When this perishable body puts on imperishability,
and this mortal body puts on immortality,
then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin,
and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:54-57

In his homily on Sunday, Father Jose Mesa pointed out that the Transfiguration of Jesus prepares us less for the Crucifixion than it does for the Resurrection.  In both Matthew and Mark we read that Jesus cautions Peter, James, and John, who were witnesses to this manifestation of Jesus’ glory, not to tell anyone about it “until the Son of Man is raised from the dead” (Matthew 17:9).

Father Jose went on to say that in many ways the Resurrection is harder to deal with than the Crucifixion.  I nodded.  Yes, I do believe that is true.  Everyone has some experience of suffering.  And if as yet we have had no experience of death, we eventually will.

But resurrection? The victory of life over death?  The definitive triumph of goodness?  A radiance that will fill, not only Jesus, but us as well? How do we deal with this?  How do we even begin to describe it?  In the remarkable 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Saint Paul tries his best to tell us something of what the resurrection of the dead will be like, but ends up making it sound marvelously and totally incomprehensible.

When in the Presence of Mystery…

Faced with the dazzling glory of Jesus transfigured, Peter, who tends to rush in where angels fear to tread, says, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” (Mark 9:5).

Whereupon the disciples hear a voice from the cloud.

What do they hear?  Not “Nice idea, Peter,” or even “Let’s sit down and discuss what you are experiencing.” No, all three synoptic gospels record that the voice says something to the effect of “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased;  listen to him!”

Or to be blunt, “Be quiet and pay attention to Jesus!”

What is the proper response when in the presence of great mystery —   whether we happen to be Peter the first pope, Benedict the current pope, or an ordinary person such as I am (and probably such you are, too)?

Stop talking and listen! Pay attention!  The time will come to proclaim the good news (for the Mystery of God is always good news).  But not yet.  Now is the time for listening.

_____

The following is Peter’s account.  Notice that he conveniently leaves out the part that suggests he was talking too much.

…we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.

So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

2 Peter 1:16-19

I would like to share with you a few thoughts on the Resurrection from James Alison’s book Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination (28-31); for Alison finds it crucial that Jesus was “risen as crucified.” The risen Jesus, he says “didn’t appear to his disciples just as someone who had been dead, but was now better and risen….In contrast to this, the risen Jesus was dead.”

The risen Jesus was dead? Doesn’t this contradict everything we have been taught about the Resurrection? Then we remember that unlike Jesus, the raised Lazarus was not dead.  He had been returned to life – and so would have to die again.

Alison continues,

But that death is nothing but a vacant form for God, something whose reality has been utterly emptied out, which can only be detected in the form of its traces in the human story of someone who has overcome death.

The marks, then, of Jesus’ death were something like trophies: it was his whole human life, including his death, which was made alive and presented before the disciples as a sign that he had in fact conquered death.

The risen Jesus was dead, but this death no longer had substance – it was “nothing but a vacant form for God.” It was empty of any death-reality and filled with God.

“Whatever death is,” says Alison,” it is not something which has to structure every human life from within (as in fact it does), but rather it is an empty shell, a bark without a bite. None of us has any reason to fear being dead, something which will unquestionably happen to all of us, since that state cannot separate us effectively from the real source of life.”

“Peace be with you,” says Jesus to the disciples hidden and trembling behind locked doors on the first day of the week. Then he shows them his wounds and says once again, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19-21).

- – - – -

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
(1 Corinthians 1:18,25)

I’ve found some rather sad and bitter web pages as well, published by people mocking the Paschal mystery. A self-professed atheist named Ed Kagin writes:

Wouldn’t it have been nice if the risen savior of the world had appeared in all his glory to the Roman Senate where literate rational humanists could have recorded an accurate account of this miracle?”

He seems to think politicians would have been more reliable witnesses than Mary Magdalene.

Are the witnesses credible?

That the first witnesses to the resurrection were women seemed to bother some of the disciples, too. They refused to believe until they had seen Jesus for themselves, perhaps because everybody knew you couldn’t trust the testimony of a woman. Actually, the fact that we are told the women were there is probably an indication of the historicity of the story, because no one trying to concoct a plausible story would have put women in as witnesses. N. T. Wright, in his monumental book called The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003), says:

“If they could have invented stories of fine, upstanding, reliable male witnesses being first at the tomb, they would have done it” (608).

The presence of men would have been considered much more convincing. However, since there is a good chance that the Christian community already knew the women had been there, that’s the way the story had to be told. (Paul, however, does take the easy way out in writing to the Christians of Greek city of Corinth, conveniently neglecting to name the women in the otherwise magnificent fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians.)

No vengeance? No retributive justice?

So we have female witnesses, therefore not credible. And what is perhaps even more conducive to the charge of nonsense, Jesus comes back to the very people who had denied him and deserted him when he was most in need. Back to all of us sinners he comes, with no effort or desire to get even. How foolish can you get, by the standards of worldly wisdom? Why come back to them — to us — at all? Shouldn’t the risen Christ have declared victory accompanied by invading troops of angels? Shouldn’t he at least have demanded an apology?

Christianity’s Reason for Existing

Why did Christianity arise, and why did it take the shape it did? The early Christians themselves reply: We exist because of Jesus’ resurrection. … There is no evidence for a form of early Christianity in which the resurrection was not a central belief. Nor was this belief, as it were, bolted on to Christianity at the edge. It was the central driving force, informing the whole movement.

- N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is

It is this folly of the cross and resurrection that makes us who we are and calls us into the very life of the resurrected Christ. For as Paul says, “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:21).

First, the Resurrection shows us that Goodness is in control of the universe.

