Nobody knew what to make of that first Easter Sunday. The disciples didn’t understand the scriptures. Mary Magdalene thought the body has been stolen and later on believed that the Risen Lord is a gardener. People are running here and there. Peter saw the linen wrappings but couldn’t figure out what that meant. The so-called other disciple (is St. John being modest?) saw the empty tomb and believes but doesn’t understand – whatever that means. Confusion, puzzlement, misunderstanding, uncertainty were in the air that first Easter morning. Of course there is good reason for this muddle. Easter has burst into our world—the world of space and time, the world of history and human life—but our minds and imaginations are too small to contain it. Even though Jesus had predicted this death and resurrection, the first Christians weren’t prepared for what actually happened. Even though Jesus had said it, who could have believed in such a thing? They couldn’t wrap their minds around it. They were struggling to describe something for which they didn’t have adequate language.
Easter is the challenge that it is because the Pascal mystery serves as the hinge of history—the moment towards which everything that happened before was converging and from which everything that happened afterward must be understood. The death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is the sonic boom that rattled the world. Christians believe that after Easter the world is, in fact, a different place, full of possibilities that were previously unimagined. At Easter it was God’s intention to get our attention. All that humanity has yearned for throughout history – and doubtless all that humanity will yearn for in the future – finds its answer in the Risen Jesus. The Risen Jesus shows us that love is stronger than death. The Risen Jesus assures us that we are made for life, life to the full. The Risen Jesus demonstrates that there isn’t any pain, tragedy or difficulty that God can’t transform into grace and glory. Just as Jesus shares a common humanity with us, at Easter Jesus won for us a share in his divinity.
But here’s the problem that we believers face on Easter morning. The world post-Resurrection looks remarkably like the world pre-Resurrection. The names have been changed but the forces pulling us away from life on high and into the garbage dump perdure. Nations still go to war – the current iteration is in the Ukraine. Selfishness still mars the landscape – file under resistance to dealing with climate change. Greed is still looked upon as desirable – the top 1% of U.S. earners now hold more wealth than the entire Middle Class. How are we to make sense out of the clean break in history Christians profess occurred on that first Easter morning with the reality of human calamity continuing just as it has since the stone age – only now with nuclear weapons? Was Jesus’ death and resurrection a one-off, an event that happened to him that we can only admire from afar or is it the event that grabs us by the collar and demands us to re-orient the entire way we look at human life? Is Easter more than a ham, a chocolate bunny (hopefully not hollow), and a new outfit and bonnet?
To find the answer to those questions we must notice that the Easter stories are personal. Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene. He visits his friends in the upper room. He walks with the Cleopas family on the road to Emmaus. If you remember at the very beginning of his ministry Jesus resisted the temptation of the devil to make a spectacle of himself, to throw himself from the temple. Even at Easter Jesus is not playing to the crowds. He encounters each individual with the experience of Risen Life and relies on them to respond. All of which says, Jesus inaugurated the new age of God’s love and mercy on that first Easter morning but we have to complete the pascal story in our lives. We are Easter people so what happened to Jesus impacts us but not in some kind of cosmic way, not spectacularly, but individually, personally. The new life of an Easter people is retail, not wholesale. We recognize the newness of a Resurrection world in the changes in our own hearts and our own lives.
What does that mean for us? How do we become Easter people? Think of it as moving from Kansas to Oz, from black and white into Technicolor, from dirt streets to the yellow brick road. In one sense we are the same people in the same world doing the same things we have always done. But as Easter people we are different, we feel different, we see things in a whole new light. In the before picture the world is a dangerous place full of war and violence. After Easter we trust that the plan of God is at work, unfolding in our lives, freeing us from fear and giving us hope. In the before picture families are dysfunctional, relationships are strained, people are difficult. After Easter we understand that we have the power to forgive, to comfort, to console everyone who has been woven into our lives. In the before picture the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. After Easter we understand that our generosity, our charity, our concern might not seem like much to us but does, in fact, serve as the pebble leading to an avalanche of care. Jesus rising from the dead has raised us up from individuals scrambling to make it in ball of confusion to become a leaven, as St. Paul puts it, a community of those who each add our piece of lumber, our brick, our nail to build up together the glorious city of God. God gives us grace, this day and from now on, to live as Easter people, celebrating Jesus’ love and joy at his table and making his kingdom and justice known in his world. Amen! Alleluia!