Easter 2013

Easter 2013

Easter, I have to say, is a tough holiday to sermonize. We hopefully know the story of Christ’s glorious resurrection. Hopefully we understand that it is at the core of our faith and who we are… But it’s still difficult to get one’s hands around to try to sum it up—or even find a thread to tease out for a meaningful message. The truth is there’s not a whole lot that can be said that could possibly inspire more than the Gospel story itself, so I’ll not try to offer something clever.

I suppose when we think about it Easter is just a difficult thing to deal with all the way around. In fact, the very day that we set aside to celebrate Easter is different from year to year. It isn’t a specific day annually the way that Christmas, or other holidays are. What’s more, there are other Christian traditions which celebrate Easter according to a different calendar—so even now our Orthodox sisters and brothers are making their way through Lent…

My point is, that even this season that so defines our lives and our faith can’t practically be itself defined.

And maybe this is a good thing that we can’t define Easter. After all to define literally means to determine or identify the essential qualities; it means to make distinct; and to mark the limits of something… 

  

However, the mystery of Christ’s Resurrection doesn’t really allow us to do any of that; because his resurrection is something that doesn’t seem to have limits. It’s such an amazing story that it’s almost too much to believe. So, at best, we’re at a loss for words even when we speak of it. Because as all of us know, for the resurrection to mean anything at all, it has to be something that pervades our lives—it has to be a thing that gives meaning to all the things and places in our lives.

Part of the problem is that it’s just too big a picture to process. Death is a natural counter-point to life. This is why the disciples returned home confused after finding the tomb empty—because they couldn’t possibly have understood what Jesus meant about rising from the dead.

After all, death is the thing that most people spend their lives worrying about, and others try to cheat. So when someone comes along and supposedly defeats it, well, we either can’t believe it, or we have to try to integrate its meaning into our own lives and experience.

In the end, perhaps the indefinite nature of the resurrection is exactly what continues to give it such power, because rather than have something about it that we can claim, or hold on to tightly—sort of what Jesus meant when he spoke to Mary in the garden. We instead have something that we have to live with, and experience.

The reason we can’t define Easter and the resurrection is because it can’t be defined—instead, it defines us. Resurrection finds us in the darkest places of life; in the face of tragedy; at a loved one’s deathbed; Easter finds us.

 It dares us to stare death in the face, and know that we’ll never be broken. It calls us to see certain hope beyond hopelessness. More importantly, resurrection calls us to live however uncomfortably into its ambiguity; into that place where four very different accounts of the same story come together. Because it’s in those narrow places, where we try to define ourselves; try to define our own lives and can’t; look for easy answers to persistent questions and fail that we find the mystery of Christ’s resurrection looking back at us…as indefinite as the chaos at the start of Creation, yet so real as to mark us as his own.