Today is Easter Sunday, 2010, a day celebrated by Christians worldwide as the day when Christ rose from the dead. I appreciate the fact that he is able to do this conveniently on Sundays, each and every year, as most people have the day off. This the ultimate disappearing act, an act where the mystery of God is revealed: Jesus dies, disappears, reappears, and ascends. This part gets really confusing. There seem to be many different accounts of how this actually happens, and we are missing plenty of details.
I have no idea why today is not called “Disappearance Day,” or DD for short. The stone was rolled away and the body of Jesus wasn’t there. Plus, even if he were raised from the dead on the 3rd day it wouldn’t be on Easter Sunday if he died on a Friday. Count the days: Friday to Saturday is one, Saturday to Sunday is two.
Resurrection and ascension are two different things. Being raised from the dead is resurrection. Ascension is where Jesus returns to heaven to live with God on a permanent basis. There is an apparent span of 40 days or so in between the two during which time Jesus “appears” to his followers. And then, poof, he’s gone.
I find it interesting that no Gospel gives a definitive accounting of the resurrection of Jesus; we are left to come up with our best guess. Nor are there precise accounts of reappearances after his death. Or why he chose to appear to some and not others. We still have this query today, over 2000 years later. What we do seem to know is that there was an empty tomb.
As was customary of the time, women would visit the tomb on the first day of the week. “Wait a second,” they said. “Who rolled this humongous stone away?” “Hey, look! He’s not here!” Apparently sometime shortly after that, Jesus appears to at least one of them (Mary Magdalene) and instructs her to inform his disciples that he is alive and well.
Jesus had a fondness for women, in very fact (if we are to believe in any of this at all), he appeared to them first. He loved Mary Magdalene, his mother, Mary, Aunt Elizabeth, Grandma Anna, and so on. Yet the Christian tradition has successfully oppressed women since his death. Well, actually before, during and after. This makes me like Jesus all the more. Blood drips out of my pores when I see so-called Christians treat women, or anyone for that matter, in a way that would have made Jesus weep. And it’s not just men who do this. Many “Christian women” look upon non-Christian women with disgust, disdain, and a truckload of judgment. And to top it off, the four gospels have it that the risen Christ commissioned women to teach men! Well, let’s just skip over that part. It’s not important. God picked a man to be his representative and that's final. Who would have believed a woman, then or now?
Like Jesus, we will all descend into the abyss before our ascension into another dimension of being, a dimension far more transcendent than any we can know in human form. Until that time, we remain on earth and watch as our loved ones disappear before our very eyes, sharing the same disbelief as the women at the tomb. And when our own bodies are whittled away by the ravages of disease, sucked dry by the vampires of bodily pain, we will no doubt find women at our sides. For women have an amazing capacity to witness, to enter into the darkness of others, and to offer a cup of love to the thirsty. It is no accident that Jesus picked them to carry the message of love.
You will not find me in church today. My resurrected Jesus will be found at the bedside of a dying friend, in the joy of a child discovering a hidden Easter egg, in the warm lick of a dog’s tongue across my cheek, and in the singing celebration of the birds.
My Easter is right here, all around me.
