What does it mean for the world that Christ is risen? So much more than I could possibly put into a few paragraphs, certainly. If all the ink in the world were spilled to write of Easter, it might still not capture all that this day means. It means, in the first place, that death is defeated and eternal life is possible. It means, beyond that, that there is always hope, because if our Savior can handle the cross, then what can’t he handle? It means our sin is gone. It means salvation.
But if I had to pick out one particular aspect of Easter that has really struck me this year, it’s something that comes from the other great resurrection story in the gospels – the resurrection of Lazarus in John 11. It is in this story that we get one of the great “I AM” statements of John … “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” That’s a claim Jesus would dramatically back up on Easter morning. What strikes me, though, is the sheer immediacy of it.
One has to remember that at the beginning of the Lazarus story, everyone thinks that Jesus has let his friend down. When Martha sees Jesus, she says, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” We can hear the unspoken rebuke in her words – Why weren’t you here? Mary and many of the onlookers say the same thing. They all think Jesus has arrived at Bethany too late to do anything. (And it’s a similar kind of grief to what the disciples experiences on Good Friday, when they assumed, not realizing that the Resurrection was coming, that the cross meant Jesus’ Messianic mission had ended in failure.) But Jesus looked at Martha and promised that her brother would rise. Martha didn’t get it. She thought Jesus was giving her the standard funerary consolation. Yes, there is a resurrection … someday. A resurrection in which she believes, to be sure, but a resurrection waiting so far over the horizon that it barely touches the grief of the present day. And that’s when Jesus said it – “I am the Resurrection and the Life.”
It strikes me that Jesus took the hope of resurrection – the hope of Easter – and planted it firmly in the now. What he’s saying is, no, the resurrection is not located in some distant future. The Resurrection is standing in front of you. The Resurrection is talking to you. The Resurrection has hands and feet and skin and eyes. The Resurrection is me. So you don’t have to wait for your brother to rise, because if I am here, then the Resurrection has already come.
I wonder if that’s what God is trying to get us to believe – that the Resurrection is now. I do not mean in the most literal sense. For most of us, rising from the dead will indeed happen at the end of days. But I do mean that salvation appeared in fullness in the person of Jesus Christ. I do mean that Jesus was serious when he said the Kingdom of God has come near – as if it were so close you could reach out and touch it. I do mean that God is redeeming us now. God is putting broken things back together now. God is changing lives now. God is driving back the darkness now. I mean that the power of the Resurrection is already loosed into the world.
I confess that sometimes I want to locate all God’s work in some far off future. I begin by acknowledging that some things – in my life and in the world – suck. Then I assume that they will always suck, so what’s the point of trying to change them? What’s the point in hoping for redemption? It’s not that I don’t think God will do something. I just think God is going to do something a long time from now, at a time far enough removed from the present that I don’t have to bother with radical living or radical hoping today. But could this attitude be blinding me to the reality that the Resurrection is already, and that the Kingdom is invading earth today? That things really could change for the better, and maybe I ought to be working towards that end? When we believe that things are as they are – when we live according to the narrative that some things and some people are just too far gone for God to save them, that Jesus is too late getting to Bethany – it hurts. But it’s also convenient, because it gives us an excuse to live complacently. And it gives us a reason not to get our hopes up an risk another disappointment.
But I think the gospel dares us to believe in something greater. It dares us to believe that this broken world can be saved, and God is already trying to do it. It dares us to believe that God can raise the dead, can even raise the dead parts of me. And it teaches us not to put living the resurrected life off until tomorrow. So if we believe in Easter, let us dare to hope. Let us dare to love. Let us dare to fight for truth and justice. Let us dare to think that if Jesus is with us to the end of the age, so if the power of his Resurrection. Let us dare to be the people of the Resurrection and the Life.
Because Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Let the darkness tremble.
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