Risen

James Reid, Life of Christ 
woodcut, Philadelphia, 1930

Three close family members have had dangerous car accidents in the past nine months.

The first was on the PA turnpike one night last summer caused by debris from a shredded tire. My brother-in-law found his car thrown toward the median. The car was totaled, but he was okay, just badly shaken, replaying the incident in his mind for days after. It could have ended very differently.

Last month is was my son, waiting on a busy road to make a left turn, rear-ended by someone not paying attention. Since his wheels were turned, he was pushed hard into the oncoming traffic lane. Fortunately, no one hit him head-on. His car, too, was totaled. A few seconds sooner, a few seconds later, the outcome could have been tragic.

Wednesday it was my husband, Whitney. Heading off for an oil change, he was hit by an SUV running a red light. The front end of his car was smashed, with debris thrown across the road. His wrist was abraded by an air bag, but other than that, he's fine, just shaken like the others. 

Life is fragile. Our days are uncertain. One second can change our lives. One nano-second can end them.

I've been reflecting on all that this week as I read the gospel accounts of crucifixion and resurrection. Many of Jesus' last conversations included predictions of his death and references to resurrection. No one believed him.

We sometimes think the people of his day were innocents, simple folks eager to believe a myth of a resurrected hero.

That's not what I see as I read the accounts. Death was much more present for the people of his time. Disease, hunger, violence: all leaned in close. There were a few surprising stories of resurrection: Lazarus, the rich ruler's daughter. But for every day folks, that seemed like nonsense. You lived. You died. Life was harsh and short. Maybe somewhere in the distant future there was an afterlife for the most pious and holy, but for most folks? Forget it. 

The Sadducees, students of religious law, concocted stories and questions to prove resurrection was ridiculous. 

I like the way The Message words the account from Mark 12:

Some Sadducees, the party that denies any possibility of resurrection, came up and asked, “Teacher, Moses wrote that if a man dies and leaves a wife but no child, his brother is obligated to marry the widow and have children. Well, there once were seven brothers. The first took a wife. He died childless. The second married her. He died, and still no child. The same with the third. All seven took their turn, but no child. Finally the wife died. When they are raised at the resurrection, whose wife is she? All seven were her husband.”

Jesus said, “You’re way off base, and here’s why: One, you don’t know what God said; two, you don’t know how God works. After the dead are raised up, we’re past the marriage business. As it is with angels now, all our ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God. And regarding the dead, whether or not they are raised, don’t you ever read the Bible? How God at the bush said to Moses, ‘I am—not was—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? The living God is God of the living, not the dead. You’re way, way off base.”

The phrasing of the response interests me: You don't know what God said; you don't know how God works. 

James Reid, Life of Christ,
woodcut, Philadelphia, 1930

Now, millennia later, we can read the words, but we still don't quite know what they said, and we definitely don't know how God works.

Jesus's friends, heading toward his tomb on that morning long ago, had spent time with him, watched him, listened to him. But none of them had the slightest hope that death had been defeated. They had loved and followed Jesus. They had watched with grief and fear as the crucifixion unfolded. Now they were hoping to see his broken body, hoping to wrap and bathe it and honor him in his death. Resurrection, from their own accounts, was the last thing on their minds.

Is resurrection on OUR minds, this Easter morning? I had my first COVID vaccination Thursday afternoon, and have spent the past two days slightly achy, slightly feverish, tired.

I'm thinking about the more than 500,000 here in the US who have died of COVID in the past year, the nearly 3 million around the globe. 

Does God care? Is resurrection part of that story?

In the days following that first resurrection morning, some believed quickly. Some needed convincing. 

Luke, the careful historian, describes the first report of resurrection:

It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

Were there some who heard the women's story and believed it immediately? When did "nonsense," for Peter, finally make sense? Were there some who saw the resurrected Jesus and explained it all away? Were there some who saw, and heard, and deliberately decided that belief would be too costly?

Saul fought those who spoke of resurrection until he was struck with a blinding light on the road to Damascus. Renamed Paul, he spent the rest of his life teaching others of the truth of the resurrection, risking his life for that central reality, facing imprisonment for the hope of resurrection. 

In his first letter to Corinthian converts he reminded them: 

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

There are mysteries on mysteries in considering resurrection. Are suffering and death anomalies, or essential parts of a much larger story? Is this life precious beyond all else, or a moment, a sigh, before the real song begins? Is it reasonable to believe in resurrection? Unreasonable to doubt it? Are all somehow equally true?

From a poem by John Terpstra (find the full poem here) 

Because I did not for a moment doubt in childhood
the story of this rising, shall I, now
I am wiser? The world still has no
boundary. The lines still shiver and wave;
the impossible takes place . . . 

I’ll say this: whom she supposed to be
the gardener sings and dances the contour lines
that are his body; this body that is broken
by time and season and violence too deep
for us to wonder at the source, broken
into beauty that lures our present rambling
and leads us to the edge of this escarpment . . .

and where we meet her
who has run and sung and danced these trails
since the day she first saw
the massive rock dislodged
from the cliff-face

     of any reasonable expectation. 

There is much I don't know: what the word "resurrection" means. What eternity will be. Where the boundaries of grace and love are found, if there are 

Today, Resurrection Sunday, is the day to set all wondering aside and simply rejoice that life has conquered death. 

Hallejuah. Christ is risen. 

He is risen indeed. Hallelujah. 

David Jones, The Resurrection, woodcut, London, 1924