In the end, how do we make sense of this life? Sooner or later, this question becomes our agenda. Ernest Hemingway, who wrestled unsuccessfully with this ultimate issue until he ended his own life, concluded his novel, A Farewell To Arms, with one of the characters saying, "The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places."1

Is this really what happened to the followers of Jesus after they had tucked tail and run from the horror of crucifixion? They were surely broken. One of their own had betrayed their Messiah by escorting those pawns of the Sanhedrin into Gethsemane’s garden carrying those hideous torches. Then, they all deserted him. Jesus was left to fend for himself. This man, who was the embodiment of God’s goodness, was subjugated to a mock trial and executed Roman style. Roman law crucified him for the crime of treason. Caesar Tiberius was the only son of the gods. Only Herod Antipas was the legitimate King of the Jews. So, insecure men with personal political agendas presided over the execution of the Man of Nazareth.

The story confirms what we already know: this broken world is unfair. We live in a cracked creation. The good die young. The evil forces of this world break the hearts of loving people. So, did the disciples merely protest this fact by inventing the notion of the resurrection of their Messiah?

Some would strip the whole business of Easter faith down to an affirmation of the human spirit in rebellion against injustice. The disciples were broken by grief and guilt. Thus, they became strong at the broken places. They came to believe that the miracle of his truth must never die and they must keep it alive somehow. Some would have us believe that the Easter story is based upon the fact that the disciples of Jesus experienced a life so beautiful that the memory of such a loving man must never evaporate. Thus, they turned doubt into faith and fear into hope. They invented a story of wishful thinking, an idle tale.

I am not convinced by such a superficial argument. Take away the proclamation that God raised the crucified Jesus from the dead and we are left with an affirmation of the human spirit, protesting the cruel death of a righteous prophet. The Christian faith then becomes merely an endorsement of his moral values. It is merely a veneration of Jesus of Nazareth as the Great Exemplar of all times. The Christian faith becomes a cult of admiration for a man whose life ended in an unnecessary tragedy.

But I am not ready to give my life to such an inspiring person. His ethics seem impossible for me to achieve. I am not eager to give my life in faithful homage to a sagacious seer who taught an inspiring new code: to love my enemies, to turn the other cheek, to forgive those who have harmed me. I am certainly not eager to die for a collection of oral teachings or seemingly impossible standards of moral behavior.

Easter suggests that there is something far more significant going on here. Something cosmic in dimension!

During the years of my pastorate here at Providence Church I have nearly every week visited in the hospital beloved ones in our midst. Some surgical procedures have been routine. All have been serious. Some terminal. When I have visited a terminal patient at Presbyterian Hospital and concluded the time with prayer, I have often detoured by the maternity hall before departure. I have gazed into the window of the observation room, balancing my rendezvous with death by greeting life. Fifty-eight years ago, plus seven days, I was born in that same hospital. I tell my daughter that the building was a log cabin at the time. But when I was born in Charlotte, terrible things were happening in this cracked creation. Vicious military warriors controlled the Japanese Empire. The Nazis dominated Europe. Hitler’s final solution had been set in motion. On that day, the crematories of the death camps polluted the skies of Poland and Germany with human ashes. I can never erase these facts from my consciousness.

I do not trust in the resilience of the human spirit, as did Hemingway, as a factor that will save humanity from barbarism. Humanity must be liberated from above. These atrocities are not uniquely the property of the Twentieth Century. Massive injustices have stained the pages of written history in each generation. But these horrible things cannot occur without inflicting grief upon God. The coming of God into this broken world, through the One who died upon a cross outside Jerusalem, provides the only real solution to the problem of evil. God cares! And God will ultimately redeem this cracked creation. This, for me after thirty-three years of parish ministry, is the affirmation of Easter!

So, on this Easter morning I think of Eva and Benny Bivens from my Wingate parish. I accompanied them to Charlotte’s Presbyterian Hospital the night their precious little Beth died at age three. Her blond hair and beautiful blue eyes are forever etched in my memory, along with the tears of her loving parents. She was their only child. Did this happen, and God not care?

On this Easter morning I visualize the gathering of the faithful at the Shady Grove United Methodist Church in Davidson County. They will stand upon the grassy sod of graves that were dug when I was their pastor twenty-five years ago. Saints like Gerald Clodfelter are memorialized there by name in granite stone. Gerald used to tell me about his experiences as a soldier liberating concentrating camps in Europe. He tried to describe to me the indescribable suffering. Gerald was often my companion when I made difficult pastoral visits with the terminally ill. After all, he suffered with emphysema. His presence at the door indicated that this parish’s most devout wounded healer had arrived. What a comfort for a young, inexperienced pastor. I could fill volumes with memories of such faithful ones from every parish I have served. These anonymous saints are dear to me, especially on Easter morning.

