Easter Sunday

For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.

What is the difference between someone dying and being brought back to life, what we might call resuscitation, and Resurrection?

We might call resuscitation a miracle, though it happens not infrequently: someone apparently dies, and a short time after, by means of some medical intervention, they are brought back to life.

That reminds me of that great scene from the Princess Bride, when Billy Crystal’s character says to Inigo and Fezzik, about Westley:

It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do… Go through his pockets and look for loose change!

But even a mostly dead person, miraculously resuscitated and brought back to life, one day will die again. Even Lazarus, brought back to life after four days, one day died again.

Resurrection, what we celebrate today, is different. It is not resuscitation, a miracle of being brought back from the dead, only one day to die again. Resurrection is victory over dying, an end to death entirely.

The Gospel today concludes, “they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”

Last night at the Easter Vigil, we proclaimed:

This is the night, when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. The one Morning Star who never sets, Christ the Son, coming back from death’s domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity, and lives and reigns forever and ever.

“He had to rise from the dead.” He must rise, it is necessary that he rise.

This is the great message of Easter. Not that Christ was resuscitated, that he happened to be brought back to life, only to die again. But that death itself, and all that goes along with it, has been defeated.

“They did not understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”

One of the prayers read last night at the Vigil, the one after the reading from Ezekiel, says:

“May the whole world know and see that what was cast down is raised up, what had become old is made new, and all things are restored to integrity through Christ, just as by him they came into being.”

To redeem means to get back the value. Christ lays down his life in order to take it up again.

Did you not know that this is your destiny too?

Again and again we hear this throughout the New Testament: if you are baptized into Christ, then you too have died with him. And if you have died with him, you too will rise with him. You must.

Christ is the first born of the New Creation: he goes first through that passage into death; he is the first to receive the fullness of that transformation, in his victory over death. But he does so as the New Adam, the first of many brothers and sisters, the Head of the Body that is Christ brought to full stature.

If God has destined us to be his members, brothers and sisters in this New Creation, then we too must pass through that death, until all that has been broken is healed and all that is lost is restored and that has gone wrong is rectified.

We don’t want mere resuscitation, to be brought back to life, only to die again. We want healing, transformation, redemption.

Therefore, we must follow Jesus on this Paschal journey from the beautiful communion of Holy Thursday to the sorrowful ordeal of Good Friday through the strange silence of Holy Saturday, all the way through, until the glorious new life of Easter Sunday.

Every Easter we need to learn again that full meaning of the new creation that begins in Christ: he must rise.

Do we too not yet understand that he had to rise from the dead? Do we think that our life is a mistake? That we are trapped, enslaved? That our sins are too great? That holiness is impossible?

Christ defeated death entirely. He reigns in victory, in the fullness of life, having received every good gift God intended for his beautiful creation at the very beginning, recalled in the First Reading from Genesis proclaimed last night at the Easter Vigil. He reigns, and this is critically important, not only as God, but as man, as God’s redeemed creation.

Know then on this Easter Sunday that God wants nothing less for you. I announce to you Good News! The greatest news! God will settle for nothing less than you receiving everything he has given his own Son. Not resuscitation, with death still the inevitable, final fate. But a life made new, never to die again. Total victory. Resurrection.