Dear Friends in Christ:
Alleluia! Christ is risen; He is truly risen from the dead! Alleluia!
There is no way to overstate how remarkable, wonderful, and powerful this truth is! Yet, we tend to gloss over it and treat it in a most casual manner. Ho hum. For the most part, our world has tried to domesticate this truly earth-shattering event by trivializing it with brunches, chocolates, colored eggs, and marshmallow animals. These are not bad things, except perhaps for one’s waistline. We should celebrate, but if that is all there is, if this is the only way we appreciate the Resurrection, we have truly missed the mark. We have truly underestimated the power of the Resurrection of Jesus. Jesus’ Resurrection is so great, it is difficult for us to grasp how good this Good News is. If we did, our lives would definitely be different.
The good news about the Good News is that it is real, and our lives can be different! Our lives really can be better, richer, fulfilled, and joyful. All of this is possible when we encounter and embrace Jesus, risen from the dead. The temptation to trivialize Easter comes from our conscious and unconscious attempts to domesticate Jesus and his invitation for us to follow Him each day. Jesus wants us to walk with Him every day, not just on certain days. We try to turn Jesus into a moral teacher, philosopher, historical figure, nice guy, holy card figure, Santa Claus/Genie, or something that we can easily and politely dismiss from our “real lives”. This kind of Jesus demands little and allows us to have a casual convenience store or fast-food relationship with Him. If we need something quick and easy, fine; otherwise, we’re okay on our own. How different this is from the real Jesus presented in the gospels. How different this is from the risen Lord encountered by the women at the tomb or the disciples and later Thomas in the Upper Room behind locked doors. How different from the Jesus encountering Peter on the shore or St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Can anyone really think that a domesticated Jesus would be worth committing your life to or dying for?
The gospel accounts show the risen Jesus is not at first recognized by the women at the tomb, by the disciples on the road to Emmaus, by the Apostles in the Upper Room, or when they are at the Lake of Gennesaret. But they all, in fact, come to recognize Him. They recognize Him with certainty when He speaks their name as He did to Mary, in the breaking of bread with Cleopas and the other disciple, and by His wounds as he showed Thomas. Jesus, our risen Lord, kept His wounds. He kept the signs of His crucifixion, the nail marks in His hands and feet, His pierced side. Isn’t that a bit odd? One would think that if you are going to bring a body back to life, you would fix the injuries and imperfections. Why?
Those wounds are the signs of Jesus’ love for us. They are signs to us that Jesus knows that we have wounds too; wounded hearts, wounded relationships, and wounded lives. His Resurrection is an invitation to us to bring our wounded lives and join them to His. His Resurrection is an invitation to a new life with Him. That life is not a trivial life, but a real life that has undergone suffering and has the wounds to show for it.