Happy Easter! My greeting might seem misplaced, especially in light of the recent horrifying Virginia Tech shooting. On a much smaller scale, many of us are weighed down with other worries and anxieties. But isn't Easter already over?
Like many of you, I was raised to think that Easter was a single day. My memories include patent-leather shoes, a special corsage from my father and, of course, the Easter bunny. But come Monday it was all over. Jesus was out of the grave. We could return to our more or less normal lives.
And yet, according to the Christian calendar going back to the beginning of the church, Easter is not a single day. It's a season — Eastertide — a 50-day span stretching from Easter Sunday to Pentecost.
What difference does this make?
How we live in time makes all the difference in the world. We all know the anxiety we might feel in anticipation of a speaking engagement. Contrast this with the time where we eagerly await some good news, such as the birth of a child. How we live in time forms who we are.
The question Eastertide brings is this: Are we ultimately defined by the provincial and passing events of our daily lives, or do we place ourselves in the larger, grander drama of God's time? And how exactly do we place ourselves in God's time?
Eastertide tells us that we are still in the time of the early church. It is not impossible to imagine ourselves in this light in a far distant future — 15,000 years out. And this is the way it should be. We are the early church because those first disciples live with us and we with them in Christ. We are now brothers and sisters in Christ.
What difference does this make? To live fully in Eastertide is to live close to the heart of the church.
During this time, we remember that the church was being born not only 2,000 years ago but right now in our congregations and wherever people gather in the name of Christ.
And yet, as many of us know, the early signs of birth can be notoriously difficult to read. Before the birth of our first child, Jessica, I told my husband to call all the relatives, thinking labor had started. We sat around and waited for a day and night. Everything slowed down. I called our doctor, who told me, “When your labor has started, you will not be able to talk to me the way you are right now.” My husband had to call all our relatives back. Another day, another night.
Signs of birth can be difficult to read. According to the Gospel of John, when one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side, blood and water came out — signs of birth in this dark moment. No one at the time saw the descent from the cross as hopeful or even significant. And yet God was transforming the world.
Eastertide marks the birth of the church. It means the church is being born in our lives here today. We are called to trust the miracle of birth — of what God is now doing in the church — even if the signs are opaque. We must admit, especially in our moments of discouragement, that we don't fully know what God is doing.
And yet we can also see instances when blindness on the part of the disciples gives way to sight.
First, in the familiar scene from the Gospel of Luke where Jesus walks with two disciples on the road to Emmaus, the disciples are unable to recognize Jesus. This failure is not because there is insufficient evidence. Their inability is rather a failure of the imagination. Only when the disciples gather around the blessed bread are their eyes suddenly opened.
Is this also true for us today? Does worship enable us to see Jesus? This reality of seeing Christ in worship is not about our own feelings or insights. It is about entering into a reality already present. Worship trains us to live in God's time rather than our own. Every Sunday is a day of resurrection.
Secondly, in the Emmaus story, after the disciples break bread, Jesus vanishes, only to return later, saying “Peace be with you.” The disciples are startled and terrified. How often have we been fearful? How often have we worried that the community is not going the direction we think it needs to go? And yet Jesus cuts through the fears that have caused the disciples' hearts to beat faster. During Eastertide we remember that the reality of Christ is more determinative over our lives than our fears and worries.
Finally, I turn to a modern disciple, Wendell Berry. In Berry's Manifesto: the Mad Farmer Liberation Front, he writes:
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Love someone who does not deserve it…
Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
The reality of the resurrection does not compute with so much that goes on in our lives. It doesn't compute with the violence, greed and deception that surround us and are a part of us. Surely practicing resurrection in our context must mean something other than a false optimism, which evaporates like cotton candy in water. Practicing resurrection must be something different than “random acts of kindness,” which cannot truly constitute a way of life.
When Berry writes, “be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction,” he is saying that the way things are is not the way they have to be. We are freed from seeing and doing things from a merely human point of view. We are free to practice resurrection and to become God's new creation — the reconciling presence of Christ in and for the world.
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— Beth Newman is Professor of Theology and Ethics at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. [email protected]