Living the Word: Easter: The New Normal?

THE SUNDAY AFTER EASTER we all take a breath. We’ve worked hard to offer our best for Easter. Ministers often have had to preach more than our accustomed once a week. Choirs have gone all out. The sanctuary has been cleaned and decorated and trampled upon and cleaned again. Worship services may even have been lively and full. Now, as the Easter season settles in, all goes back to normal. We gather these Sundays not for spectacle, but for the risen Christ, refracted off the faces of one another.

The lectionary readings send us into unfamiliar territory. During these days, there’s not an Old Testament reading in sight—the book of Acts functions as the history of God’s faithfulness. Revelation tears a hole where Paul usually is. The gospel texts speak to the unbearable newness of a risen Lord reorienting the world around himself.

In the ancient church, those baptized at the Easter vigil would first be stripped naked before going under the water. They then donned a new robe as a sign of “putting on” Christ—and wore it throughout the Easter season. They went to church daily, learning what it meant to be “in Christ.” Had they ever seen a baptism before attending their own? Had they ever shared in Eucharist until they tasted one? I wonder whether the Easter season can be a new normal. Not one where we settle for the ordinary, but one where we take part in the risen Christ’s wrapping of all reality around the empty tomb.

[April 3]

Doubt and Praise

Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 150; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

IN ACTS, PETER SHOWS himself the patron saint of all civil disobedience: “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (5:29). Christians in the West are often known for our bellicose support of more muscular foreign policy and divisive domestic agendas. But Peter and the apostles suggest Christians should be known for constantly being at odds with human authority. Resurrection obliterates political quiescence.

The religious authorities object, of course. They accuse the apostles of always trying to “bring this man’s blood on us.” Peter seems to agree (5:30), but only seems to. The broad swath of the New Testament makes it clear that it is we, all of us, who killed Jesus with our sins. The government, the religious authorities, the ordinary people, even his apostles participated, collaborated, or fled. We killed him. Then he returns to us, his killers, with grace and forgiveness where one might have expected vengeance. Now we are a “kingdom of priests” (Revelation 1:6), called to mediate undeserved forgiveness to a world stupefied by it.

John’s story of Thomas doubting that Jesus is truly risen from the dead is one of our best. (Caravaggio’s painting “Doubting Thomas” perfectly captures the intense drama, with Thomas’ finger probing the wound in Jesus’ side.) Thomas’ response after touching Jesus is the weightiest Christological confession in the whole Bible: “My Lord and my God” (20:28). Catholics are often taught to recite this phrase at the consecration of the host. Other Christians can say it too—when we see the poor, our enemy, those to whom we’ve made difficult promises, and the person in the mirror. Contrary to our objections, we are guilty of doubt, just like Thomas. Contrary to all logic, we are forgiven, just like Thomas. If this is true, then everything is different.

Psalm 150 registers the scale of this change. It is a cacophony of extravagant praise, of loud clashing cymbals! At the end of the psalm, at the end of this worship, at the end of our lives, all that is left is praise—exuberant, ridiculous, world-reorienting jubilation. In other words, church as usual.

[ April 10 ]

Death, Upended

Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19

IF YOU'RE AN ATHEIST, and something really good happens, whom do you thank?

These scripture passages all reflect staggering reversal. The psalmist was dying and is suddenly, deliciously, unexpectedly alive. Paul is on his way to murder a religious minority and ends up joining it. The Lamb who was slain now receives universal honor. And Jesus is so presumed dead that his disciples are returning to their “pre-Jesus” lives.

Then something happens that upends death altogether. The sick one gets well. The slaughtered Lamb now rules. Paul is struck down, does not eat for three days and nights (his own passion), is baptized, and starts to preach (and to suffer—Acts 9:16). Jesus turns back up, knowing exactly where to fish to bring in miraculous hauls. This is all surprising—impossible even—to judge by our normal lights. But then, if God brought all things out of nothing, perhaps this is all a new normal.

