Easter, April 5 2015
Acts 10:34, 37-43; Col 3:1-4; John 10:1-9
Brookdale
Why Easter? The most common version of the Christian story in the West—that is, among Catholics and Protestants—is that Jesus died on the cross to save us, because we were all destined for Hell by the disobedience of the first human beings. There are several variants of this story, but in all of them it is the suffering and death of Jesus that save us. So who needs Easter? Why does today’s Gospel passage say “they did not yet understand the scripture, that he had to rise from the dead”?
The Gospel writer is, of course, referring to the Hebrew Scriptures. But the scriptures nowhere explicitly say that the Messiah has to rise from the dead. What does happen in scripture, however, over and over again, is that salvation has two aspects. The first aspect is negative: the destruction of sin and cleansing of evil. The second aspect is positive: the imparting of new life.
We see this in the Exodus. The people have to leave their homes in Egypt and head out into the desert. They have to sacrifice a lamb and sprinkle its blood on their doors. They have to throw out their old bread starter—called yeast in today’s second reading—and eat unleavened bread. These actions all involve loss, but they are necessary in order to prepare for the positive part of the action: to escape slavery, get to Israel, start fresh with new yeast.
We see the two aspects of salvation in the story of the Babylonian captivity. In the first, negative aspect, Jerusalem, the kingdom, and the temple are all destroyed by the Babylonians and the Judeans sent into exile. But in the second, positive aspect the exiles return to Jerusalem and build a new temple.
Ezekiel describes the two aspects of God’s saving action in a daring metaphor. In Ezekiel’s prophecy, God tells Israel that he will remove its heart of stone—that’s the negative aspect—and replace it with a new soft heart of flesh—that’s the positive aspect. Who knew they had heart transplants in ancient Israel? So the first, negative aspect takes away the heart—that is like death, but the second aspect gives a new and better life. Ezekiel even says that God will give Israel a new spirit—that recalls the time when God first blew his own spirit or breath into the first human being to make him a living being.
Our Western Christian heritage tends to emphasize the negative, cleansing aspect of salvation. We focus on the cross. The Orthodox churches, however, put more emphasis on the positive aspect of salvation, the new life of Easter. After Jesus’ death, God breathed new life into him. That new breath is the Holy Spirit, and we can live in that same Spirit. Paul even calls Jesus the second Adam—the new prototype for human beings—because God gave Christ new life as he once gave life to Adam. The Orthodox churches talk about the divinization of man, because we are invited to enjoy that new life too. We are invited to die, as Paul says, to “malice and wickedness” but then to live in “sincerity and truth,” powered by God’s own Spirit.
Modern secular society tends to deny the need for salvation. It preaches the unstoppable progress of man. There’s no need for Lent and Good Friday: No sooner are the Valentine’s Day flowers cleared from the shelves than the chocolate rabbits and eggs appear. The news reminds us that we do need salvation. We need the negative aspect of Lent and Good Friday, the death and removal of the stone heart. But we need the soft new heart too. We need Easter and new life in the Spirit. Throughout the scriptures God works in the world by his spirit. May God’s spirit live and work in us. Happy Easter!