Celebrating Easter

On Easter, we read the resurrection story. Every year. We read it at the early service outside and the regular service inside. As many Christians on the liberal side of things, we are a little uncomfortable with the literal bodily resurrection. The implied afterlife doesn't always sit well either. Still, we tell the resurrection story.

We tell of women who came to the tomb looking for Jesus and were called evangelists for their proclamation of Jesus' resurrection.

We tell of the angels' cry, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?"

We tell of disciples who didn't believe resurrection was possible.

We tell of disciples running into Jesus, alive and well.

And it's strange now to realize that for most of my church life, Easter wasn't about resurrection. Easter was about Jesus' death. My nieces, in their very cute Easter dresses, could tell you what I grew up knowing, "We celebrate Easter because Jesus died for our sins so we could go to heaven."

I now believe Jesus' death was incidental, not salvific. If he had died in his bed at a ripe old age, there still would have been resurrection. We could talk about that for hours, I know.

This year, though, reading the story of resurrection with my Sunday Bible study in preparation for Easter's sermon, I was struck by how little Easter had to do with life for most of my life. As much as we sang about a risen Savior on Easter, we trusted in death most of the time. If we did everything right, Jesus would save us from eternal death.

I still don't quite know what to do with the resurrection. Maybe that's the beauty of this faith: a lifetime spent wondering does not reveal the fullness of God's covenant with us. This deep, beautiful mystery of the faith can and will haunt us in the best way imaginable.

But I am so glad that now I celebrate an Easter that is about life. There are a handful of deep truths I hold about God, one of which is that our lives now matter. They don't matter because of their implications for the afterlife. They matter because, well, it's our life.

Show up at the birthday party and the funeral. Take the neighbor's kid with you to the water park. Set an extra plate or two at every meal for whatever guests happen to show up. Buy dinner for yourself and that homeless guy on the corner; sit down and eat it together. Do the things that create amazing, unbelievable, abundant life.

Because if nothing else, I know this: resurrection is about life that overwhelms everything else.