Posted on Apr 10, 2020

Seeing the point of Easter is like seeing the point of a joke.

When we get it, it’s marvellous. In a flash of recognition, it possesses us. It doesn’t need any explanations. It raises no questions. In fact, explanations and questions will ruin it. What happens is pure involuntary response.

Seeing a joke is suddenly to see what’s familiar to us in a fresh and unexpected light. In a flash we see the reverse side of things. We’re confronted with the opposite of what we expect, and it’s the cause of great hilarity.

As with a joke, so with joy. Joy is pure involuntary response. It’s not something we can contrive. We can’t think ourselves into joy. We can’t convince ourselves to possess it. Reason doesn’t help. Like a joke, joy is a spontaneous force which happens when we see familiar things in a new light. Except what we see with joy is not the comic, but the radiant, transcendent side of things.

Here’s the clue to understanding Easter. As with a joke, we suddenly see the reverse of what we expect.

And - as with joy – what’s reversed is our bleak expectation of how things are going to work out for us. In a flash we see all that frustrates and depresses us in a new and transcendent light.

The story of the suffering and death of Jesus reminds us of the worst we are going through. We are all, to a greater or lesser extent, having to deal with some kind of difficulty or sadness in our lives. An illness. A separation. A rejection. A tragedy. A death.

And right now, we’re all very apprehensive of the impact of the Covid-19 virus which, thankfully, we haven’t to date experienced in Western Australia to the same savage degree as in other parts of the world, but which nevertheless has caused grave medical concern and has decimated businesses and livelihoods. Many are now facing an uncertain and worrying future, medically and financially.

These are elements of our lives which at the moment seem to have it all their own way – and it’s the way of sorrow and suffering. The way of fear. The way of despair. The way of hopelessness.

The joy of Easter is seeing these debilitating aspects of our lives in a new and unexpected light.

The women came to Jesus’ tomb expecting there to be death. That’s why they bought spices – to anoint a body. But instead they found life. The young man at the tomb told them they now had nothing to fear. The impossible is now possible.

And that’s the Easter message. We need no longer be thwarted by what has the potential to deaden us. We need no longer to be terrified by the darkness, for we know it holds the light.

It would be a mistake to think of resurrection as though it were entirely an event in the past.

What happened on that first Easter Day is what happens for us again and again. Our fearful expectations are constantly being reversed.

We convince ourselves we shall not be able to cope, and then we find that we have done so. Our lives are long lists of times when we believe nothing good or positive can ever happen. But time and again what we experience is the opposite of what we had expected, and what we thought was impossible becomes possible.

Despite our deepest forebodings we see the other side of things, and joy breaks through. Often not in the way we had imagined, but it breaks through nevertheless, unexpectedly, and in the most unlikely circumstances. And once more God gets round our unbelief.

We have faith in the resurrection of Jesus after three days because we know it to be true in our own experience. We are already being raised from despair to life, day after day. This resurrection is happening to us already.

In our fear, we look on the risen Christ, and know there’s nothing to fear. The unexpected transforms the familiar.

That’s the point of Easter. And it’s right there for us to get.

 

John Shepherd

Easter 2020