Huston Smith puts it this way:

“Jesus’s resurrection was not about the fate of a worthy man. It concerned the status of goodness in the universe, offering evidence that goodness has power—indeed, ultimate power. Jesus was goodness incarnate, and in his resurrection his goodness triumphed….The resurrection reversed the cosmic position in which the cross had placed Jesus’s goodness.” (The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition [HarperSanFrancisco, 2005], 75-6)

It is crucial to remember this when we face the obvious evil in our world. The awareness that goodness is ultimately in control keeps us from losing hope; and hope itself helps us to notice the good and not to get mired in discouragement at the in-your-face presence of evil.

The resurrection shows us that there is no violence in God.

According to theologian James Alison,

“At the resurrection, what the apostolic group began to understand was that there is no violence in God, no wrath, no desire for retribution, no need for vengeance or satisfaction” (“Befriending a Vengeful God,” Encounter, October 24, 2004).

How de we know that there is no violence or vengeance in God? For one thing, Jesus came right back to the people who had denied him and run off in his hour of need—and he didn’t come back to get even. He came into the room where the apostles were quivering in fear and said to them, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19 ).

The early Christians took very seriously the belief that there is no room in God’s love for violence. One of the ways in which this was evident was that they tended to refuse military service.

The Resurrection shows the tender mercy of God toward us.

Instead of taking revenge on us for our own denials and betrayals, God forgives us and turns our falling into new life—life renewed for our earthly journey, and life everlasting after death.

“For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:10)

The gifts of the Resurrection carry with them a marvelous responsibility. For through the tender mercy of God who forgives us our sins; through the love of God in whom there is no violence; through the power of God whose goodness triumphs over evil—we, puny creatures that we are, are called to let ourselves be transformed into the good and merciful and peaceful presence of Christ for the world.

In John 20:21, Jesus says a second time (they probably needed to hear it again) “Peace be with you.” But then he adds, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
Indeed I count everything as loss
because of the surpassing worth
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse,
in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him,
not having a righteousness of my own, based on law,
but that which is through faith in Christ,
the righteousness from God that depends on faith;

that I may know him and the power of his resurrection,
and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect;
but I press on to make it my own,
because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

(Philippians 3:7-12 RSV)

Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,
radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
Darkness vanishes for ever!
(Easter Proclamation, Roman Rite)

There is a literary practice called the “pathetic fallacy,” which attributes human feelings to non-human creation. Often the pathetic fallacy is used to show the natural surroundings in harmony with what is going on inside someone — for example, when the scariest scene in the ghost story takes place at night during a thunder storm, or when a poem about grief employs the image of skies weeping with rain.It is called a fallacy because, obviously, nature is not human, and rocks, trees, planets, and animals do not have human emotions.

I like to think, though, that when Jesus was raised from the dead, there was some way in which the whole universe participated in the joy of heaven, even if no one was consciously aware of what was happening.

And I can’t help but believe that deep down each one of us, along with all of creation in some mystrious way, knows — really knows, even if we don’t know that we know —

-that life has conquered death;
-that God always comes back, even when we reject the Holy One and send him to death;
-that it is safe to commend ourselves into the hands of God, as Jesus did;
-that love is the truest and most powerful reality in the universe.

Only love is stronger than death. But human love by itself is not strong enough. Only God’s love is strong enough to conquer death and to ease the fear which threatens at times to overwhelm us. Only in this love — which is the deepest truth of our being — can we be at peace within ourselves and with the rest of creation. It is when humanity is not in touch with what we already know deep down, when we are not at one with this love, that the hungry are not fed, the naked are not clothed, wars and oppression abound, the earth is polluted, and global warming is left to proceed unchecked.

So I pray: God of love and life, may my heart rejoice with the joy of the Risen Christ. May my life be filled with the radiance of your love, so that from wherever I am, your blessing may spread out to others and to the whole of creation.

• - Holy Thursday: none
• - Good Friday: on Univision, a movie entitled, “La Vida de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo.”
• - Holy Saturday: on the History Channel, “St. Peter: The Rock” and “The Apostle Paul: The Man Who Turned the World Upside Down”; and on the Travel Channel, “Where Easter Began”
• - Easter Sunday: on the Discovery Channel, “Jesus: The Complete Story” (complete?); and on our ABC affiliate, Charlton Heston in “The Ten Commandments”

I’m not complaining, especially when I consider the quality of some of those Christmas shows. But I do ask myself the reasons for the difference. This is what I have come up with, although I am sure there are other reasons as well: Christmas is to a certain degree a more accessible mystery. Everyone loves a story about a baby. Add animals and angels and an evil king who kills babies and three wise men bearing gifts and it becomes even more attractive. Besides, most of us accept the virtue of giving and the concept of peace on earth, at least on an abstract level.

Easter, however, is another matter. We can grasp the notion of resuscitation (by CPR, for example). We can perhaps just begin to wrap our understanding around the thought of a near-death experience during which it appears that one takes a step into the next life, only to be sent back with no further fear of death. But resurrection — being raised after bodily death to a new, transformed life in God and never having to die again — is beyond our human ability to comprehend.

According to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, some of the early Christians also had problems with it. Paul himself had difficulty trying to explain it to them. Using the image of seeds, he says, “It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.” The oxymoron “spiritual body” serves only to emphasize how incomprehensible is this mystery to our human minds.

Resurrection of this sort, as opposed to near-death or resuscitation or the revival of corpses in a horror movie, is not something commercial television can deal with profitably — and if truth be told, not something we know how to deal with ourselves. Nevertheless, this same disconcerting mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus is what lets us know that we are not abandoned, assures us of forgiveness, and promises us a future of joy and hope — a future with the Beloved, a future which is Christ.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:42-44)