Easter for Less...

Sea Island Chapel

“Easter for Less…”

Mark 16: 1- 8;

Robert U. Ferguson, Jr., Ph.d.

If there is any aspect of Christianity that is exceedingly difficult to get our arms around, it is Easter and the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Carlyle Marney once spoke on the campus of Duke University. When a student asked Dr. Marney to speak about the resurrection of the dead he replied:  "I will not discuss that with people like you."

"Why not?" the student asked.

"I don't discuss such matters with anyone under thirty," Dr. Marney replied.  "Look at you, in the prime of life, potent – never had you known honest to God failure, heart-burn, impotency, solid defeat, brick walls, mortality.  So what can you know of a dark world which only makes sense if Christ is raised?" 1

Resurrection is, if we are honest, a bit hard for us moderns to swallow. Of course, it is not just we of the first decades of the 21st century who have problems with the resurrection.  People have had problems with the resurrection ever since Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, and Salome walked away from the tomb dazed and confused.  You heard the succinct story Mark tells: these went to the tomb to anoint the body with spices – and instead found themselves leaving in terror and fear.  Other gospels fill in the blanks – reports quickly surfaced that the body of Jesus had been stolen – the church countered with reports of appearances – and our 2,000 year debate was off and running.  

The belief that the body of Jesus was stolen, not resurrected, has persisted, resurrecting itself every decade or so.  Skeptics alike have attacked the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus as either a fairy tale, a wish projection of the followers of Jesus, or an outright lie fabricated to perpetuate the teachings of this Palestinian peasant.

How ought we to respond to those who doubt?  Are they instruments of evil who seek to destroy faith by casting doubt on the resurrection of Jesus?  Possibly, but I think not.  Resurrection does not easily fit into our human understanding – for it is outside our normative experience and categories.  “The deceased just do not get up and walk out of a graveyard” is the reality we know.

These who deny the reality of the resurrection tend to do so because they have run up against all the incongruities in the resurrection stories.  After all – honesty compels us to admit there are discrepancies in the gospel accounts:

• Luke has Mary Magdalene accompanied by some women and immediately encountering two angels.
• Mark has these women accompanied by one other – Salome -- encountering just one angel who is inside the tomb.  No men go to the tomb in Mark’s account. 
• Matthew has the same basic account as Mark but adds that the women meet Jesus on their way back to tell the disciples.  In this meeting with Jesus they clasp his feet and worship him.
• Did Mary Magdalene go alone to the tomb as John states?  Did she, after retrieving Simon Peter and John, stand outside the tomb weeping only to be met by Jesus whom she takes to be a gardener? 

What does all this mean?  Is the resurrection a lie?  Is Christianity built upon something that never happened?  The reality is that we do not have witnesses to the actual resurrection; what we have are accounts of the events of that first Easter albeit from different persons and perspectives:  Simon Peter remembered this part – and John this – and the women another.  The differing accounts are actually proof that we do not have a concocted story, for if this were such then the details would have much more agreement than they do.  That the early church did not try to coerce these accounts into agreement is a wonderful witness to their veracity.

Doubt itself is not necessarily a prelude to disbelief, but is more often the prelude to honest, authentic faith and belief.  These first doubters became the first believers. Their doubt was echoed 25 years later by some first century Christians in Corinth who decided that the resurrection was not such a sure thing after all. (I Corinthians 15: 12-19).  Believing in the resurrection was as difficult for the first Christians – being fairly intelligent human beings who knew death much more personally than do we – as it is for us. 

So, how do we respond to the doubts that the resurrection happened?  Do we just wink, nod and go on, all the while ignoring the difficulties of such a central event in Christianity?  Do we set the resurrection aside, acting as if it did not matter?

As persons of intelligence and integrity, not to mention followers of Jesus Christ, it is impossible for us to live with such ambiguity in our faith.  After all, we are talking about the focal belief of Christianity – not just about next lunch next Tuesday or who will be running for president. We humans have a propensity to try and make all the ends come together, to have everything fit nice and neat.  However, life is much different. Life is about loose ends, unexplained mysteries, and a faith that goes beyond our abilities to understand. When all the evidence has been assembled belief is what the 19^th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard called it: a leap into the darkness, a step from the edge of our knowledge into the unknown. If we would believe in the resurrection then there will be some loose ends; there always are. 

