Easter Sunday: Resurrection for a Reason

What would it have been like to be there, among the chosen few, that Easter morning?  Exciting and inspiring, confusing and scary, or all of the above?  The details are at best fuzzy:  When we examine the four gospels, none of the stories about the resurrection appearances agree with any other stories, and those traditions seem to have all been late additions to the manuscripts. They don't agree as to who, when, where, why or how.  But there is a common thread, a bottom line  -- that Jesus overcame death, so that death no more has dominion over us.  We have "passed over" from death to life, and Jesus continues to guide his Church, albeit now by the Holy Spirit..

Do we get that?  Maybe not.  Indeed, in our gospel reading today [John chapter 20], two key future apostles didn't get it.  Mary Magdalene pines that someone has stolen Jesus' body and she can't find it.  And Peter, racing John to the tomb, sees the funereal wrappings and is, as usual, clueless.  Even the Prince of the Apostles doesn't get it!   Soon those two and others will fearlessly go out to share the Good News of a radically different kind of life in God through Christ -- eternal life beginning in the here and now and going on forever, a life lived for the sake of others!

Being plugged into eternal life means many things, but especially that we can trust God with what follows this life, that we don't need to worry or obsess about afterlife, we don't need to waste time speculating about afterlife.  For us,the question should be, not whether there is life after death, but whether there is life before death.

Experts tell us that it would be economically, physically and strategically possible to create a world in which every human being is housed, fed, educated, and given good health care. We have the resources and capabilites but we do not have the heart or the will to make it happen.  Moreover, it would require the renunciation of economic tenets that send almost all new economic wealth to a tiny but growing cadre of elites, and a world economic order in which we and a few other Western nations absorb the lion's share of the world's goods at the expense of everyone else.  The kind of world in which God's work is done on earth as in heaven, the world Jesus called the Kingdom of God, is possible, for with God nothing is impossible.  We are called to be God's partners in the healing and renewal of creation.

Ask yourself, how have I experienced resurrection and for what have I been resurrected?  We all have experienced our Good Fridays of disappointment and fear, obsession, addiction, and failure.  God has been present to bring us up from those lows. God has saved us for new life in his grand project.  We might ask: what was I raised for?  What is my special calling?  Am I presently a part of God's solution or part of God's problem? Am I enabling or hindering God's dream for a new world?

Jesus was raised for a reason, and so are you and I.   Happy Easter!