How Does The Resurrection Give Us Hope today?

31 March, 2024

A whole year ago, on the Sunday after Easter 2023, I started this blog - and in that blog I explored the question: Are we to take the physical description of the resurrected Jesus literally?  (Having an Adult Faith)

And so today, on the last Sunday of that year of blogs, I want to share a brief reflection on the meaning of Easter.   In the Christian tradition, the Easter Tridium comprising of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are perceived as one composite unit, where the meaning of each is intimately linked to the meaning of all three together.

And so as I reflected on Jesus as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane (which took place on that Thursday when he was arrested), I remember his plaintive cry:  Father if it be possible, take this cup away from me, nevertheless, let not my will but yours be done.  And as the Gospel tells us, so great was Jesus’ fear and anguish that he sweated drops of blood. Medical science tells us that this sweating of blood or Hematidrosis can be caused in women with bleeding disorders, but otherwise by extreme distress or fear, such as facing death, torture, or severe ongoing abuse. And the latter reasons seem very much in  harmony with what the Gospels tell us that Jesus was going through as he reached the end of his life.  And then on Good Friday, we have a dying Jesus cry out: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!!.  And though some have tried to downplay this by saying that Jesus did not really feel God had abandoned him, but was just quoting a psalm, the simple question is why would a person who knew the Psalms have chosen this particular line to express what he was going through? Wouldn’t the simplest explanation be that he used this line because it expressed what he really felt?

And so we see a Jesus who, at the end of his life, experiences what it means to be an abject and complete failure.  After three years of preaching what he wanted to share with all as the good news; after three years of much acclaim when he worked miracles, even to the point of many wanting to make him King, as we see most poignantly just a few days before on what we call Palm Sunday; after three years of trying to teach his closest friends (his apostles, his disciples) what it means to bring about the kingdom of heaven in their hearts,  he now experiences that it was all to no avail, he now experiences a deep sense of utter failure.  His disciples certainly do not understand him as they cannot even understand his pain and stay awake with him, later all his disciples all run away, one denies him, one betrays him. Later the disciples running away to Emmaus express clearly what they all believed: We thought he was the one to redeem Israel.  So an utter failure as a teacher, as a guru as it were.  And again an utter failure when the Jewish religious establishment of the religion to which he was so faithful, completely abandons him, so much so that they would much prefer a robber  Barabbas than him. And finally, an utter failure when he is killed by crucifixion, a death reserved for the worst criminals, and where he feels abandoned even by God his Father.

So as Jesus enters the final phase of his life, he sees his own life as an utter failure.

And then suddenly, there is a resurrection of his entire life and his teachings.  Suddenly his disciples finally understand,  and from cowering cowards they become unafraid missionaries - and Jesus’ teachings and life change the entire world.  What a resurrection!!!

And when I look at that life, it strikes me that for those who choose to try and change the world, it doesn’t matter in the long run whether they see any success in their own lives; it doesn’t matter if even in their own eyes they die as failures - because if that person has lived his or her life with deep integrity AND deep love, then eventually his/her message will live again, they will change the world, and the resurrected self will be far different from their original limited selves.  So for those who have given their all with integrity and love, and still experience failure, this is the meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus that they can hold on to.