? Or is it present right now underneath whatever suffering and grief you bear today? The Resurrection is the answer to that question. It’s the something new, that really changes things. It’s why Winston Churchill, in the darkest days of the darkest of centuries, could say “if you’re going through Hell, keep going.” Because we aren’t alone, even should we walk through Hell, he has been there and he has been through and he has returned to us from the undiscovered country. Quoting Benedict XVI one more time: even in the darkest of times, “we can hear a voice that calls us and find a hand that takes ours and leads us out.” If love can penetrate to the very depths of hell, we are never alone or hopeless.

We hear a voice that calls us, and find a hand that takes ours and leads us out. Out of despair, out of hopelessness, out of addiction, out of selfishness, out of slavery. Jesus is not someone who merely was, but someone who is. He is Lord, He is Savior, He is the Good Shepherd leading us home. He is Risen.



sources of note: 
Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, part Two, 241-2.
Tania Geist, Benedict XVI's Theology of Holy Saturday, posted for First Things "On the Square",
    http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/03/benedict-xvirsquos-theology-of-holy-saturday

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