Resurrection is Real

Resurrection is as real as anything, surely at least as real as Crucifixion. 

Say or think what you will about what happens to one's body after death. I choose to leave room for enough mystery, enough so that I may state that the different Gospel accounts of post-tomb Jesus appearances are not certainly fabricated. Do I understand how it may be possible for a once-dead person to show up behind locked doors or eat fish on the beach? No. But I also choose not to dismiss stories about these inexplicable events any more than I dismiss stories about the inexplicable fact that I am seen as lovable by my amazing spouse. "Real" and "true," it turns out, are fabulously complicated notions that don't always depend on logic or facts for their meaning.

One fact that is sad is that we can likely agree quickly and easily that Crucifixion is real. It was real and embodied in torture, oppression, injustice, hatred, lust for power, and murder with regard to Jesus of Nazareth just as clearly as it is real and embodied in too many places too often today. There is no gap for me between the ways of death practiced at Calvary and those practiced all around the world today. On my worst days, the reality of Crucifixion is stark in my own imagination with thoughts of retribution and more, and it is too readily available in practices of which I am not proud.

But here's the thing about Good Friday, what makes it good: we recognize that Crucifixion ought not be our norm. We rightly wring our hands and feel blood pressure rising as we read headlines, but even these symptoms point to the dis-ease that we have with too much death in the world. Somewhere deep inside, we have enough of a sense of what is right, to react with anxiety toward what is evidently wrong. This core locus of goodness, this gauge of what is properly loving, is at least a seed of proof of the truth of Resurrection. 

If I hold such a seed, perhaps in or of my soul (gut, heart, intuition, etc. - pick what works), then it seems logical to believe that if I nurture it I will eventually find a sprout. If the metaphor holds, a plant may grow that over time yields something like fruit. I have lived long enough to learn the power of practice as nurture, such as when a gut reaction prompts one at first to simply not laugh at the sexist "joke." Cultivating this growth, the next level might find our hero actually confronting the racist comment. New life, anyone? Before you know it, death has lost its sting, and we are building something beautiful and restorative to undo economic injustice in places we previously did not know existed. 

Fruit and flowers are only possible, of course, because at some point a seed died or at least gave way for the plant-to-be. An orchid feeds the eye with beauty in a way no less real than a blueberry bush satisfies all kinds of critters, all thanks to the lowly seed. In much the same way, new life comes forth not only through justice and equity work, but in songs, sunsets, delicious meals, expressions of compassion, and in every other creative, restorative movement.

It's at times fearful and difficult, this push through deathly power with love. We also have to recognize that the power of goodness and new life do not magically cause death to vaporize. Pain and loss continue to be real, but they do not ultimately finish our story. If it is even possible for Christ to chart a course for an entirely new way of being alive beyond the grave, then surely we may find our own way with God to keep on keeping on through any crucifixions that we encounter. Indeed, nothing is more real and true than love alive as a power greater than death, Resurrection beautiful.