CAC Dean of Faculty Brian McLaren encourages us to make Easter an expansive celebration of resurrection.
What might happen if every Easter we celebrated the resurrection not merely as the resuscitation of a single corpse nearly two millennia ago, but more—as the ongoing resurrection of all humanity through Christ? Easter could be the annual affirmation of our ongoing resurrection from violence to peace, from fear to faith, from hostility to love, from a culture of consumption to a culture of stewardship and generosity … and in all these ways and more, from death to life. What if our celebration of Easter was so radical in its meaning that it tempted tyrants and dictators everywhere to make it illegal, because it represents the ultimate scandal: an annual call for creative and peaceful insurrection against all status quos based on fear, hostility, exclusion, and violence? What if we never stopped making Easter claims about Jesus in AD 33, but always continued by making Easter claims on us today—declaring that now is the time to be raised from the deadness of fear, hostility, exclusion, and violence to walk in what Paul called “newness of life”? What if Easter was about our ongoing resurrection “in Christ”—in a new humanity marked by a strong-benevolent identity as Christ-embodying peacemakers, enemy lovers, offense forgivers, boundary crossers, and movement builders? What kind of character would this kind of liturgical year form in us? How might the world be changed because of it? [1]
Retired Episcopal bishop and Choctaw citizen Steven Charleston offers this celebratory song for the coming of new light and new hope:
Rise up, faithful friends. Wake up, sleepers in the shadows. Wake up to see bright banners on your horizon. Wake up to see your redemption coming to you, the answer to so many of your prayers, the fulfillment of your dream from long ago. Rise up, faithful friends, to shout the good news to the morning sun: justice has arrived at last, mercy has returned, love has won the day. Rise up, good people of many lands, for this is the moment of change, the time when hope starts to be real and truth begins to speak to every courageous heart. Wake up, rise up, and rejoice! [2]
McLaren imagines the impact of the ongoing recognition that we meet the risen Christ in all we encounter:
I can imagine Easter opening a fifty-day period during which we constantly celebrate newness, freedom, change, and growth. As we would retell each year the story of the risen Christ appearing in the stranger on the Emmaus Road, so part of every Easter season for us would mean meeting and inviting to our tables strangers, aliens, refugees, people of other religions or no religion at all, to welcome them as we would Christ, and to expect to meet Christ in them. [3]
References:
[1] Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World (Jericho Books, 2012), 175.
[2] Steven Charleston, Ladder to the Light: An Indigenous Elder’s Meditations on Hope and Courage (Broadleaf, 2021), 154–155.
[3] McLaren, Why Did Jesus, 175–176.
Image credit and inspiration: Krista Joy Montgomery, Unknown (detail), 2019, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. We carefully tend the blooms of bright resurrection after the pain of our Good Fridays.
Story from Our Community:
I have been surprised and amazed at my new understanding of Lent this year. I always jumped to the joy of Easter without truly experiencing the wilderness and suffering of Lent. Events like the COVID epidemic and other times of isolation have revealed to me the deep spiritual growth that can come from solitude, silence, and emotional wilderness.
—Margaret C.
