Missing the point
On December 17, 1903 the Wright brothers finally succeeded in keeping their homemade airplane in the air for 59 seconds and 852 feet at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Their sister shared their excitement with the local newspaper. The next morning the headline in their local paper read, “Popular local bicycle merchants to be home for the holidays.” The editor didn’t realize the significance of that event. He missed the point of their excitement.
Incredibly, in spite of the vantage point of two thousand years of history, there are many people who view the resurrection of Jesus Christ just like that editor viewed the Wright brothers’ first flight. It was something that happened rather than a great change event
Many see Easter merely as a time home to be with family. There is much more to it.
Resurrection – comfort and/or challenge?
We can smile at the editor’s lack of understanding about the significance of the event. But I am beginning to realize how much I am like that editor. Let me explain.
During most of my lifetime I have focused exclusively on the resurrection as the Good News. Jesus conquered the most significant fact of our life… death. With Jesus, I too will rise again. I rightly take comfort in that. What I am beginning to realize is that I have focused too much on how the Resurrection impacts my future. I have failed to realize how the resurrection challenges me to live my life today.
I am not thinking about the challenge to prove that Jesus rose. I am talking about the challenge implicit in what Jesus’ resurrection teaches and how that changes the way I should live my life.
Let’s not stop with what Jesus taught during his life. Let’s take seriously what his death teaches us about living.
I am afraid that for many today Jesus’ death teaches that God is an angry king who demands “pay back” for our offenses against God and neighbor. I am now seeing a clearer connection that Jesus’ death models for us the limitless way we are to love God and our neighbor. He is teaching us to “pay God’s limitless love forward”.
Understanding and accepting the challenge
This Lent and this Holy Week have made it clearer than ever that Jesus’ life and death models for us what it means to really love our God and our brothers and sisters.
This Lent has made it clearer to me how Jesus uses stories such as the Good Samaritan to show how me how to love everyone whether they are blood relatives, look like me, or pray like me… even if they are in some way “enemies”!
Jesus teaches us that limitless love is the way God wants us to love each and every one of our brothers and sisters.
No wonder after washing their feet, he asked his apostles, “Do you understand what I have done.”
He suffered and died to show us that “an eye for an eye” is not God’s way of dealing with us… so it should be not our way of dealing with each other.
He summed up the law and the prophets in “love your God and your neighbor as yourself… even if it hurts, etc.
He proved the cross is no longer a “scandal” but a sign of hope for our resurrection!
JESUS’ RESURRECTION GIVES ME THE COURAGE TO WALK THE PATH OF LOVING WITHOUT LIMITS – I WILL RISE!
A question of focus
- Is my Easter focus primarily on what Jesus did for me?
- Or is it on understanding that I am to love even my enemies?
RE: “I have failed to realize how the resurrection challenges me to live my life today.”
Pope Francis says that “the cross is not negotiable” (https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2021/documents/papa-francesco_20210401_omelia-crisma.html). He also says, in his Easter Vigil homily, that we must daily renew the amazement of the first encounter and humbly allow ourselves to be surprised by God’s ways. He explains that the Risen Lord is asking his disciples to go to the settings of daily life, the streets we travel every day, the corners of our cities.
Happy Easter to all! May we all see and believe, as the beloved disciple, and as St. Vincent, whom Celestino Fernández calls “a mystic with eyes open,” so that we may be filled with surprises in the light of Jesus’ Good News, what he shows daily that he wants us to do.
Pope Francis Message 2021…
“Christ, my hope, is risen!”. This is no magic formula that makes problems vanish. No, the resurrection of Christ is not that. Instead, it is the victory of love over the root of evil, a victory that does not “by-pass” suffering and death, but passes through them, opening a path in the abyss, transforming evil into good: this is the unique hallmark of the power of God.
The Risen Lord is also the Crucified One, not someone else. In his glorious body he bears indelible wounds: wounds that have become windows of hope. Let us turn our gaze to him that he may heal the wounds of an afflicted humanity.