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Easter is so American! Jesus rose from the grave – as John describes the encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene – in a physical body that could be touched and held[1] and later, as Jesus dined with his disciples on the beach,[2] a body that hungered for food. Although clearly also a cosmically accessorized body, enabling Jesus to walk through locked doors.[3] Nevertheless, a body that in its essential fleshly earthiness bears the promise that the Easter proclamation of new and eternal life is to be realized now!
Today, I challenge that old pious notion that this life is a rehearsal for the next. If true, makes this life both less important (there’s something better awaiting us in the great beyond) and more important (we had better get it right, for the only bad rehearsal is the one in which we practice the wrong tune and play the wrong notes over and over, thus when the real performance comes – in this case, at the threshold of heaven – we’re just, well, wrong and, therefore, get sent to hell). I challenge this idea, for a physical resurrection proclaims that this life is important for its own sake.
But not so fast! If that’s true, then we face an immediate new danger, far worse than holding onto empty pious notions. If life is all about now, then almost inexorably we fall into the trap of making life all about us. We worship at the altar of the worldly cult of individual personality development and self-fulfillment, where the rites and rituals are all about our intellectual achievements (the books we’ve read, the thoughts we think, the opinions we form), our personal attainments (the status-giving jobs we’ve held, the positions of prominence in our communities, even the relationships we’ve amassed, who we know and how well we know them), and, even in this era of economic turmoil, our material accoutrements of goods and pleasures – property, travel, vacations, fine food and drink. And all of it in pursuit of that earthly haven called “happiness.” How American!
But this quest to satisfy ourselves and equating our satisfaction with happiness is a myth. Just as much as the notion that on the “last day” Jesus will come in glory and should we be lucky or blessed enough to be numbered among the saved, then we will dwell in the fulfillment of forever in the presence of angels and saints.
Life, I believe, is eternal as we follow Jesus. That is, living for more than ourselves. Living in love and with justice to make life greater, better, richer, more abundant for others, particularly our sisters and brothers who are not like us.
The Easter promise of new life proclaimed by the resurrection of Jesus is possible only because it follows Good Friday. It is in the willingness, even more, the actuality of our sacrifice in service for others than ourselves that makes the eternal now.
[1] The gospel passage appointed for the day is John 20.1-18.
