Renewed Life: An Easter Story

The slave, in his prime, shriveled under the noonday heat, the object of both the sun that scorches and the whip that lashes. The grandma in the nursing home, awaiting the big visit from her family that never comes. The team manager coming in, still hungover from last night’s liaison with his favorite drink. Thoughts, unasked for, protrude, make themselves pressing. Hurtful words that leave a lasting mark deeper than any abrasion.

Whether from personal experience or our collective history, these are images we are familiar with. Our bodies can feel pain; we can also feel pleasure. But we have souls too, which give us the comprehension and decision-making abilities that set us apart from the other creatures of the Animal Kingdom. Human beings are rational animals – Homo sapiens, the sapient ones. We have a mind that can know things, not just about the world – but about God and ourselves as well. Unlike the rest of the fauna that walk and crawl and slither around, we seek to understand our surroundings through the sciences.

We also have an acute sense of whether or not we are needed, wanted, and loved. We feel content when we are, and sad when we are not. The other members of the Animal Kingdom don’t display such interest in the world, nor do they show signs of knowing when they’re unwanted. This deeper consciousness and self-awareness point to the rational soul in every man and woman.

We humans are body-soul composites. We have one foot in the physical, the other in the visceral. We are creatures who touch the tangible and the transcendent. It is this body and soul that we live with every day, and in the human condition, there is always room for improvement.

Dear Reader, this is the background and understanding with which I am working. These are my beliefs, and they are important to know before continuing. This is the story of an Easter miracle. No, not the miracle of how a rabbit produces so many multi-colored eggs for Easter Sunday. But it is something just as biologically baffling.

It’s a story of how death does not have the final word, how death is not the ultimate destiny. Death looms in the distance, as natural as birth and love and action, yet all the more terrible. But there was a Man who died once and lived, the Man who turned death on its head.

You don’t have to be Christian to know the general outlines of this story. It is, after all, the history (and goal) which propelled Western civilization up until recent times. Jesus was like us in all things but our sinfulness. He prayed, ate, drank, socialized, sang, worked, and wept like the rest of us. He experienced the good and, especially at the end, the bad. Following significant blood loss and a gruesome execution, He died. He did so to save us from sin (a reality we can’t explore adequately here) and days after His Body had been placed in a tomb, He came back to life.

For the Christian, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is everything. It changes all we say and do, how we live our lives, and what death holds in store for us. It shows the goodness of Jesus and the fulfillment of His life’s ministry: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10) and “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). The Resurrection is the pinnacle of our faith. If Jesus could raise others to new life but not Himself, it would prove the limitation of His power over life and death. But since He conquers even sin and death, we see that, for Him, there are no limits.

New and abundant life is what Jesus seeks to give each of us. Christ’s Resurrection and the hope of our own leads us to conform our earthly lives to His. Thus, we strive to live in charity, the epitome of the Christian life, which is love and a selfless doing good for others. We wish to live well and do good to others so we can gain Heaven.

Why seek the unseen? For two reasons: All the good things we have tasted in this life and all the mistreatment that has left a bad taste in our mouths. Every delight is but a foretaste of heavenly peace. The good things of this life, in comparison to the resurrected existence of heavenly glory, are negligible, utterly forgettable. As for the pains we’ve borne and the injustices we’ve suffered, it will likewise be as if they never were. Because in Heaven there is no pain and no sadness. Even unsavory memories wash away. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

So the resurrection to new life has the last word, and not death. “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). The resurrected body will be indestructible, imperishable, immaculate, perfect. The resurrected mind will not hate or fret about the past or worry about the future or second-guess itself. The soul too will be perfectly at peace because we will be completely at peace with our self.

Sound too good to be true? Well, it would if it weren’t for the fact that suffering is an inherent part of our life on Earth. We are called to take up our cross and follow the way to life that Jesus has shown us. Still, He overcame suffering and death. Like a slave, He was beaten. Like the lonely and the outcast, He was abandoned by His own when He needed them most. Like the stressed employee dealing with a difficult manager, He saw those closest to Him give themselves over to lesser goods instead of to Him. The thoughts of the self-righteous were jealous of the Just One. Judas, Jesus’s traitor as much as His friend, shared words of endearment which proved empty. All that baggage Jesus transforms in His love.

The Resurrection makes us live differently. If people didn’t work on their relationship with God or believe in a heavenly Promised Land, we would not have charitable giants like Mother Teresa or international visionaries like Robert Schuman.

We awake each morning to a cosmos ordered by both gravity and grace. Because of the Resurrection, I can get up every day with a fresh start. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). What’s in the past is in the past. Each moment now is a step closer to Heaven.