THE PARADOX OF EASTER

Happy Easter. For a Christian, there could be no more wonderful day than this—when we shout with joy that death itself has been defeated forever — we celebrate the victory of life over death. And even more, that this victory can reach back to the very beginning of time, till the end of time.

The Gospel of Easter starts by telling us that all was still dark
(include here despair, suffering, lost-ness etc.). The disciples still did not see or believe. Only at the end of the Gospel, does the one whom Jesus loved, go into the empty tomb and “he saw and he believed.” He moved from darkness to light.

There is a story back in the 1970’s, about a French philosopher named Jacques Ellul who was planning to write a book entitled, “The Age of Abandonment.” Jacques observed a society of chaos, of moral confusion, and of violence. Work and family life had become depersonalized and fragmented. He felt that most people now lived with feelings of having been abandoned—abandoned by God, especially.

But then a strange thing happened. As he began to write, Jacques says, “It was more and more borne in upon me forcibly that I could not write about the abandonment of God, and that the words now given me—as well as the power dwelling within me—were words of hope.”

So, “in a way which cannot be explained rationally,” but which compelled him from within, he decided to change the title of his book to, “Hope in Time of Abandonment.”

On Easter Sunday, there is no more profound message that we could hear. There is still hope in time of darkness, but are we able to hear it?

In life’s journey, each of us comes with very different questions in our hearts. Some of us may feel weighed down by burdens of grief and stress. Many are fearful of what life is demanding, and we cannot really celebrate when we are frozen with fear and anxiety. Some of us think we have no faith anyway so why bother. Most of us are trying our best because we want to be people of good will who are trying to love God. Even as Christians we probably feel that simply to say “Jesus is risen!” does not say enough. It sounds so banal.

Or maybe it does say enough. A Catholic woman in the state of Ohio in the USA tells the story of the many times she drove through a really rough slum neighbourhood in her hometown. There were liquor stores and pawn shops on many corners of the township.

She noticed a little store-front evangelical church nestled in between them. The tiny front door had a long name printed over it, something like “The Peace and Deliverance of the Holiness of God and Christ Temple.” She used to wonder, “What goes on in there? Who are the people who worship between a gun shop and a liquor store?”

She herself was going through a very difficult time in her life. On Easter morning, driving home from her own church, she still felt sad and somewhat numb. Without realizing it, she found herself taking the “road less traveled” through the violent and blighted neighbourhood. The bars and pawn shops were all closed, the filthy street quiet.

Suddenly, her eyes fell on the rough front door of the little store-front church. She looked closer… and saw that two wooden slats from a vegetable crate had been broken into pieces, then nailed back together into a rough cross on the door. Someone had scrawled with an unsteady hand in black letters, three vertical words, from top to bottom: HE IS RISEN.

She sat in her car for a while, crying first, then laughing, as a blessed relief washed over her. She, too, had been broken into pieces. She too had been wandering and searching, wanting to be made whole again… but without knowing how or why, when she looked at that awful little cross, she was beginning to know that it could be true, that it was true—that in this hidden place, that looked like the most godforsaken hole in the world, people had hope.

And the broken pieces were proclaiming the truth her heart desperately needed to hear: JESUS IS RISEN. Christ is risen; He is risen, indeed!

This past year has been another tough year. We have had natural disasters like cyclones, earthquakes, storms and fires. We continue to have wars with the killing of numerous innocent people. We have had man-made disasters with a dam collapse in Brazil, and sub-standard factory buildings collapsing in other places. And in the church we have had the pain and shame of scandals and cover ups of the sexual abuse by Bishops, priests and religious. In all of this, we too are shaken and in darkness. In these broken pieces, in these places of pain and sin and suffering, our hearts desperately need to hear the words of hope: He is risen.

Jesus has come forth from the tomb, and is shouting to our empty hearts, to our bruised hearts, that our life is risen life… and that we are all deeply, and dearly loved.

May this new life of Jesus also bind our broken pieces of life together so that his gift of hope may never leave our hearts.