I dont know if it happened this way, but I know this Easter story
is true
.
Fr Martin Low, ofm
I remember as a child, Easter was second only to Christmas among
the magic days of the year where I received Easter eggs and
chocolates. I heard the Easter stories as literally true, by which
I mean historically factual. I assumed that, if I had been with the
women at the tomb, I would have seen that it was empty. I took for
granted that whatever the significant authorities in my life tell
me to be true is indeed true. Thus I heard the Easter stories as
reporting publicly observable events which anybody who was there
would have seen. I did not require faith for I had no reason to
think otherwise.
Then came my teenage years, Easter stories were just an event like
any other event. Jesus died on Good Friday and resurrected on
Easter Sunday. Thats it. Attend Mass and service in Church. Not
much of a significance at all.
But over the course of my life, this has changed, especially as I
entered Religious Life, studying theology. I am more critical in my
thinking at hearing the Easter stories. I hear them once again as
true stories, but I do not think their truth depends on their
historical factuality. More specifically, I see Easter as true,
even though I am skeptical that the tomb was empty. An empty tomb
does not mean that Jesus is resurrected. I discovered that the
story of the empty tomb is relatively late, found for the first
time in Marks gospel around the year 70.
In contrast, the earliest references to appearances of the risen
Christ treated them as visions. I have seen the Lord, Paul
writes in 1 Cor 9:1, referring to his vision on the Damascus Road
which happened at least a few years after the death of Jesus.
Moreover, in 1 Cor 15, Paul includes himself in the list of people
to whom the risen Christ appeared, suggesting that he saw their
experience as similar to his visionary experience. And in the 2nd
half of that chapter, he explicitly denies that the resurrected
body is a physical body. Consistent with this is the important
distinction between resuscitation and resurrection. Resuscitation
means resumption of physical existence and resurrection means entry
into a different kind of existence. Resurrection is not
resuscitation.
Being critical can destroy a literal understanding of the Easter
stories. It suggests that Easter is not about the image of a watery
fluid body of Jesus appearing to his followers for forty days after
his death and then ascending into heaven, as the chronology in the
first chapter of Acts put it. For me, this stage lasted a long
time, from my mid teens to mid twenties. During that time, I was
aware that there was a stage beyond. I had no idea what to make of
the Easter stories.
But now, I see the Easter stories as true stories, even as I am
convinced that they are not factually, accurate reports. I dont
know if it happened this way, but I know this story is true. The
Emmaus Road story in Lk 24 is a classic illustration. Two followers
of Jesus journey and converse with the risen Christ for several
hours without recognising him, then realise who he is in the
breaking of the bread, and then he vanishes from their sight. One
needs only to think about these details to realise that the story
does not report the kinds of events that could have been
videotaped. Rather, the story affirms that the risen Christ
journeys with us whether we know it or not.
So what is the truth of Easter? Two claims seem central to me.
First, Jesus is a figure of the present, not just the past. Jesus
continued to be experienced by his followers after his death,
though in a radically new way. Sometimes he was experienced in
visions, sometimes as an abiding presence. The truth of Easter is
grounded in the continuing experience of Jesus, not in what did or
didnt happen on a particular day in the past.
The second claim is that Easter affirms that Jesus is Lord. Easter
is Gods yes to Jesus - the affirmation that he is the decisive
disclosure of what God is like, and of the life which is full of
God. He is, in the words of Colossians 1:15, the image of the
invisible God.
Happy Easter!
Bulletin of 29th/30th April 06