It Had To Have Been A Rollicking Good Time

If you’re in a liturgical church, the fine thing about Easter is that it lasts so long—long enough to shake off the care and aggravation of lent, and most of all to meditate on the mysterious wonder of the resurrection. As long as you thought about the cross, that’s how long you think about the empty tomb and the days that Jesus spent with his disciples before ascending into heaven.

This time around—especially after mourning over that Nicholas Kristof interview of Serene Jones—I’ve been bemused and charmed by, on the one hand, how intimate and personal are the resurrection appearances, and, on the other hand, how much Jesus seems to enjoy himself. One might go so far as to say that he spends resurrection day, as my children would say, ‘messing with’ his nearest and dearest. And why wouldn’t he? It’s the grandest and most glorious surprise of the cosmos. Popping in to bewilder and alarm, especially with something so happy, sounds, how shall I put it? Fun.

These two features of the resurrection—the very personal nature of Jesus’ glorious revelation of himself, and the rollicking good time—pair rather brilliantly, I think, with the stark truth of the cross itself. They illustrate the deep and troubling reality that faith and belief have to come first. Serene Jones, having discounted the cross, can never understand the resurrection. The desperate hope is that she will one day be overturned by Jesus into true belief. Only then will she catch a glimpse of what is wrought by these two events.

Observe the symmetrical beauty of the cross and the resurrection. Jesus dies publicly, shamed, alone, broken. His friends run away and it is left to two strangers to profess faith in his work and person. He hangs out there to be gawked at by the whole world. Anyone can look at him, can jeer or curse. And then he dies. And after that, he is no longer for everyone. If you looked at him and hated him, or looked at him and didn’t care, you don’t get to have another go on Sunday morning. That whole day is the bright, sweet restorative fellowship of those who cared very much, who were devastated in spirit as he was broken in body. What’s the line by David? ‘The body you have broken may rejoice’—everyone rejoices, undone by astonishment and wonder. But not everyone in the crowds. Everyone of that private, intimate fellowship of friends who are restored to life when there had been no hope of ever being together again.

And that’s a rollicking good time. I mean, first Jesus hangs about in the garden with the women, overturning the terrible cosmos destroying mistake of Eve. Then, that very day, he walks all the way to Emmaus with two friends who should have known better. Just when they might catch hold of him he disappears and goes to see the disciples, intruding on their fortress of solitude and grief. They who have spent the whole day miserably not believing the women. The women who must—out of all the believers—have had the best day you can imagine. A strange and surreal day, but the best one.

And then there’s poor Thomas, who doesn’t believe but also doesn’t go away. Like so many hangers on to the church, who can’t make up their minds to be happy or miserable, who wait and wait hoping for a personal sign, or any reason to be there.

Jesus could have done it anyway he liked. He could have compelled, by his mighty hand and outstretched arm, all the disciples to array themselves humbly at the tomb so that when he stepped out they would see it. ‘Ha,’ he could have said, ‘Told You So.’ But that’s no fun. Too much like a board meeting.

I mean, what do you do when you have good news? I generally sit by in amazement for a while and then think about who I can tell. I have to tell somebody. Somehow the news unfolds out of my own astonishment and then, as it is told over and over, becomes a fixed ebenezer of joy. ‘It was like this,’ I say. I went out weeping, but came again with joy, my mouth full of laughter.

Every Christian gets to taste it. But you have to look at the cross first and find your rightful place in the stark, ruined devastation of public sin. You confess to the wide world that it should have been you, there, and not the only good and true person ever to walk stony ruined paths of this life. Only then are you overtaken by an interior, astonishing joy—not of your own feelings of resurrection, of things being slightly less worse than you thought—but of the risen Son, alive in your heart, mind, and soul, animating your dying self with the effulgent light of his risen glory. It’s the most cluttered, unexplainable, haphazard joy.