Why does John specify exactly how many fish the apostles catch? Why 153? St. Jerome imagined it was the total number of fish species in the world, signifying the church’s worldwide mission. But first century people already knew more than that many fish. St. Augustine does math. In the third era (the era before the law, the era under the law, and the era under grace) of history, 50 days after Easter (Pentecost), the triune God (three) extends the church to all nations. 3 x 50 + 3 = 153. Like that? On and on it goes.

What do we know? All things, looked at aright, bear witness to the resurrection—even things as world-altering as miracles and as ordinary as random numbers.

[ April 17 ]

Little Resurrections

Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

SHEEP MAKE FOR some of our most predictable, clichéd lessons. So instead of starting with John 10, let’s start with the “little resurrections” in Acts, shall we?

Peter raises a dead woman back to life. Tabitha hasn’t been gone long. But gone she is: washed, laid out, not coming back. Unless there’s a prophet nearby. Her friends hear there is. They fetch Peter.

Peter has read his Bible. He knows what Elijah did when a hospitable widow’s only son died: Elijah stretched out on him three times and revived him (1 Kings 17:17-24). Peter knows what Elisha did when another widow’s son died: He laid upon the child, mouth to mouth, eyeball to eyeball, and brought him back (2 Kings 4:18-37). So Peter has precedent—and he has prayers. Soon the woman, Tabitha, has breath and is making garments again. Peter is one of the prophets. Jesus’ defiance of death is at work in him (Luke 7:11-17 and 8:41-56). I love how bodily these passages are, how specific (eyeballs and mouths and warm bodies and garments). God could heal at a distance, but instead comes unbearably close.

Back to the sheep. John’s gospel describes a different kind of shepherd, one whose voice the sheep recognize. One who walks with us through dark valleys and sets a table in the presence of our enemies. One who lays down his life for the sheep. I’m no expert on shepherds, but I imagine if every shepherd were willing to die for every sheep, we’d soon have no more shepherds (without a few resurrections). Jesus works backward from the way we do and teaches us to do the same.

“Who are these, robed in white?” John’s seer asks in Revelation 7:13. They wear robes of the sort Tabitha wove. What is necessary to wear a robe? A body. This is no disembodied, otherworldly hope. No. It’s a hope as tangible as a poor widow who gets her son back, a middle-class craftswoman who gets her self back, a legion of saints who get their bodies back, just as Jesus snatched life itself back from death. And ever thereafter we’re given eyes to see the little resurrections around us.

[ April 24 ]

Even Sea Monsters Praise!

Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 148; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

THE PSALMS in this season are a delight. Psalm 148 names, among those summoned to praise God, the heavens, the angels, the sun and the moon and the stars, sea monsters, fire and hail, snow and frost and wind, mountains and hills and fruit trees and cedars and wild animals and cattle and creeping things and birds. Praise!

The implication is clear. All critters know they should praise—except for stubborn humanity.

These passages lay out some of the most common objections to faith. First, that it’s only for a select few people who then look down on others. No, Acts says. God chooses Israel in order that, through Israel, God could get to all of us. Second, religion encourages otherworldly escapism and is an opiate to sedate the masses. No, Revelation says. Christian faith is about Christ coming down from heaven, making a dwelling place among us, bringing into being the world as God has intended it to be from the beginning. Third, faith forgets love. True enough, says John, so Jesus gives us a “new” command that’s as old as commands get: Love. The new thing here is not the content but the speaker. The crucified and risen Christ is the one who commands us to love. Love costs God everything and will cost us the same.

And yet we praise. God has a strange way of reclaiming creation. God gathers up praise from the tiniest creeping things, the most majestic cosmic things, and the most elusive thing of all—the human heart.

It’s true that religions will continue to exclude. People of faith will continue to obfuscate and be a tool in the hands of “the Man.” We will forget love.

But that’s probably true of everyone, religious or not. Yet God will get the universe of praise God intended from the beginning—starting with Jesus, stretching throughout God’s beloved Israel, and even to us, reaching down to every depth and up to every height. And that’s a reason to praise!