An Easter Surprise

I always seemed to have a hard time with Easter.

As a boy, it was about Easter baskets with bunnies, egg hunts, a new suit, going with my family to a bombastic presentation at church, with trumpets and timpanies. It was a show. But as I got older and began to question just what happened on that Easter morning in Jerusalem, my budding scientific mind began to dispute the cheery notion of Happy Easter.

It reached its apex when I was engaged in an argument with a fellow seminarian late one night. After wrestling with one another over the story of Easter, I admitted that I did not believe in the resurrection. My compadre, a fellow South of God tribe member, was shocked and visably disturbed by my self-revelation. He told me that if I did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, that I was not a Christian, and that I certainly could not be a minister. It was a tough night for me, with my fledgling faith, and our tenuous collegial relationship.

By the way, this is the same guy that I would get into regular arguments/discussions about the Bible, theology, and ethics, not to mention politics. He would often wind up closing our encounter by famously proclaiming, “That’s okay Galloway. You just keep believing your way, and I will believe God’s!”. It was a theological imperialism that I could laugh at but would trouble me because I knew he was not kidding.

After this fateful discussion, I made a trip to the Trappist monastery in Conyers, about an hour east of Atlanta. There I had a monk that I talked to regularly. He had helped me to learn to pray in a more contemplative style, that of the meditative Centering Prayer. Even though I was not aware of the term, he had been functioning as my spiritual director, listening to my honest reflection on my questions, my spiritual experiences, my wonderings, and my doubts. It made sense to me to talk to him about my recent conversation. It felt safe to be transparent as to my thoughts and feelings. So, I did.

Fortunately, he had a wonderful sense of humor. He roared when I told him of my friend’s cocky response, and added that there were a few monks at the monastery who had a similar attitude. He reassured me that the questions I was having were normal and part of the discernment process of discovering a faith that is your own. You can not simply “inherit” the faith of your parents but have to “work out your own sense of God” so that your faith informs how you live. You want to live authentically and be true to your deepest self. I’ll always remember this: he said that God is big enough to handle your doubts and questions. What a gift of grace that was for a young man caught in the vortex of a seemingly endless relativism.

After telling him of my belief in the teachings of Jesus, particularly the concept of the covenant, of loving your neighbor and loving God as the central commitment to faith, I confessed my problem of accepting the idea of a bodily resurrection. Rather than arguing with me, he simply offered his take on what happened at Easter.

It went something like this. After the disciples had come to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover, with high hopes that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, They were hoping that Jesus would bring in a new day for the Hebrew people, freed from the Roman’s oppression. But things didn’t go the way that they had planned. Jesus was arrested at night in the Garden of Gethsemane as he was praying. Jesus, poignantly while praying, asked if this cup of suffering and death could possibly pass him by. And yet, he trusted God and offered himself in faith. “Not my will, but thy will.”

And we know the rest of the story. He was taken before Pilate, was tried and condemned, sentenced to death on a cross. Jesus was beaten and crucified, dying there on the cross.

Jesus’ disciples fled, scared to death that they too would be arrested and killed. Fear took over their spirit, where before they had been animated by hope. Peter stands in for them all, as not only fleeing the scene, but denying Jesus, even protesting to those who were trying to link him to the condemned man that he, Peter, did not know him. These disciples were driven by self-preservation, and according to the tradition, went to hide in the upper room where Jesus had gathered them the night before to share in the fellowship of the table.

Tradition says that on Sunday morning, Jesus was resurrected, appearing to the disciples in that same room, and appearing to the women who fearlessly kept vigil by the tomb where his body had been placed. There are several accounts of other appearances in the Gospels, notably for me, his presence on the road to Emmaus, as Jesus is recognized in the breaking of the bread.

My monk admitted that he did not know how that resurrection took place. At the time of our conversation, there had been a lot of excitement around the Shroud of Turin, the burial cloth that seemed to show the image of Jesus, burned into the cloth. My monk smiled at that.

His evidence of resurrection was the transformation that occurred in the disciples. As they had fearfully fled the cross on Friday, by Sunday they had changed. On that Easter Sunday morning, they were bold in their proclamation that Jesus had indeed risen, that death could not contain his spirit, that he was alive among them. My monk saw that change as evidence that Christ had risen, even in the midst of fear and doubt. The creative power that Jesus had pointed to in his teachings and in his life, came to animate this gathering of disciples as they formed what would become the living community of faith, even in the face of persecution and martyrdom.

That made sense to me then, and still does now. I have told this experience of the surprise of finding my Easter faith to every congregation I have served.

As you come to this Easter, what hopes and fears do you bring with you? What wonderings and wonder fill your heart on Easter morning in this Springtime of new life? What sense of awe echoes in your soul? What surprise does Easter have for you this year? Blessings.