We Are Risen, Indeed

A lot of churches around have signs up that say “Resurrection Sunday” instead of “Easter Sunday.” I guess they are trying to keep the ster in Easter or something.

At my church, it was a big, noisy out-the-tomb party with breakdancing, a melodica AND a bagpipe. You know. Easter. And the last of the questions in the Questions of Jesus sermon series at church was “I am the resurrection and the life, do you believe this? Jesus says this to Lazarus’ grieving relatives when they are being pissy at him for not being around to prevent Lazarus’ death. “I am the resurrection and the life, do you believe this?”

Well, no. I don’t. The idea that god would show up on Earth in one time in one place in one body to do a magic trick, or a series of them does not jive with my experience of the world.

Please, no, take your time, Jesus.
 I don't mind stinking in the grave for four days. 

Why would any prophet would literally die and then come back to life? It makes no aesthetic sense.

So no, I don't believe this. But that's not the point.

The point is that to die and to come back is what living is. For me, more than any other thing, at the beating heart of being a person is hitting the bottom, being entombed, and somehow emerging. And while our Seder this week reminded me how much I love the questioning and story-wielding midrash sense of Judaism, the story of the Jews in exile coming to the promised land is not my story. As much as I value the story of submission before god in Islam, that is not my story either. Nor is that of Shiva dancing the world into destruction or of the Daoist warrior-gods, or even the bodhisattvas with their good patient sense of responsibility.

Probably in no small part because I grew up steeped in and shaped by Christian culture, it’s the Christian story that resonates with me.

Christianity is a story of a god who wanted to be human. The god who created suffering and death wanted to know suffering and death. Like a director who longs to act. God could appreciate that the real beauty in god’s experiment was not in the perfection of what god had created but in the imperfect oddity that evolved from it. God did not want to stay apart from the uncomfortable parts of god's creation that being god exempted him from. God understood the necessity of brokenness to the fullness of what life has to offer that god opted for it. God put godself in a position to appeal to god. Why have you forsaken me? Why have I forsaken myself? 

Yeah. Why?

There must be something good in that garden of Gethsemane.

It was nice to wear my Easter hat and to stomp and sing. It was good to hide the Easter eggs and fill everyone’s basket. And it was good to break my lenten fast and eat pancakes with brown sugar rolled up inside them. (Less good later when my stomach hurt.)

The best part, though, was to come home late to my very dearest people, the ones from whom it is not necessary to conceal things, the ones who all want a turn at chopping and at doing the dishes and who fill the down time with talking about Star Trek and who love each other in the right way that I don’t have to worry about the teasing that comes with it. Peaceful. The best part was to sit down at the table with them, each one a certain number of steps out of the darkness of the tomb. To know that these were my people, that we’d offered and would continue to offer each other clumsy grace when more betrayals and mockery and more cups we’d like to pass came along. To get a little tipsy and to fall asleep in my church shoes, and to know the boys would wipe the table down.

Every year has an Easter. The Easter story, the resurrection story isn’t right as a historical event that we remember. It points to the nature of things. How we all have to get broken and die, how we all come back again and again, more crosses, more tombs, more glorious third days. It’s good to remember that.