The Hard News of Easter

Christ is risen! Christians around the world claim that no news has ever been or ever could be better. After the darkness of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and the silence of Holy Saturday, Easter morning seems to burst forth with nothing but joy and light. And yet, Easter holds many often-conflicting emotions—not all of them joy. We only have to look at a couple gospel depictions of Jesus’s resurrection to see this truth.

• Mark’s gospel ends with the women “went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” (16:8)
•  Matthew’s gospel ends with Jesus commissioning his disciples on a mountain top: “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” (28:17)

While the women have received the good news of resurrection, but after the terror of watching their friend Jesus suffer brutal execution, they understandably seem to interpret any new developments—even good developments!—with fear. While the disciples worship Jesus, Matthew’s text says that some of them doubted what was happening even while they worshipped. The gospel writers seemed to understand how humans hold often-conflicting emotions in tension.

And it’s not just the disciples who hold death and life together. In both Luke’s andJohn’s gospels, Jesus shows the scars of his crucifixion to his disciples.Resurrection did not erase the physical trauma of torture from Jesus’s body anymore than it would erase the mental and emotional scars of those who had watched their friend die.

We must remember that there is no resurrection without the crucifixion. Even in our own lives, the experience of redemption by its very nature reminds us of previous failure, trauma, or heart ache. The male and female disciples under went severe trauma that even the miraculous act of God raising Jesus could not undo.Resurrection does not undo death; it forges a new path through death. The effects of grief, despair, and pain therefore remain realities even when experiencing the joy of and gratitude for new life.

So, in order for us to accept resurrection in all its beauty, we must refrain from seeing emotions as dichotomous: joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure, beauty or ugliness. Resurrection asks us to experience joy through sorrow and pain along with ecstasy. And for resurrection’s power to be fully felt and to transform our lives, we must not ask it to show up without its own scars.

The story of Jesus’s resurrection does not replace the story of his crucifixion—it redeems it. As the witness in Mark’s gospel proclaims, “Jesus of Nazareth—the Crucified One—has been raised.” (16:6) Interestingly, the symbols of our faith remain the cross and the tomb, emblems of death and destruction. Ever notice how early Christians didn’t adopt a throne or a golden scepter as the images of our faith to demonstrate that Jesus was raised from the dead? No, the cross remains, but it also now sprouts flowers every Easter morning. And the tomb—while yet a stopping place for every traveler on life’s journey—at the end of the day is vacant.