Christ is Risen

Kirsten would probably be annoyed with me if I started saying "Christ is Risen" on Good Friday. But that's what's been going through my head for the last, oh, 20 minutes, and it's a beautiful thing.

I typically get annoyed with Easter. I love Ash Wednesday and the liturgical traditions of Lent, but it's also about this time that the penal substitutionary atonement songs and sermons come out en masse. I get pretty frustrated at all the talk of blood and gore. It's just not at all my thing. My own understanding of atonement obviously involves Jesus' death, but minus all the divine-mandated violence and God-paying-ransom stuff.

This evening, what's flooding back to me instead are the reasons I've remained a steadfast Christian: Jesus' love for the world, his example of radical subversion, and the reality we celebrate that life will overcome death. This is the beauty of Easter that I celebrate. I know that I am a sinner and the ugliness of humanity's sin, but Easter is a reminder of the good. Death doesn't win. Empire doesn't win. Love does.

When I go to church this Easter, we'll probably sing "Up from the Grave He Arose," which is fine. But my mind will be on the subversiveness of the Gospel, on Jesus' love for the misfits and miscreants, the homeless and the hurting. That love which extends to me, to you, to all of us, calling us to be our best selves by loving others in return. I'll be thinking about the imperial powers that Jesus unmasked, unbalanced, overcame--and our consequent freedom from such systems of dominance and oppression. This Easter, I'll be remembering you, I'll be remembering all those in the world who still must live under these troubled powers. I'll be thinking of all of us. But as I think, I'll be remembering that "Christ is Risen," and that reality lies not in the grips of power and empire, but in a celebration of love and life for all.

"Christ is risen indeed." Now go and love the world.