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[Back to index of April articles] BEARINGS: By Martin L. Smith We've all tried yanking at loose threads dangling from our clothes, only to find that instead of snapping they unravel the whole seam. Some questions are like those threads. We think twice about dealing with them in case we make a worse rip in the fabric of the story we tell about ourselves. Just now, I am not sure that I want to ask How real will my "Easter joy" be this year? Questions about the authenticity of our feelings are scary. Where might it lead if I start wondering whether my religious experience is fake? Religion is fraught with the danger of confusing genuine experience of God with counterfeits. So what is authentic Easter joy? Well, I do know it isn't relief at the return of spring, however welcome that is. Easter joy has to be something that I would experience just as much in the southern hemisphere, where Easter heralds the onset of winter cold. Easter joy is not a seasonal mood of uplift. Neither is Easter joy to be confused with the triumphalism of popular religion that deforms the resurrection by misrepresenting it as "a descent from the cross given greater dramatic effect by a 36-hour postponement," as the fearless Anglican philosopher Donald McKinnon once said. The counterfeit version of Easter joy depends on the make-believe that God pulls a surprise "happy ending" on us after the ghastly setback of Jesus' crucifixion. Jesus is presented as a Houdini figure whom, it seems, couldn't possibly have escaped from this ultimate trap of crucifixion and burial in the sealed tomb. But no! To our relief - our so-called Easter joy - out he comes! All is well and our hero is victorious, the One they couldn't keep down! Happy Easter! Let's congratulate ourselves for being on the winning side! Nor is Easter joy to be confused with the common idea that all this resurrection stuff is just a fancy way of assuring ourselves that Jesus's soul passed automatically into heaven. The apostles speak of a resurrection that is a shocking and unprecedented anomaly. They could understand what occurred only as the Creator taking Jesus into the ultimate state of glory that faith had intuited as the eventual and final fulfillment of God's goal for human beings. The glorification that people had imagined as the final achievement of the Creator's purpose was enacted instead in the here and now. God embraced, recreated, and transformed the entirety of Jesus' person and being - including his shattered corpse, which was not left behind as a mere husk. The only trace left behind from this surge of transmuting energy welling up within God and enveloping the body of Jesus was the empty tomb. The resurrection leaves no body behind to rot or to be fawned over as the relics of a martyr. Easter joy focuses then on why God would do this to Jesus, something that by definition only he could do. If someone is raised while history is allowed to go on, this is God's only way of showing us what he is actually like. The resurrection is God's way of showing that it is the crucified Jesus who is the ultimate manifestation of his identity and character. In the resurrection, it is Jesus-on-the-cross that is confirmed as the 'last word' about the nature of divine love and creativity - and divine vulnerability. This is where it gets scary. The resurrection only makes sense as God's "showing his hand" about the meaning of the cross. So I can't have Easter joy if I don't find joy in Jesus-on-the-cross. In fact, I can't even believe in the resurrection, unless I want to believe in a God who would be so crazy as to identify himself with the crucified Jesus. God identifies with Jesus' choice to risk being crucified, his refusal to make the compromises that could have saved him from it. Paul speaks of "the foolishness and weakness of God" shown on the cross. The resurrection, far from supporting the notion of a triumphalistic deity of power, mysteriously confirms how deeply hidden and baffling the Creator truly is, as he reveals that he is at one with the man who so willingly exposed himself with an open heart to the fate devised by political power and religious expediency to crush him. Authentic Easter joy - the pearl of great price hidden among all the plastic fakes - is unfeigned delight in my heart of hearts that a hidden God turns out to be so different from all the stuff, aggressive or sentimental, that gets fabricated about him. The real God has authenticated himself in an event only the poor in spirit can really understand, certifying that we can know the divine heart and spirit through the single-minded, open, tender, fierce, penetrating, inviting, integrity and love displayed in Jesus' yielding to death on the cross. [Back to index of April articles]
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