Resurrections are disruptive

Martyn Percy (Editorial, Modern Believing, Volume 44:2, April 2003)

Resurrections are disruptive affairs. They leave more questions than they answer. They confound rather than confirm. The money spent on the funeral tea is now wasted. Resurrections lead to that confusing cocktail of emotions: fear and hope. No-one really knows what to do with a resurrection, for they sweep away order, convention, common sense and reason. And when these are gone, what is there left to say? There are no words or images that are fitting; no vocabulary that captures the something that is beyond reality. The witnesses are left bedraggled by the event; ravished by a moment that they can neither describe nor process.

Yesterday, across the land, Christians celebrated Easter. The starkness of Lent and the sombre timbre of church decor in Holy Week yields to an orgiastic rush of colours (gold, yellow, white), and to the sounds of celebration. The Christian cry is that 'He is risen!'. The acclamations of 'Hallelujah' ring out from bell towers and lusty congregations in churches of every hue.

But the first Easter was an altogether more confusing and circumspect affair. The gospels tell us that at the sight of the empty tomb, the disciples fled in fear. And as the appearances of Jesus increased in intensity and frequency over the following weeks, there were still doubts, questions and more fear. The resurrection, it seems, broke the world order in which the disciples lived, loved and grieved. And the new order to which they were being beckoned was as yet opaque.

In recent years, theologians, bishops and church leaders have found themselves in some difficulties when it comes to affirming what the resurrection is, and what it might mean. For some, the litmus test of orthodoxy has to be a literal affirmation of the historicity of the physical resurrection of Jesus. Anything less than this is deemed to be dangerous and heterodox.

But for other Christians, the accounts of the resurrection that are recorded in the gospels can only be the best that language can do to capture and convey an event that is, almost by definition, beyond words. Here, the resurrection stories simply point towards a new reality that is more than history itself. It defies explanation; it can barely be described.

Yet for all sorts of theological reasons, the resurrection stories are important material to wrestle with once we have got past Easter day. To be sure, the gospels affirm that Jesus, once dead, is now alive - but he has at the same time become an elusive figure. Sometimes present, often absent; sometimes easily recognised, sometimes appearing as a stranger. Jesus' resurrection provides consolation and mystery in equal measure. The gospels seem to be saying something about the very nature of God in the resurrection accounts. That God cannot be pinned down - you cannot be sure where, when, why and how [he] will appear. Now you see him; now you don't.

Quite recently a bishop addressed his diocese by saying that the most perfect image we have of God is Jesus hanging on the cross. Arguably, the plethora of crucifixes in churches, and in culture more generally, testifies to the popularity of that sentiment. The suffering of God in Jesus - can there be a more perfect 'image' of God to behold?

The answer from Easter Sunday to the question posed by Good Friday is an emphatic 'yes'. The most perfect image we have of God is an empty tomb; there is nothing to see, save only a few linen cloths folded neatly on a grey grave slab. The perfection of the image of God in this picture lies in the very absence of there being anything to glimpse. That, and the two instant emotions that would strike anyone who loved a person who had just died, only to discover that the body they had come to anoint had now disappeared. Those two emotions are hope and fear.

And that is what the resurrection stories evoke: the fear of God (which is the beginning of wisdom), and completely unmerited hope. And the gospels, with their four very different codas, try to hold on to these unbearably contrasting emotions, for it is in them and in between them that Jesus appears.

So the resurrection stories are packed with paradox, not persuasion. It seems that God's style is not to give proof; [he] prefers to pose questions. We are left with clues, but not conclusions. The grave clothes are folded neatly (how nice to know that God is tidy!). And yet the end of the gospels are untidy and ragged (as though God couldn't bear to say 'The End', or 'That's All Folks!'). The resurrection stories toy with us, playing with the borders and boundaries of our sense of reality. One minute there is absence, the next, presence. Yesterday, an experience of desolation and desertion for the disciples. Today, one of empowerment and presence. One minute Jesus can't be touched (his very instructions to the weeping Mary), and the next, he is to be touched (his command to Thomas). And in the middle of this (inevitable and quite human) yearning for certainty, proof and facts, Christians are reminded that their religion is, ultimately, a faith, not a science.

So the Easter message is this. The tomb is empty. But there is no point in standing guard outside it, and trying to draw people's attention to the places where Jesus has once been. An empty grave will win few converts. And that is really the point of the Easter story. In the most ancient account of the resurrection (by Mark), and in the earliest Greek manuscripts, the gospel ends mid-sentence, with an innocuous Greek word, gar (meaning 'for': 'they were afraid for…'). The abrupt, ungrammatical ending leaves us off-balance, mid-stride. Where will the next step be? Perhaps this is artful reticence on the part of the writer? It seems likely, for a proper conclusion to the Jesus story is withheld from the reader. The gospel has no apposite ending. It is up to the reader to say what happens next. The followers of Jesus are invited to write a resurrection conclusion with their own lives.

Modern Believing, MCU, October Vol. 44, No. 2, April 2003