Happy Eastertide!

Easter is not a time of renewal. Spring cleaning renews; strategic plans and leadership changes bring renewal; but Easter isn’t a sign of renewal. What is Easter? It is an invitation into an experience of glory. Lest this sound abstract, let’s explore.

A pastor was reflecting on the ministry of Project Rachel, which accompanies women and men who suffer from having an abortion in some form, leading towards healing. Noting what a long, slow work this is, since it’s personal and relational, the pastor remarked on its success in helping people be present to what really happened, allowing them to grieve and find reconciliation. But so few out of so many. Observing the urgency and the vast scale of this hidden need in our society, he wondered: “How will we ever be able to face what we have done?” It’s harder, not easier, to face because we’re expert at putting a pretty face on things, keeping the reality out of sight.

Humans are masters at rendering invisible whatever we can’t deal with. We know how to make dark things look lovely or anodyne on the outside — whether it’s the nice neat paperwork sending refugees back to danger or the family-and-friends-surrounded recipients of “dignified,” “painless” euthanasia who cannot move or cry out to show their suffering from the lethal drugs. The outside clean and sparkling, the inside decaying, inhuman and destructive: the “whited sepulchre” only seems distant to us who barely even know any more what graves and funerals are.  

This human ingenuity for hiding ugliness inside a thin paper mask of comeliness is an inversion of the way the Lord operates. He takes what’s disfigured or marred, abandoned or cast out and uncovers something splendid within, revealing a heart as pure as diamond and soft as snow. That’s the effect of His presence, for He isn’t fooled by the elaborate sets we spend so much time manufacturing to hide what we’d rather not see. Nor is He deterred by shame and spitting or by the hideous contortions we produce to keep Him from getting close. He wants to be where we are. He wants to be with us and infuse us with His glory.  

What do we mean by His glory?

When an unseemly woman breaks the expensive bottle of perfume and spoils the party, Jesus enjoys the fragrance. When a tortured crucified criminal blames everyone but himself for his predicament, Jesus accepts the same nails so he can be eye-to-eye with him; and so, inside humiliation and defeat is revealed the doorway to Paradise. The sealed-up tomb of Jesus, which hides the cruel effects of rage and injustice, is emptied of death and decay. Instead, it is shining with light and filled with angels, the very burial cloths neatly rolled-up and radiated with God’s own energy. Swaddled in wounds that cover every inch of His body, Jesus’ resurrection reveals the inner life of the Trinity: the glory.

The New Testament shows us Christ’s resurrection from the dead — this is the Good News. The New Testament doesn’t know the word “trinity” (the first recorded use we have is over a hundred years later) but does know the Resurrection as a trinitarian event. The Son gives His life freely in love. The Father raises Him in His humanity. The Spirit is poured out on all like the blood and water from Jesus’ side. Each is involved according to the unique relationships within the three-in-one.  

The Resurrection shows the glory that God has a Son, and the Son has a Father, and that we come inside their relationship by adoption in the Spirit. At the tomb as at Gethsemane, we come to know the glory that exists without us, but which is eagerly offered us to partake in.

The glorious love within the three-in-one God is the love that greets Mary Magdalene and the women before dawn, that greets Peter who betrayed Jesus and John who loved Him, and that offers His wounds to the finger of Thomas. The stench of death brings forth a fragrance. The sword and whip, nail and lance, caused blood to flow and that blood seals a new relationship between God and humanity.  

We often prefer to cope with ugliness by refusing to see it. Do we do so because, after all, we don’t know how to bear reality and can’t face ourselves as we really are? The Resurrection shows how God sees the ugliness and reveals the hidden beauty, because He does see us as we really are.

Why is this glory revealed in the mud of human existence and flung out as lavishly and sweetly as the woman’s perfume? Is it so that we can observe from a distance, staying in hiding and judging each other to avoid our own pain? Is it for a spring-cleaning or new-leadership kind of renewal? Or is it to give us as much glory as we can bear?