On Easter I always think of my mother who talked so openly and bravely with me about her dying. Her nine years of intense suffering with bone cancer had a profound impact upon our family. She spoke often with me about the mystery that awaited her on the other side of this reality. Each Easter I also remember my father and try to determine the time of his death. Did he die when I said my last goodbye to him upon leaving for a continuing education seminar just days before his last breath at the Wesley Nursing Center in Charlotte? Or did he die years before when he first showed no recognition of his own identity, due to the advancement of Alzheimer’s?

Aristotle was the first to refer to the deceased as the silent majority. On Easter I not only contemplate the silent majority but also those who live in the anguish of present existence: peasants with whom I worked in Bolivia, the hungry children of Mexican villages I have visited, the gaunt faces I saw in Cairo, Egypt, who inhabit the so-called City of the Dead, amidst the tombstones of their own heritage.

On Easter morning my mind, however, is filled with the joyous sound of a voice. The words are spoken by the apostle Paul: "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died."2 Paul here used a metaphor for explaining the resurrection. Passover was a harvest feast. Levitical law required the Jews to bring barley to the Temple priest. These sheaves of barley had to come from a common field. When given to the priest, the barley was threshed with soft canes so that it was not bruised. It was parched over a fire and exposed to wind so that the chaff would be blown away. It was then ground into flour and offered as bread to God. This was the offering of first fruit. Not until this was done could bread be bought and sold in Israel during the festivals. Paul was saying to the Corinthian church that Jesus is like a first fruit offering. He is the sign of a coming harvest. His resurrection is guarantee of the resurrection of all true believers. Just as new barley cannot be used for bread until the first fruit offering has been presented at the Temple, so none of the faithful will be raised unto eternal life until Jesus has been raised from the dead.

Luke Timothy Johnson, in his monumental study, The Writings of the New Testament, makes this important observation: "Like Judaism, Christianity is a religion of personal encounter with the Other. The primitive Christian experience consisted in encountering the Other in the risen Jesus. The resurrection faith is the birth of Christianity."3

Without the resurrection, we would have no faith, no message of hope for a broken world. All the gospel writings, including Luke’s empty tomb story read today, were composed from the perspective of a rear-view mirror. Even Luke’s Christmas narrative was written out of the context of his looking backward from the resurrection experience. The powerful Roman Emperor Augustus, the wicked Jewish King Herod, and the hapless governor Pilate play a bit role in this cosmic drama. The One whom God raised from the dead was born in Bethlehem and he transformed history.

One of the most significant lay students of the gospel message is a distinguished professor of English literature and noted novelist, Renolds Price of Duke University. In a cover article for Time Magazine to celebrate the new millennium, Price raised the proposition that perhaps Jesus was who he claimed to be – "a transnational Messiah who continues to care for individual humans and to save them from internal and external evil."4

At the conclusion of the article, Price described himself as a recipient of such care. Sixteen years ago he endured radiation treatment that withered a ten-inch long cancer on his spinal cord. At the time he was an "outlaw Christian" with no active tie to the church. Through a mystical experience, Jesus encountered him. The risen Christ led him through a vision to the Sea of Galilee. Jesus poured handfuls of water down the fresh scar on his back. In this mystical, dream-like encounter, Jesus told Renolds Price, "You sins are forgiven." Price asked, "Am I also cured?" Jesus responded, "That too."5

Dr. Price has since endured devastating surgeries and a permanent paralysis of his legs. He has not yet experienced a recurring vision of the risen Lord. Yet, he writes this: "To the surprise of my doctors, I’ve survived without apparent return of the cancer, and my life is more rewarding and productive than before that washing in Galilee. My lifelong sense that Jesus of Nazareth stood in a unique and redeeming relation to the Creator of this universe at least has intensified though I have felt no right to claim intimacy with him."6

Reinhold Niebuhr rightly warned us to beware of anyone who claims any knowledge of either the furniture of heaven or the temperature of hell. Yet, we are empowered to live out our time upon this broken earth with enthusiasm and hope because we know that we have an eternal destination.

John Bunyan depicted Pilgrim coming within sight of the eternal city. He tried to look at it through his glasses, but his hands shook as he put them before his eyes. He could not see the city clearly. We indeed all see through a mirror dimly. We travel by faith, not sight. But this much we can see on Easter Sunday: we know that we shall be met by the One whom God raised from the dead. He is the embodiment of God’s love. In his mercy, he will have the last word in the affairs of humanity. The saga of human history is, consequently, more than a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and furry, signifying nothing. Because of what God had done through the Risen One, our existence is a pilgrimage with a purpose, beginning with ashes and ending in Life Eternal.

1. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957).
2. I Corinthians 15: 19 NRSV
3. Luke Timothy Johnson, with the assistance of Todd C. Penner, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation, Revised Edition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), p. 110.
4. Renolds Price, "Jesus At 2000," Time (December 6, 1999), p. 94.
5. Ibid.
6. Op. cit. p. 96.