Sunday, April 16, 2006
The Rising Son
By Fr. C.G. Arevalo, S.J.
THE story of Jesus does not end on Good Friday; the Gospel does not end with the crucifixion.
The Catholic Catechism says nothing new when it tells us that “the crowning truth of our faith in Christ, believed and lived as the central truth” of Christianity from the first Christian communities to the Church in our time, is the resurrection of Jesus, Saint Paul, in his first Letter to the Corinthians, already writes: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain.”
We recite in the Creed, “I believe in Jesus Christ…(who)…was crucified, died and was buried. He descended to the dead, and on the third day he rose again.” Many Christians find it difficult to formulate exactly the content of their faith in the Resurrection. What “God raised Jesus from the dead” means isn’t something most people have given too much thought to. Is it just the resuscitation of a corpse, i.e., what happened to Jairus’ daughter and to Lazarus in the Gospel accounts? Try asking yourself and your friends these questions sometime, and see what answers you get.
From the Scripture accounts, the resurrection of Jesus was something quite different from a mere continuation, after several hours’ interruption, of his bodily life. He didn’t just come back to life again.” The new Catechism says, for instance, “the Father’s power `raised up’ Christ his Son, and by so doing, thus perfectly introduced his Son’s humanity, including his body, into the Trinity,” Jesus passed over into a wholly new form of being and life. Saint Paul, again, “Even if we used to know Christ according to the flesh, yet now we no longer know him (so).” (2 Corinthians 5, 16).
In the resurrecion stories, the disciples fail to recognize, at least at first, the risen Christ: in the garden (John), on the road to Emmaus (Luke), as they gather in the Upper Room (Luke), and at the lakeside in Galilee (John). Jesus comes and goes, passing through locked doors, appearing and disappearing suddenly, not held back by materiality nor constrained by the categories of space and time. It is the same Jesus they knew before the crucifixion, but now he has “entered into an entirely new form of existence, one in which he shared the power of God and in which he could share that power with others,” writes Luke Timothy Johnson. “The sharing in Jesus’ new life through the power of the Holy Spirit is an essential dimension of the resurrection,” Kenneth Woodward, in a long essay in the April 8 issue of Newsweek, adds a final comment. “Not everyone has, can or will accept that belief. But without it there is no Easter.”
The British musical Godspell doesn’t show Jesus risen from the dead. I`m told. Protests greeted its early performances in London, because “the physical Jesus didn’t come back onstage after the crucifixion.” In Godspell, Jesus dies. This is followed by silence. Then the disciples take his dead body and slowly, reverently, carry it off the stage. As they do, they begin to sing, “Long live God,” slowly and softly at first, then faster and louder, with increasing joy. Over the refrain, the song of the Baptist, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord” is heard again, rising triumphantly, the players onstage now dancing and the audience joining in, clapping and singing, too. The musical is saying, “The story of Jesus begins again. Now it’s your story, you who follow Jesus, you who believe in him, in what he lived for and died for, for which he was raised up.”
This is what the resurrection is about: Jesus shares his new life with you. The resurrection is death transformed into new life, and bursting out in glory – in Jesus and in all in whom he lives. (I haven’t seen Godspell myself; I depend here on a description by Fr. John Hadley.)
In a way, people find it hard to get too excited about Easter because, every Sunday, Easter is renewed. The Easter vigil expands the symbols and rites of every Sunday; the risen Christ of the Easter candle and the Exsultet is there in every Eucharist, in every celebration at the altar all year long. The risen Christ is ours every day, Resurrexi et adhuc recum su; I am risen, yet I am with you still.
In Jesus’ death, his body was sown in the earth and died, like the grain of wheat spoken of in John. In the resurrection, the Father raised it, no longer the physical mortal body but a spiritual body. Soma beumatikon, St. Paul calls it: “a spiritual body which all the disciples and priests and Romans, and tyrants and skeptics, and preachers and theologians and bishops and inquisitors in the world have been unable to hold down ever since.” (John Hadley) “He won’t stay in safe and respectable places. More likely he’ll be found, as in his earthly life, amongst the poor and the (dis)reputable)…more likely in pubs than in vestries….leading not a religious procession but a bacchanalian conga which turns everything in its path inside out and upside down.” (John Hadley again, though I think that last clause a bit overdone; but it’s Easter Sunday, so let it stand.)
Today’s readers will, by now, I trust, have caught on. When Christians relate to the crucified and risen Christ we don’t turn to him primarily as a historical figure from the past, not even as someone who’s up there, sitting at God’s right hand. Rather we relate to him as present among us, within us, present in the Church in people, above all in the poor. Present as living Lord who speaks in our words and acts in our sacraments – especially when we gather in his name to break his bread and share his cup. For it is at that particular moment, seeing in faith the wounds shining in his broken hands, that we recognize him.
But “the primary witness today to the truth of Jesus’ resurrection lies in the quality of commitment and hope displayed in the lives of Christians.” (Brendan Lovett) It is when our lives display the pattern of Jesus, when the marks of his redemptive wounds are reproduced in our deeds, when people give love and count not its cost, when suffering is offered gladly for others and joined to Jesus’ passion, when the summons of the cross is not refused – then we see the risen Jesus in our midst. When we are willing to be broken and poured out for his purposes, for his people, for his dream of the Kingdom, then, too, we become the real presence of the crucified and risen One.
In the seminary where I live, we sing a splendid communion hymn by David Hass. This is the last stanza:
We are the presence of (Christ); this is our call
Now to become bread and wine;
Food for the hungry, life for the weary,
For to live with the Lord, we must die with the Lord.
We hold the death of the Lord deep in our hearts.
Living, now we remain with Jesus the Christ
Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday belong inextricably, inseparably together in the mystery of the Redemption: Together they yield one law; death transformed into life; cross into resurrection – and glory; the story of Jesus’ life, the pattern of our own. And its verification, its issue: this verse from the first Letter of John:
For our part, we have crossed over from death to life. This we know, become we love our brothers.
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