Easter Living, A Way to Have an Honest Relationship with Time and Change

Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024
Acts 10:34-43 Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Mark 16:1-8

Lectionary Link
 

When we compare the past and the present, sometimes we might like the past better than the present, and sometimes we might like the present better than the past.

But our comparison is irrelevant because we cannot stop change or time.  Whether we like the present better than the past or not, we still must orient ourselves to the present in realistic ways.

The disciples and friends of Jesus who once had hoped for someone who had not yet been born, found that special unforgettable person.  Jesus was the unforgettable person of their lives.

We are very selfish about the people we love because they make us better.  They make us feel hopeful, they bring out of us things about ourselves which we could not discover without them.

We would like to freeze-frame our lives with the people we love the best.  We don't want the very best of relationship to change or end.

The friends and disciples of Jesus were not unreal about life and death.  They knew that people live and die.  But it seemed drastically unfair that their best friend would be gone in his mere thirties.  Surely we could grow old with Jesus and have him do our funerals.  It reminds me of the young man at his grandmother's funeral who said to the priest, "I hope you will also do my funeral."  And the old priest thought, "Well, I'm going to be long gone before you die."

The disciples and friends of Jesus have become for us a part of the Christian program of Easter living.  What is Easter living?  It is living realistically with the fact of time and change.

And what is the hardest fact of time and change?  The hardest fact of time and change is when starkly apparent discontinuities occur.  When we can visibly note the starkest of change, the experience of loss can be great.  And the greatest discontinuity for us as humans is death.

All things considered, we'd rather be alive and have those closest to us alive as well.  This is our preference, even though we begrudgingly know that at certain age our bodily functions diminish to the point of not having the quality of life of body and mind that we desire.  It is easier for us to accept death as discontinuity in a very mature old age, than to experience the seeming untimely death before one's time.

What the disciples of Jesus did not know at his death is that they would be a part of his continuity after his death.  They would be important witness to how the dead Jesus would continue in their lives and in the life of the world as the Risen Christ.

And again on this Easter Sunday, we return to the events of this transition phase in the continuity of Jesus of Nazareth to become the Risen Christ, not just from and for Nazareth, but for all the people of the world.

The resurrection of Christ in story is about the transitional occasions of the appearances of the Risen Christ to his friends who had been devastated by his death.  His appearances provided for his friends and disciples a continuity of his former life with his afterlife.  They were given the assurance that their friendship with Jesus would continue into their future, and they would continue to know him.

The transitional continuity of Jesus in his post-death appearances indicate that his continuity was different in aspect and abilities.  He seemed to be able to tele-port from Jerusalem to Galilee in a moments time.  He seemed to be able to appear suddenly through locked doors.  He could eat a meal of fish to prove the substantiality of his continuity with his previous self.  He could hide his identity and suddenly reveal it in with an abrupt unveiling.

The fact of the resurrection of Jesus is the fact of the continuity of Jesus after his death.  But it is also the fact of the distinctly different states of appearance for this future continuous Risen Christ.  The continuity of Jesus as the Risen Christ has continued in the lives of people for many years now.  St. Paul had a different experience of the continuity of Jesus than did Peter, the disciples, and the women who visited the empty tomb.  But the different experience of Paul was a valid experience of continuity with Jesus, and so is our experiences of the Risen Christ.

The resurrection of Christ teaches us to live realistically with time and change, both with the more seeming gradual changes but also with the great and stark seeming discontinuities, such as the poignant and profound event of death.

How can we bear to lose the visual and tactile continuity with our beloved ones?  How can we bear to lose our favored ways of interacting with our beloved ones?

What the resurrection of Christ teaches us is that everything is retained and sustained in the future.  What we have to learn is how to accept and appreciate that what is retained and sustained is always different than it was before.  And adjusting to the differences in future continuity is the most difficult for us who live after our loved ones have died.

But the truth of the resurrection is the truth of life itself.  Life is spontaneously sustaining into the future and in this sustenance all that has come before is retained in continuity but in various degrees of different continuity in appearance and consciousness.

And if we are worried about the loss of recognizable continuity in our lives, let us also remember that as long as language users exist, then the eternal Word will be the continuity of life as we know it.

The Risen Christ is also the Eternal Word from the beginning, and as the Eternal Word, our continuity is forever memorialized in the memory of the Eternal Word forever.

Today, on this Easter Sunday, let us not forget that the resurrection is not a single magical event that happened to Jesus; rather it is a process of sustaining life which manifested itself in a poignant way in the life of Jesus Christ.  With the resurrection as a way of life, we do not deny the reality of time and change, and the extremely painful transition of death; but resurrection gives us permission to accept the continuity of ever future life, even the future life of reunion with those with whom we always feel like we have unfinished relationships.

Today we celebrate the continuity of life that happened to Jesus in becoming the Risen Christ, and we ride this resurrection energy for our continuously different future lives.  Alleluia, Christ is Risen.  The Lord is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia.  Amen