Easter erupted amid grief, pain and despair. The death of Jesus appeared to be the death of the campaign for the kingdom of God: the hoped-for realm of peace and justice. A people’s movement slaughtered with its leader.
The votes were cast, and it was Barabbas by a landslide. So many shouts of “Give us Barabbas” that they didn’t even need to count the ballots. The occupying powers killed Jesus on a Roman cross. The empire won.
Laura Mayo
Barabbas — a known criminal, a violent man — was exalted, he was cheered. But Jesus — known for welcoming outcasts, challenging authorities, telling story after story of extravagant love — Jesus was silenced.
Caesar won. Herod won. Herod, that fox, that killer of the innocent. Mary’s song of justice, sung when she learned of her pregnancy, turns to wails of anguished grief. This is how Easter begins. Everything is wrong. Hope seems lost. The cruelty of the empire has defeated the realm of love.
And so we go with the women to the tomb.
We go diminished, less than we were. We go, the silence of death and catastrophic defeat ringing in our ears. We go expecting to find yet more death. We come with spices to anoint Jesus’ dead body.
“We do not find what we are looking for.”
But we do not find what we are looking for. Instead of Jesus’ dead body there is an inquisitive angel who asks: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”
And as Scripture testifies: “Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the 11 and to all the rest.”
He is not here. He has risen.
Easter changes the narrative. Easter creates life amid death and decay. Easter springs possibility from the impossible. Easter shouts: Death is not the end of the story. There is more. Love never dies. Easter reminds empires, then and now, that violence and cruelty never will be all there is, never will be the end of the story.
Just days before his crucifixion, Jesus was asked by religious leaders: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?” He responded: “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.”
At issue is not merely our economic relationship to the government, but our existential relationship with God. What belongs to God, and what belongs to Caesar? And what if Caesar has no concern for the poor, for immigrants, health care, education, due process, human rights? What if Caesar supports oppression and domination, fascism and xenophobia?
“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.”
“Jesus shows us how to resist oppressors without being made over into their likeness.”
If the coin belongs to Caesar, let him have it. The rules are Caesar’s, the violence, the oppression — but how we respond, that’s God’s, and Caesar has no power over that. Jesus shows us how to resist oppressors without being made over into their likeness.
The way of Jesus goes beyond both inaction and retaliation. Jesus doesn’t avoid conflict but neither does he react violently to evil. Jesus does not let evil dictate the terms of his opposition. He does not let violence lead him to mirror his opponent.
Caesar means corrupt power, systemic injustice, oppression, violence, racism, cruelty. It has been Caesar’s week. It always is, in some form or another. But that’s not the end of the story. Thank God, that’s not the end of the story.
Easter shouts: This is God’s world.
Ben Okri, a Nigerian-born British poet and novelist, in his collection of essays, A Way of Being Free, writes: “We live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted — knowingly or unknowingly — in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.”
Easter changes the story. It shows us that passion is not bound by death — passion to set the oppressed free, to feed the hungry and clothe the poor. Passion for a realm of justice and peace does not end with death. Perhaps it is snuffed for a time but it will rise! Passion can be renewed in the morning. The pain of injustice cannot drown out love. War never can fully stifle peace.
This, for me, is the certainty of Easter. This is my Easter affirmation of faith — not anything to do with something so mundane and unknowable as the historicity of the event. We don’t know exactly what did and didn’t happen thousands of years ago. We do know the power of possibility in the midst of despair; we know the truth of hope when all seems lost, we know the transformation of love created, maintained and sustained in God’s world.
“I will be with you.” The resurrected Jesus tells his followers. “I am with you always, even to the close of the age.”
Jesus — love incarnate — is still here. Right here with us when Caesar wins, right here with us when Caesar denies due process. Right here with us when everything we hold dear feels vulnerable and threatened. Right here with us when we must visit the graveyard. Right here with us when our efforts for justice and peace seem for naught. Right here with us helping us to see a different story to live into.
Jesus is right there with us, waving a palm branch as we carry our signs, turning over tables as we stand up for justice. And Jesus is with us when oppression and violence win the day. With us with the promise of resurrection; the promise of possibility. Jesus is with us in love. Love that refuses to be kept down. Love that will always rise again.
Laura Mayo serves as senior minister of Covenant Church in Houston. She is a graduate of Carson-Newman University and Wake Forest Divinity School, with additional studies at Regent’s Park College of Oxford University. She is active in various interfaith projects and organizations in Houston.