Easter is our defining moment

Beloveds in Christ,

Easter is our defining moment as Christians and resurrection

defines Easter.

When you think of Jesus’ resurrection, what comes to mind?

A miracle? That after being executed, Jesus came to life in a

resurrected body fully accessorized with supernatural powers?

This is a fair, maintainable point of view. But at that time and

place, accounts of “awakenings from death” were neither unknown nor

uncommon. So the proclamation of Jesus rising from the dead would not

have been new news.

Do you, as many I know, think that Easter proclaims a fiction?

Where are you in the shaggy tale with which Fred Borsch begins his

chapter on “Resurrection” in God’s Parable? In this fiction, Jesus’

bones are found but it serves to convince one skeptic (only) that

“Oh, then he did live!” Self-delusion and corporate deception could

have carried the first disciples only so far I think; only

resurrection explains for me their subsequent self-denying,

death-defying missionary zeal and success, and our presence here,

now.

For others, Easter proclaims that Jesus, metaphorically speaking,

was raised up in a continuing life in the body of his followers, a

following that has had life on its roller coaster ride through

centuries in an array of expressions within that community called The

Church. This, too, is a fair view of the resurrection of Jesus. But

it doesn’t include the very real historical experiences of some truly

rational people who, through the realm and range of time, have

testified to having encountered the living presence of Jesus.

A final fair position I suspect some of us take is that as Jesus

was raised from the dead, so we too will live forever. Well, even if

Jesus’ rising did mean the same for us, “living forever” doesn’t

strike me as so pleasant a possibility. This life, as it is, “world

without end” as old prayer books put it, is not something I want to

enjoy forever. Immortality is a wonderful prospect precisely because

it embraces a life and a world where all is well, where good

triumphs, where right reigns, where love is victorious. Here, all is

never well! Responses to calls for compassion, mercy, kindness,

peace, justice and love are too often, “No!”

As I experience the gospel story, the purpose of Jesus’ mission

and ministry was to proclaim the nearness of the presence of God.

Jesus not only proclaimed it, he personified it. Wherever he went,

whatever he said and did, for those who entered his presence it was

as if good had been embodied, right made manifest, and love

enfleshed. Then, Jesus was killed. Wrong seemed to have won. This

world shouted “No! to God.

Easter is extraordinary because it proclaims God’s inexhaustible

answer to the world’s persistent “No!” Easter proclaims God’s eternal

“Yes!”

Will we dare to confront and confess the truth about the

continuing brokenness of our lives and of this world where little is

ever well and all is never well? Will we dare to hope that for every

human “No” there is a divine “Yes!?” Dare we hope that this divine

“Yes!” , God’s first word breathed into being-life at the dawn of

creation, will be God’s last word at the close of this age bringing

into being the fullness of life everlasting. When we so dare, Easter

is our defining moment.

The Very Reverend Canon Peter D. Hayes, Rector, Saint Michael &

All Angels Episcopal Church

For more information, call (949) 644-0463, or visit the Web site

at www.stmikescdm.org.