Resurrection People

The seed is in the ground

Now we may rest in hope

While darkness does its work.

-Wendell Berry, Sabbath Poem 1991.V

We very well might not have people gathered together on Resurrection Sunday.  For Christians, Easter is the single most important day of the year.  Even if it has been eclipsed in the increasingly secular and nominally Christian world by Christmas, the day of the Resurrection of Jesus marks the moment when we separate from every other faith, even the other "people of the book" as Islam calls Jews, Christians and Muslims, because of our belief that Jesus, who was crucified, dead and buried, did not stay that way.  While we may not be able to gather this year because of COVID-19, we must learn to be, more than ever, people who live in the light of the resurrection.

There are two things to keep in mind during this season of enforced sabbath time, where we have been told, as a matter of common good and health, to stop many of the things we would otherwise be doing.  The first is that the darkness of the tomb was necessary for the dawning of the light.  Jesus told his disciples and many others that he was the light of the world, mostly they did not fully apprehend what that meant.  Only the startling triumph over the darkness of death could truly assure the human heart that God was indeed with us.  The reason the death of Jesus was so dark, involving the betrayal of a friend, the conniving of those in power (including religious power), and the brutality of an oppressive empire, was not because there was some price to be paid, but because the light needed to break in an unmistakable way.

The second thing to remember though is that the person Jesus was before the resurrection is also who he was after.  He did not die on Good Friday as a rejected Nazarene craftsman/travelling rabbi/miracle worker and rise on the third day as the Son of God, he was all those things, all the time.  That means that the fundamental things that Jesus taught before the whole death and resurrection event still hold true.  We are still called to love God and love each other, we are still called to care for the last and the least of these, we are still bound to proclaim justice, mercy and good news.  Loving one another in this time of a pandemic means that we have to stay in the darkness a bit longer than we would probably like.

The proposition that is being made that somehow we just need to bite the bullet and get back to normal so that business can go on and so that the world as we know doesn't suffer too much is morally repugnant from the perspective of a person who follows the Jesus that Gospels tell us about.  The idea that our faith will protect us is ignorant and dangerous.  The proposal that we should just resign the old and the vulnerable to death by drowning in their own fluids so that we can "go about our business," should be seen for the utter anathema of Christian values and ethics that it is.

I know that this pandemic has put us in an unusual situation as the church, so much of what we associate with worship and community is the gathering of the people.  But in order to love our neighbor and care for one another as Christ commands, we have to learn some new things. Someday we will be able to emerge again from our isolation, someday we will be able to exit the tomb, when that day comes we will be able to celebrate, but even in our places and our solitude, we can still be people of the resurrection.