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Christos anesti! Alithos anesti!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
This is the good news of the gospel. Good news we need to hear, now more than ever.
We have lived through the Lent of Lents. We’ve fasted from physical contact. Fasted from communal gatherings. Fasted from foods in short supply at the supermarket. Millions around the world are being forced into fasting from food and other essentials, as entire nations enforce isolation.
The passion – the events of the last week of Jesus’ life – culminated in a corona of thorns pressed upon his head as he was crucified. All of humanity, as one, has had this coronavirus pressed down upon our heads, either directly or indirectly. We’re all suffering – if not infected with the physical virus, we’re all infected with the spiritual virus of fear.
This suffering is our universal human condition. The cross is its sign – both symbol and reality. Through Lent and Passion Week, it confronts us. There is no way around it. The only way beyond the cross is through it. We must gaze upon it, take it up, own it as our own.
Through the cross, on its other side, is the tomb. Jesus’ body was laid in it, the stone was rolled in front of it, and incubation began. Three days later, the stone was rolled away. The tomb was empty. Christos anesti! Alithos anesti! - chanted the early Christians in their common language of Greek. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Divine Love has gone viral!
Jesus, the suffering human being, died and was buried. The Christ, who was and is the divine compassion he taught and practiced, rose three days later, and lives today whenever we shower that love on others.
God as a supernatural superpower was crucified, died, and was buried. God as the celestial giver of special favors for special people was buried. God as the embodiment of national identity was buried. God as dispenser of rewards and punishments was buried. The God of my religion but not yours was buried. Old assumptions and beliefs about God died and were buried, and out of the opened tomb, God. who is unconditional agape Love, rose and now lives among us.
The passion, the death, the resurrection: the gospel is not fixed in the first century, but is a sacred myth reflecting a universal and timeless reality. Like spring, Easter keeps coming around, and with it, resurrections for our time.
With coronavirus, the idea of America First, or China First, or India First is dead and buried. Some folks might not have caught on to this death and burial yet. But rising past the rolled-away stone is the consciousness that we are one whole human race, indivisible, united both in suffering and in the necessity of shared sacrifice for recovery.
With coronavirus, the politics of “me first” is dead. The politics of greed and selfishness is dead and buried. Some folks might not get it, but soon they will. Rising from the empty tomb is the consciousness that we are all in this struggle together, and that we must have a robust public social safety net, so that the most basic needs of all people are met.
With coronavirus, the idea that public health can be privatized is dead and buried. Rising from the tomb is the spreading conviction that health care must be guaranteed for all, regardless of ability to pay.
With coronavirus, our complacency about the fate of our neighbors, near and far, and our carelessness about the condition of the natural world, has died and been buried. The stone is rolled away from the tomb, and from it rises divine Agape: unconditional compassion for other people and for our planet.
Christos anesti! Alithos anesti!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!