A Bigger Easter Story

it's ours for the telling

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

I wonder how many of us treat the Easter Christ like an off-hour janitor with a big ring of eclectic keys. We wait outside the great hall just milling about, exchanging small talk, checking the time until he shows up to let us in. “Oh—here he comes now, let’s get in line, it’s just about our turn.” And Jesus sidles up, eyes scanning that big ol’ keychain, carefully examining one key, then the next, until his gazes falls on just the right one—something silver and small—and pop click the door swings open and all us in the crowd rush in. “Thanks, guy,” we say as we stream past the Risen Lord, barely making eye contact, our attention on our kids or our handbags or our expectations. “About time,” others grumble under their breath, again glancing at their watches, all frowns and irritated eyebrows.

But anyway—the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus unlocks the doors of heaven and aren’t we glad to be here?

No, no. That’s not right. That can’t be it at all.

Jesus is no janitor. Jesus is not late. Rather, we make Jesus into an epic hero and cast a suspicious gaze on everyone else in the story.

“Judas picks money over the Lord?”—and we roll our eyes. We would never.

“His friends fall asleep while he prays?”—and we chuckle. Gotta caffeinate.

“The disciples scatter at the first sign of trouble?”—and we frown. We’d stand with Jesus.

“Pontius Pilate washes his hands?”—and we wag our finger. We’d recognize the Christ.

“The crowd wants Barabbas?”—and we shake our heads. Our faith would never be intimidated by a crowd.

“Peter denies he even knows him?”—and we clutch our hands to our hearts. We’re proud to know Jesus.

I wonder: Are we making Jesus the hero, or are we making ourselves the hero? Because we do pick money over Jesus and we do fall asleep in our prayer and we do run from trouble and we do ignore Jesus standing right before us and we do crumble into silence in the crowds and we do pretend we don’t see the suffering Christ right there on the news, in our neighborhoods, in our midst.

At least, I do.

We like to shake our fingers at the failures of these characters, but these folks still showed up. They met Jesus’ eyes; they were thrust into an encounter with him. And they recognized their own missteps.

Do we? Do I? Or do we too often stay at home, put our heads down and turn a blind eye? Are we brave enough to even put ourselves in the story?

Because the events of Holy Week are unfolding not just in our churches but across our news feeds, throughout our cities and right down the block. Immigrants are terrorized and students are swept up off the streets. People are whisked away to prisons in foreign countries without any due process. There is gun violence on our college campuses, and there are babies dying of preventable diseases because we can’t get our act together, because we can’t look plainly at the people in need, at the violence in our midst. Hard workers and hopeful volunteers find their jobs cut and their dreams diminished. And families the world over wonder if they’ll have enough money, enough resources to survive.

Jesus the Christ suffers right here, right now, in this Holy Week and all holy weeks. And I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, “Do I do anything to alleviate that suffering? Or am I simply grateful it’s not currently mine to carry?” Are we brave enough to put ourselves in the story? Or do we simply shrug and say, “Not I! It’s not happening to me and mine. That’s their problem.”

Ours is a God of inclusion and community, never of division. That’s why again and again we are told that we are all part of the Body of Christ. Break up that Body at your peril.

“But God has so constructed the body as to give greater honor to a part that is without it, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another. If [one] part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy” (1 Cor 12:24-26).

The gun violence and the hunger and the fear and the disappearances and the deportations and the terror and the trauma—it’s not happening to them. These things are happening to us—to the Body of Christ.

That’s the story of Easter. And that’s who Jesus is. Jesus isn’t some guy who comes to unlock those pearly gates; he’s not some mythic hero to be cheered along. We know who Jesus is—he told us at the Last Supper.

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6). Jesus is the story; he’s here to tell it with us. He’s here to live it with and through us.

That means we need to get into the story. We need to expand the story. We need to tell a bigger story, one that goes beyond me and is concerned with us, one that sees the fullness of the Body of Christ—the immigrant and the prisoner and the farmer and the student and the volunteer and the worker and the trans teen and the elderly and the lonely and the forgotten and on and on.

We go to God together with and through Christ. That’s the truth of the matter; that’s what gives life. Jesus calls each of us individually to share in community. That means each of our unique gifts are needed and necessary to build up God’s Easter dream. So let’s get after it.

Jesus breaks through the tomb not so that we can have a fistful of chocolate eggs. Jesus breaks through the tomb so we can tell a bigger story, so we can see our individual stories as part of something greater, something interwoven, something beyond our imagining. But we have to allow the Risen Christ to work in and through us. We can’t lower our gaze, focus only on ourselves, our own needs and wants and sense of security. We need to see the fullness of the Risen Body of Christ.

There’s a lot of work to be done this Easter. And it only gets done if we do it together.