Belief in the resurrection is not as much a matter of physical or logical proof as it is of personal & corporate experience. These first disciples who believed in the resurrection did not do so because of an empty tomb – and some did not believe just because someone else claimed to have seen Jesus (Thomas.)   These first doubters who became believers did so because they experienced the presence of the Risen Christ – either in his person or in his Spirit – in such a manner that left no room for doubt.  This experience is not just about an “event” as it is about transformation, about awakening into the presence of Christ that transforms us from the inside out.

Anger rises up within me when I hear people trying to water down the difficulty of believing in Easter.  Easter is supposed to be difficult; it is supposed to be challenging and mysterious.  Any God worth believing in must be beyond my little ability to comprehend.  The challenging part of Easter is not intellectual acceptance, as difficult as that may be; but that Easter is about my commitment, my faith, even my surrender of all that I am or ever will be to this Christ of Easter. Easter is about death – then life – both for Christ and for us.  Yes, we will die – it will happen.  Edna St. Vincent Millay put it best: “I will die, but that is all I will do for death.”   Easter is about laying down our life, my surrendering ourselves, and taking up our cross –  dying to self and rising to life in Christ long before anyone puts a body in the ground.  Easter is about trusting that in giving up our self, our desires, and our wants we will be resurrected to a life so wonderful and so full that it will never die.  

The challenge with regard to Easter in our contemporary world is that we have changed the idea of being a “follower of” Jesus to that of being a “believer in” Jesus.  There are more than enough “believers” in Jesus to populate heaven.  What Jesus needs is “followers,” i.e., those who are willing to stake their lives that following Jesus in discipleship, in life-style, in values and commitments, is the only way to live — no matter how difficult that may be.

Several years ago WalMart had a slogan that went something like this: “Easter for Less.”  Is that what we want – an Easter that costs us nothing, that asks nothing of us?  What good is an Easter like that?  What help does a cheap Easter bring when I am up at 3:00am worried about the future?  What good does a cheap Easter do for me when I stand at the grave and say good bye to a friend, a family member, a loved one?  Will an “Easter for less” do anything for me then?  What good does a cheap Easter do when I face rejection, discord and defeat?  In a world of Covid 19 and all that brings with us, we need more than “Easter for Less.”

No, the only Easter that matters at that point is the one which has been forged in the furnace of doubt and despair, which has been hammered out on the anvil of life and tempered in the fire of disappointment. The only Easter that matters is one which comes on the other side of Good Friday, which has wrestled with the crucifixion, the abandonment by God – and felt the coldness of a dark and dank tomb.  A true Easter faith is wrestled, like Jacob’s blessing, from the arms of God.  A true Easter faith comes after we have walked away confused, bewildered – and more than a little afraid – only to be met on the road to Galilee by this one who loves us no matter what.

So, we find ourselves in Easter 2020 in the midst of a pandemic.  Covid 19 has decimated families and communities, wreaking both physical death and economic hardship across this planet.  In our new lives of quarantine and isolation, we have come face to face with a reality we never dreamed existed.  We thought our biggest foes to be other nations and their armaments; we never dreamed they would be viruses and our own lifestyles.   Time and again in news broadcasts we have heard the lament of a family member who “died alone.”  In Christ that just does not happen!  In Christ we die with Christ, in Christ and through Christ.  We are loved, supported, and carried from this life to the next by the Spirit of the One whom death/evil could not conquer.

This Easter Sunday – let’s celebrate the only faith that matters – the faith which comes when we encounter the incredible surprise of Easter Sunday.  Let’s celebrate a costly faith, a tough faith, and a faith which simultaneously wears us out and invigorates us.  

Let’s celebrate and rejoice – He is Risen!  He is Risen, indeed!

 1 Paul Duke, "Transfigured Relations," The Christian Century, October 25, 1995, vol. 112, no. 30, page 985.

Sea Island Chapel

173 Marshland Road

Hilton Head Island, South Carolina 27262

Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020