Variety: John 20v18
John 20:18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’
Richard Rohr explains how the resurrection offers us hope, especially in challenging times:
I often wonder why so much of human life seems so futile, so tragic, so short, and so sad. If Christ is risen, why do people die before they begin to truly live? Why has there been nonstop war? Why are so many people imprisoned unjustly? Why are the poor oppressed? Why do we destroy so many of our relationships? If Christ is risen, why is there so much suffering? What is God up to? It really doesn’t make any logical sense. Is the resurrection something that just happened once, in his body, but not in ours?
I believe the resurrection of Christ is saying that the final judgment has already happened. It’s nothing we need to fear. It’s nothing we need to avoid or deny. God’s final judgment is that God will have the last word! Easter reveals that there are no dead ends; ultimately, nothing is going to end in tragedy and crucifixion. Of course we look around us, at history and at life in its daily moments and it seems, “No, that isn’t true.” And yet, ever and again, here and there, more than we suspect, new life breaks through for those who are willing to see and to cooperate with this universal mystery of resurrection.
We’re so lucky in my part of the world that Easter coincides with springtime. If this applies to you, I hope you’re going out and seeing the leaves and the flowers being reborn after months of winter. I went out early this morning to see the Easter sunrise. Sure enough, the sun rose as it always does and peeked over the horizon, just between two mountains. It appeared not so much like a sunrise but as a groundswell. The light was coming from the earth. It was coming from the world we live in. It was coming not from the top, but from the bottom. It seemed to say that even all of this, which looks muddy and material, even all of this, which looks so ordinary and dying, will be reborn.
Easter is the feast of hope. This is the feast that says God will have the last word and that God’s final judgment is resurrection. God will turn all that we maim and destroy and hurt and punish into life and beauty.
What the resurrection reveals more than anything else is that love is stronger than death. Jesus walks the way of death with love, and what it becomes is not death but life. Surprise of surprises! It doesn’t fit any logical explanation. Yet this is the mystery: that nothing dies forever, and that all that has died will be reborn in love.
So, to be a Christian is to be inevitably and forever a person of hope. God in Christ is saying this is what will last: My life and my love will always and forever have the final word.
Centre for Action and Contemplation