Today’s readings: Acts 10, 34.37-43; Colossians 3, 1-4; John 20, 1-9.
The early Church, with Peter leading, boldly witnessed to Christ’s resurrection in a credible manner. Entire communities had gone through a rite of passage from being intimidated to becoming bold and firm in their belief that Christ was really God’s manifestation of extraordinary and transformative power. That transformation itself was enough proof that they were not just fooling around or hallucinating.
The grand narratives were all put into question in the postmodern era and, to be honest, the story of Jesus crucified, buried, and risen and the way we celebrate it in our culture risks the same fate of those narratives. The proclamation that Jesus is risen rests or falls depending on what we, as believers, stand for. It needs to find corroboration in our witness, otherwise it remains a void claim with no foundation at all.
The fact that Christ was risen was not an evidence that could be documented like any other occurrence. This is confirmed in Peter’s first address as we read from Acts today. We can only approach the mystery of the resurrection with fear and trembling, even with our doubtful minds like the disciples themselves on that Sunday and like the women going to the tomb of Jesus.
Given that Christ’s resurrection did not cancel the cross from our lives, we remain conditioned. In believing that Christ was risen and that in him life triumphed over death, we remain in our humanity conditioned by the crosses we carry and see and go through in life.
In biblical language, the world stands for the structure of those who wield power on others, it stands many a time even for what we call the culture of death. This was represented crudely in the Good Friday narrative, where the protagonist was not Jesus but the perpetrators of violence who in all appearance triumphed and silenced the God of life. The blood of victims continues to be shed as if in continuity with the blood of Christ shed on that Friday. This is the instinct of death, which unfortunately continues to permeate much of our culture and headlines. From the perspective of the rule of law, the world we inhabit wants to stand for the defence of life and of the rights of every human being. Of course, there are rampant exceptions among world politicians whose record to date is the exact opposite. There is still quite a long list of them, determining the destiny of entire nations and the bleak future of millions of people.
The resurrection we are celebrating today stands for God’s power in the face of death. But this is no political or worldly power. It is a power that transforms people who choose freely to witness to it and not to succumb to the instinct of death. Those who killed Jesus did it because they were afraid that he would give rise to some form of revolution in the manner of Barabbas to destabilise the political structures.
But God’s power is of another type and its manifestation is that of the Spirit who gives life. The Church was meant to be the Easter people, the manifestation in time and space of this innovative power of God. That is why the Church failed miserably whenever it turned itself into a political structure and sought mainly to wield power on people’s minds and hearts in the manner worldly politics functions.