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The Easter Story Underneath all the Rising!


I absolutely love Easter! All of it! The bunny, the empty tomb, the race between Peter and John, the earthquake, and Mary in the garden hearing "the gardener" whisper her name! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, indeed!


But sometimes we get so caught up in the details of this story that we miss the larger story underneath it all. Let me explain.


When Jesus was crucified on the cross, the disciples didn't just lose a close friend. They lost their new understanding of God. They lost their life-stance! Jesus wasn't just a person, he represented a radical and new way of living. And when he died the door to that way of living was slammed tight. And that's exactly why the Roman government used crucifixion as their from of capital punishment. They wanted to scare any idea of new and radical right out of you!


In a sense, when the disciples watched Jesus die on the cross, they were also witnessing the death of their God. Their whole existential life stance was destroyed. And you can see this if you read the story of Easter in our gospels. What do the disciples want to do after Jesus dies? They are all headed back to the Sea of Galilee to go back to fishing. Back to life before Jesus! When Jesus died, so did their God-stance. God was dead!


After WW2 there was a huge philosophical and theological movement pronouncing the same thing: God is dead! Their argument was basically this: "If our 'loving and all-powerful' God can allow 6 million Jews to be exterminated by the Nazis, then surely this God is truly dead and irrelevant going forward!" It was and still is a compelling argument.


One of my favorite responses to that argument was written by a French Jesuit theologian named Henri de Lubac. Here's what he says:


"Whenever it abandons a system of thought, humanity imagines it has lost God. The God of ‘classical ontology’ is dead, you say? It may be so; but it does not worry me overmuch. I have no inclination to defend the petrified constructions of Wolf. And if ‘classical ontology’ disappeared, it was surely because it did not correspond adequately with being. Nor was its idea of God adequate for God. The mind is alive, and so is the God who makes himself known to it.


God is dead!’ or so at least it seems to us… until, round the next bend in the road, ‘we find him again, alive’. Once again he makes himself known, in spite of all that we have left behind on the road, all that was only viaticum for one stage of our journey, all that was only a temporary shelter till we had to make a fresh start… And if we really progressed along the road, we shall find God himself greater still. But it will be the same God. Deus semper major. And once again we shall move on in his light. God is never left behind among the dross… In whatever direction we go, he is there before us, calling to us and coming to meet us…"


And that to me is the underlying message of Easter. Mary went to the tomb that first Easter to bury not only Jesus, but to say good bye to her understanding of God. She came to that tomb with a box of spices, ready to prepare both Jesus and God for burial. But when she got there…the box meant to keep God contained was empty! And just around the corner was Easter…the Risen Christ!  At first her tears were too great for her to recognize him…but when she heard the gardener say her name, she began to surrender to God’s new reality…Easter.  And as she daily allowed this new understanding of God to enter her heart…she began to do the Easter dance as she slowly surrendered up her Good Friday clothes…and began to dance to a new song…not a dance out of fear…away from Good Friday…but instead a dance towards a God who was always preparing the way just up ahead. A God who is always planting bulbs of hope and Easter just up ahead…if we could only have eyes to see.


This Easter May God give us eyes to see!


Your friend and pastor, waiting in the garden with Mary, Brook


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