Resurrection

Friends,

The Christian commemoration of Easter focuses on Jesus’ bodily resurrection, the ultimate expression of overcoming mortal death. I have always struggled with the literal story of Jesus’ resurrection itself, but I am forever moved by the Christian tradition that affirms that personal death - or any kind of death - is never the final answer. Although I am not sure what the condition of life after death might be, I believe the essence of the Easter story is that there does exist that quality of "something more” to our mortal lives, that when we share our love in this mortal life, we also leave a legacy of love for future generations, and thus in a way we share in the Easter hope and assurance that death is not the final answer, which can be named a resurrection.

For me the explanation of resurrection is that within a continuum of life itself there is the extension of our lives after our mortal deaths. As much as we have cultured the spirit of love during our lifetimes, we will then be offering our life's legacy of love into the lives of those who follow. We continue to live beyond our death at some degree because of the love we have shared in our lives, a love that continues in the memories and lives of our successors. We cannot be assured of this kind of legacy, of course, but I think each of us wants to live such that our lives can be transformed into an ongoing legacy of love and compassion in those who follow us. In a way, that is one way to define hope. We may be assured that our lives of love will not have been the end, not have been in vane, but a that our love will somehow continue to offer hope to all who follow.

The written legacy of Jesus’ life and death is a complex of the memories of those who tried to record and interpret what his life meant to them individually and what a transformative process his radical love left for all history. They emphasize that there is a price for the kind of radical love that overcomes stagnant, restrictive, divisive religious rituals and habits of a culture that stifle the fullness of life. And yet this is the power that transforms into a radical frame of love that is inclusive of us all. Jesus accepted those well outside the bounds of his orthodox Jewish tradition and all who could accept his radical vision of inclusivity. Instead he modeled and taught that the God of love and mercy that he followed and loved would not be confined by the narrowness of culture and hatred.

I will believe that the record of Jesus’ radical love defines at some level the record of his resurrection. Jesus established a new standard of radical love and inclusiveness that, if followed, offers a path to individual and communitarian reconciliation, peace and justice. I personally choose to name that path in the contemporary language of nonviolence, the radical ability to love - even one’s enemies - even at the price of persecution and death. Jesus nonviolent “resurrection,” then, is in the lives of those like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Oscar Romaro who risked their lives for the love of their people in the practice of nonviolence, and in all of us who aspire to continue his radical love and reverence for all of life.

I do not intend that the sharing of my thoughts about resurrection is a challenge to the biblical and traditional interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection. I would much prefer that we all join in the hope and the assurance that there is indeed life after death through the radical path of love.

In peace,
Tom