The Gift of Hope

I always try to be honest with you and preach with as much integrity as possible, which sometimes means that I’m going to tell you that I struggle with certain topics, certain days. This is one of them. I struggle with Easter. Seems odd, doesn’t it? While I love the excitement, the celebratory nature of today… every year I ask myself what exactly are we celebrating? Because that is what I need to speak about. Let me try to explain...

How many of you know the traditional greeting on Easter Sunday? If I say, “Christ is risen!” You say… “He is risen indeed!”

Our traditional Easter Hymns are “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” “Up From the Grave He Arose” (with a mighty triumph o’er his foes), “He Lives” (I serve a risen savior, he’s in the world today), and In the Garden (he walks with me and he talks with me).

It seems that celebrating resurrection has become, for most Christians, celebrating resuscitation. In fact, for fundamentalists and evangelicals, you aren’t a Christian if you don’t believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Very frankly, this concept has never worked for me. It defies logic, reason, and science. And, in case you didn’t know, Jesus isn’t the only story of someone being brought back to life. Tammuz, the Spring god of Mesopotamia, Osiris the Egyptian god of agriculture and death, Satyavan in Hindu legend, Bodhidharma in Buddhist tradition, and more, all died and were brought back to life.

Personally, I have to agree with John Shelby Spong who said that, “The Easter experience in the New Testament, contrary to what we have traditionally been taught over the years, is not about bodies walking out of graves. It is far more profound than that. It is about God being seen in human life. By “God” I do not mean a supernatural, invasive God, who violates the laws of nature in order to enter time and space. I mean a transcendent dimension of life into which all can enter, an experience in which life is expanded, love is unlimited and being is enhanced.”

What if the author of the Gospel of Mark never intended for resurrection to mean resuscitation, that Jesus’ body was brought back to life? Afterall, Mark’s gospel, the first gospel written, ends rather abruptly, with no further sighting of Jesus. Instead, there is simply a young man who tells the women that Jesus is risen and would meet them in Galilee and they run scared, not saying anything to anyone. The end. Two appearance stories were added much later by different authors because someone was clearly uncomfortable that Mark left it hanging there. It’s Matthew who offers the first account of a resurrected Jesus being seen by anyone. This was written in the 9^th decade… 60 years after Jesus’ death. It is obviously a much later developing story line.

So, what if Mark ended it there on purpose? What if being risen means to rise to a new level of consciousness, an enlightened way of being? What if, once again, the message was not that Jesus was different and better than the rest of us, but that he modeled the spiritual “way” to a deeper connection with God?

Perhaps the white-robed figure was suggesting that it was time for Jesus’ followers to return home and to open to the experience of God in their everyday lives. Perhaps the message in Mark was that resurrection doesn’t just happen to Jesus, but that it can happen to and in each of us. We can be risen to a higher consciousness, a deeper connection to God and we don’t have to wait for death. It can happen when we see God present in life.

This is the gift of hope Jesus gave to us. Not the hope that we would be saved from sins and make it to heaven. Not the hope of our own bodily resurrection someday (which has also become Christian tradition for those believing in the Second Coming of Christ). But the hope that transformation can/will/does happen for each of us. It won’t happen staring at an empty tomb, it won’t happen hiding in an upper room, it will happen as we go about our days loving wastefully, living into the fullness of our beings, and opening to the presence of God around us.

Something happened to the disciples, a profound experience of the presence of Jesus.  They felt his life force, his spirit, in so many places in their ordinary lives that it transformed them from cowards who had scattered and locked themselves behind closed doors the night Jesus was crucified, to courageous men and women willing to risk death themselves in order to share their experience of God as known in Jesus. They knew with a deep certainty that all Jesus had taught them was true and vital.

The disciples themselves experienced resurrection. After losing hope, losing dreams, feeling shattered with grief, they now felt empowerment, connection, expansiveness, enlightenment and hope. This type of resurrection DOES happen to each of us. In fact, I’d wager that each person has a resurrection story to share. Every time we are knocked down and find the spiritual energy, resilience, hope and strength to move forward again resurrection happens.

One more thought... resurrection has also been hailed as a triumphant, final victory, but this story makes it clear it is a continuing story that takes place in our everyday lives. Don’t stand here looking for Jesus… he isn’t here… he has gone ahead of you, blazing a trail out into the world. His gift of hope to us today is that endings are not really endings, brick walls are not necessarily dead ends, change isn’t always a bad thing, life always follows death.

Happy Easter!

Kaye