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Woke up this morning and decided to write an article about Easter. I waited for God to deliver a word of wisdom, it didn’t happen. Scanned the Bible, looked at all the helpful bits, still nothing. Prayed, nope, nothing, not an evangelical, theological sausage to be seen! Pranced up and down waving my arms about singing “Hallelujah!” until my housemates looked at me strangely before complaining about the noise, (I think I need to pray extra hard for them, they’re dangerous liberals, you know), but still to no avail. “Aha!” I thought, “this needs another approach.” So I got some Rosary Beads, meditated on the glorious mysteries and recited three “Hail Mary”s. Would you believe it!? Still nothing!
I was halfway through my third Taizé chant when God interrupted me:
“Look at the newspaper.”
“Pardon?”, I replied.
“Look at the newspaper.”
This seemed like a strange commandment what ground breaking theological insight was I to gain from the Sun (oops, sorry, I mean the Guardian, nearly slipped up there!)? And then I saw it! The General Election! Angels Sang, Graham Kendrick praised the Lord in harmony with the six winged Seraphim! The six winged Seraphim then proceeded to show Graham the blunt edge of his guitar …
… but I digress.
Where was I? Oh yes, the General Election! (small fanfare!) As the General election reaches its conclusion I guess that some of you will be celebrating, some of you will be commiserating, but if you re like me then you’ll probably be left feeling cynical about the whole event, unimpressed by any of the main political parties. In recent times I’ve thought that I should just vote for the “Independent Screamingly Natural Perverts Party” and have done with it. I felt justified in this astounding piece of political analysis when I read that the Church has released a report which attacks all the main political parties for “turning their backs on the dispossessed and the unemployed in a frantic scramble for middle class votes”. Whether or not you agree with this statement, it certainly serves as a challenge to the priorities of us all.
So what of the challenge? Well, it’s not new, in fact it’s a challenge which lies at the heart of the Christian faith. How can we help to build the kingdom of heaven? Not an easy question, but it’s one which Christ would have us take seriously. If we look at Mark Ch 10 vv 17 — we may find some clues about how we should respond, this verse also underlines the responsibility we have for those around us and teaches us, that Christian love is an active and dynamic thing. I shall leave you to look it up.
By now many of you will be head butting the walls and screaming: “Yes, yes, your social conscience is very commendable but what has this got to do with Easter?” Okay, I’ll stop waffling and tell you. Christ, whose words and actions addressed fundamental social and spiritual questions, shared the world’s pains on the cross and carries the scars of crucifixion into new life!
Many of us feel that we have also experienced a crucifixion of some sort, but through Christ we can also experience resurrection, however, we still bear the scars, and through these scars we can find part of the answer.
Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 warns us not to be too confused about the state of our spiritual bodies in the next world but urges us to continue in our labour in this world. Christ warns us that if we neglect to feed the starving or shelter the homeless then we have neglected him. This is a huge responsibility, one which we all share, whether it be directly or by trying to influence policy decisions, policies which accept this responsibility (sin is not simply an individual thing, to say otherwise is no neglect our responsibilities). Through neglect Christ remains crucified, looking down from the cross, sharing the pain of the world. But, yet, at the same time we are also gazing into an empty tomb in an ongoing process of crucifixion and resurrection.
How do we respond? Well, this may be different for each of us, however the message resurrection remains the same, in the words of the theologian H.A. Williams:
When we begin to recognise the power of the resurrection in the ordinary gritty routine of our lives, then we shall see for ourselves that all that separates and destroys is being overcome by what unites, heals and creates. We shall no longer have to ask where and when this happens, for we shall have first hand experience of it as ordinary folk in the ordinary world …
And our scars? Well, again these are different for each of us, for a friend of mine it was having to live with the HIV virus in a world (and church) which crucified him everyday. But through Christ he found resurrection, and baring those scars he lived life to the full, always questioning, always fighting, and inviting us to place our fingers in his wounds. Once we’ve accepted the mystery of the resurrection and met Christ on the road of our lives we become more complete people, but we also become more vulnerable people, open to the pain of the crucifixion, this is not always a ‘joyful’ experience.
There’s a temptation after a ‘resurrection’ experience to lapse into a form of personal piety, after all, we ‘know’ that ‘we’ have been ‘saved’, so there’s a tendency to leap on anyone whom we ‘know’ is not ‘saved’ and force half a Bible down their throats. My experience with Christ has informed me that (at best) such approaches are short term because we don’t take into account the whole person, the vulnerable person trying to make sense of it all. It’s also bad for us because we become big-headed. We assume that we ‘know’ God’s plan for that person, and we are likely to go into shock during our next period of ‘crucifixion’. My experience is that people relate better to Christians who live out their faith openly and honestly but don’t try to cover up the vulnerability and the hurt, Christians who are honest about the questions and contradictions which make up the wounds of the resurrection body. Only then can we unite, heal and create.
Forever crucified, forever gazing into an empty tomb. Questioning and shaking up the values of this world and looking towards the next. I leave you with the words of another theologian, John Burton:
Our own resurrection, which begins, Christians believe, in the present life, does not mean that all the sufferings we ourselves may have undergone, all the troubles we have known, all the disappointments we have experienced are simply wiped out as though they had never been and we are turned into angels playing harps on clouds. Resurrection for each of us means that God affirms what we have become, with all the suffering that has made us the people we are, and builds it all into the character he stamps upon us as he raises us to new life with him. Resurrection means that God does not obliterate our past, but integrates it into his new order.
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Last modified: 25th November 2005