On Friday, scrolling through the New York Times live updates about Putin’s war, among more tweets about atrocities, images of devastation, and reports about attacks and troup build-ups, I came upon an image of three little girls, the oldest maybe 8, the youngest maybe 5 years old, all dressed in shades of pink. They were sitting at the end of a long, narrow table; between them, on the beige table cloth, a blue pony with a white mane, with its face to the camera. None of the girls was looking at the camera; being completely absorbed in their work, they may have been utterly unaware of the fact that a photographer was in the room. “Children displaced from eastern Ukraine painting eggs for Easter and Good Friday mass at a Catholic church in the western city of Lviv,” the caption read.[1]
On Thursday, in the car, somewhere between Old Hickory and the church, I was listening to a story on the radio about a family with two children who have been living underground in a subway car since Putin’s attacks on their city started. Some of their neighbors lived in adjacent cars in the same subway station, neighbors they hadn’t known really well before the war, and now, every night, they prepared a meal together, and they waited until all of them were there before they started to eat, and I could hear them laugh.
Those two scenes of children absorbed in making art for worship and of neighbors laughing as though they had nothing to worry about, those two scenes are sacred to me now, like visits by angels. We have much to worry about given the state of our world, and the children show us how to remain focused on resurrection hope, and how to be absorbed in the work of creating beauty. And the neighbors eating and laughing underground, invite us to their terror-defying and life-affirming celebration of communion.
Isaiah spoke and wrote exuberant resurrection poetry, overflowing with promise and hope, giving his voice and words to the voice and words of the God of faithfulness he served:
I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
This is not an argument for amnesia or an excuse for willful forgetfulness of a difficult past, we got too much of that already. The prophet is singing of a gladness so overwhelming that it floods even the past with healing joy.
Be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people.
In this new creation, God and God’s people will rejoice in mutual delight. The sound of weeping and the cry of distress? No more. Infants that live but a few days and old persons who don’t live out a lifetime? No more. Workers building houses and others inhabiting them, or planting vineyards, fields, and gardens and others eating their fruit? No more. No more laboring in vain. No more bearing children for calamity. No more war. No more dreams of empire. No more old men sowing lies, and terror, and death.
Isaiah’s prophetic poetry is beautiful, and it is “also an act of daring … faith that refuses to be curbed by present circumstance.” This poet knows that God’s coming newness is not contained within our present notions of the possible. And what this poet imagines for his treasured city, the subsequent people of faith have regularly entertained as a promise over every city where justice is broken and righteousness is not at home. “[Every] city is submitted to the wonder of the creator, the one who makes all things new,” writes Walter Brueggemann.[2]
We live in a Good Friday world where justice is broken, a world far from righteousness. The girls in Lviv know it, and yet they paint the eggs for Easter.The neighbors in the subway car know it, and yet they laugh as they gather for supper. We know it, and yet we gather to sing of resurrection. We sing because, as Jürgen Moltmann put it, “Good Friday is at the center of this world, but Easter morning is the sunrise of the coming of God and the morning of the new life and is the beginning of the future of this world.”[3] We live in a Good Friday world recentered in the impossible possibilities of the one who makes all things new, the God who raised Jesus from the dead.
The women who had followed Jesus from Galilee watched as the body of Jesus was taken down from the cross. They watched as Joseph of Arimathea took the body, wrapped it in linen, and placed it in a tomb. They went home to prepare ointment and spices that would be needed to complete the proper burial of the body. And then they just sat waiting. Luke says they rested, but we know they didn’t. They were waiting for the dawn so they could go to the tomb at first light and do with love and care what had to be done in a hurry before sunset on Friday.
And when they came to the tomb nothing was like it was supposed to be. The tomb was open, and they could not see, let alone anoint, Jesus’ body. They did see angels and heard them speak, heard them ask why they were looking for the living among the dead, heard them say that Jesus had been raised. Heard them tell them, “Remember what Jesus said.”
They remembered, but they didn’t break into a new creation song, they didn’t dance the resurrection—they began to slowly unfold the wondrous thing God had done: The world of broken justice had had its way with Jesus, but God raised him from the dead. The world of broken justice had spoken its violent No, but God spoke a vindicating Yes.
The world of broken justice proudly asserted, and continues to assert, its own way, its own truth, and its own life, but God affirmed Jesus. God didn’t just raise somebody to reveal God’s power to bring life out of death. God raised Jesus who lived to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor to all. And the women found the stone rolled away, not because somehow this was necessary in order for Jesus to get out of the tomb. No, the stone was rolled away so they could get in, so they could get in and come away with the good news of a new creation in Christ. The stone was rolled away so we would get out of the tomb of despair and go to find the living one among the living.
The women told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Their response? The translations vary, just pick one. “These words seemed to them an idle tale, empty talk, a silly story, a foolish yarn, sheer humbug, utter nonsense, and they did not believe them.” You don’t have to be a Bible scholar to detect “a definite air of male superiority in this response.”[4] But there’s more here than just common sexism. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is like the dawn of light on the first day of creation: radically new. And like day and night are fundamental to our experience of the world, so will the resurrection of Jesus either establish a whole new frame of reference for our experience of life, or it will remain an idle tale.
And then there’s Peter. Peter who had been with Jesus pretty much from day one. Peter who had heard Jesus’ every teaching, witnessed every healing, and shared in more meals with sinners than he could count. Peter who before dawn on Friday had denied three times that he knew Jesus. Now why would Peter get up and run to the tomb after they had all just dismissed the women’s words as utter nonsense? What was it that made him get up and not walk, but run, to the tomb? Was it that he was simply curious? Was he wondering if the women might be right? Was he hoping they might be right? Was he wondering if he was the reason Jesus was alive? Was he desperate because he felt guilty? [5] Those are all good questions to ponder. I think Peter was wiping bitter tears from his face because a glimmer of hope and joy had entered his heart, and so he ran.
When Jesus was born, Luke tells us, angels proclaimed the good news of great joy to shepherds in the fields—and the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” They went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.[6] Peter ran like a shepherd who had just heard the good news of great joy, he wanted to go and see—and he found a whole new life of hope and courage.
The way of Jesus did not end on the cross, and it did not end in the tomb. The way of Jesus did not end. It opens before us as long as there are witnesses who join the women and the other disciples in telling the world of Jesus’ faithfulness to the kingdom of God, his great compassion, and his embrace of sinners. The way of Jesus opens before us as the road to no more war; the road to no more dreams of empire; the road to no more old men sowing lies, and terror, and death. It opens before us every morning as the road to the city of peace, where all children are completely absorbed in making art and playing, and all neighbors laugh and sing around tables of plenty.
[1] Finbar O’Reilly for the New York Times https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/04/15/multimedia/15ukraine-blog-easter-photo01/15ukraine-blog-easter-photo01-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp
[2] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah (WBC), 251.
[3] Jürgen Moltmann, Cole Lectures at Vanderbilt 2002; Jürgen Moltmann, Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, Passion for God: Theology in Two Voices (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 84.
[4] Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke (Sacra Pagina), 388.
[5] See Anna Carter Florence, Journal for Preachers 2004, 35-37.
[6] Luke 2:15-20