What is the significance of Easter?
This question has many rich, diverse and beautiful answers from across the Christian tradition. Perhaps most importantly, the significance of Easter is that God incarnate in the form of Christ paid the atoning sacrifice for humanity’s sins. No longer alienated from God, we can be reconciled to God, to each other and to creation; be increasingly conformed to our original telos (end, or purpose) and look forward to spending eternity with God.
As significant as this may already be, however, the implications are far broader and more astounding. One such implication is that the internal logic undergirding the world is quite different than we may have expected. A quick survey of history and current events will turn up the same tired, expected theme: power always wins.[1] Whether wielded as money, military might, violence or interpersonal manipulation, we are attracted to it, we pursue it, we each – given the right context – would exercise it with impunity. Why? Because power works, and why not play the game?
However, threaded through the biblical narrative we catch a glimpse of an alternate economy. God chooses a chronically timid farmer to liberate Israel from the Midianites’ oppression and a woman to execute a Canaanite commander.[2] He raises up a shepherd runt to be Israel’s greatest king and later calls a boy-king of eight to catalyze the moral reformation of Judah.[3] In the Old Testament law, he again and again commands his people to care for the least and most lowly – the orphan, the widow, the alien – and this not just as a rhetorical flourish, but outlined in concrete, practical details. And God takes care to remind Israel that he chose them as his people not because they were the greatest, but because they were the least of all (Deut 7:7).
Out of a tapestry of narratives, prophecies and callings, then, we begin to expect – and hope – that the God of the Bible operates differently than the world does. This hope continues to be fostered with the story of Jesus – born to an unknown young woman in a forgotten corner of Judea in the backwater of the Roman Empire. Yet out of these humble origins, he speaks of a Kingdom that captivates the imagination and the national and spiritual hopes of his audience, performing miracles of healing and provision that reflect the heart of the God of Israel’s law.
But then he is crucified, chewed up and spit out by the machinations of power. We have to again face the hard reality that power wins, that perhaps only in soft, artificial enclaves can something other grow, and even then, it cannot last. Why be “gentle and humble in heart” if it results in ultimate defeat? Jesus’ words, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mk 9:35) must have returned to mock his disciples as they faced the cold, hard fact of his inglorious death. The upside-down logic introduced in Israel’s law and history and flickering forth in Jesus was, it seems, inevitably extinguished.
But then, Jesus rises from the dead, in an incomprehensible turn that represents more than a confirmation of our atonement. Incredibly, the Resurrection demonstrates that the illogical logic of God’s economy does indeed overcome that of the world’s. The Resurrection reveals that the truest, deepest order of things is one where humility overturns might, serving ascends ruling and self-sacrifice prevails over self-aggrandizing power. As Paul reflects to the Corinthian church,
We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called…Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength (1 Cor 1:23-25).
The existence of a more foundational, grace-filled order of things is analogized beautifully in C.S. Lewis’ children’s book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In explaining why the sacrificial Stone Table cracked, bringing him back to life, Aslan tells the children, “Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know.”[4] According to the Witch’s knowledge of the world, punishment for a crime is aptly meted out to the criminal, or a substitute who foolishly offers to stand in the criminal’s place. However, according to the “deeper magic,” the truer reality undergirding the Narnian world, “when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the table would crack and time itself would start working backward.”[5] The natural law, so to speak, underlying the Narnian universe is one of gracious, rather than tightly retributive, justice.
Undergirding our world is not an automated providential mechanism, but rather a sovereign God whose very nature, embodied in Christ, is one of gracious and humble self-giving love. This generous reservoir of love flowing from the Trinity is ample enough to absorb and alchemize every hurt and evil of our world. It is the “deeper magic” of the universe, the illogical logic that quietly and confoundingly overcomes the selfish powers of humankind.
We are wise to follow Jesus’ example of servanthood if it indeed reflects our world’s deepest reality. But if we follow it hoping to win at the world’s economy – that is, if we practice humble, sacrificial living in hopes that God will eventually raise us up to earthly (or even heavenly!) prominence – we are sorely mistaken. This represents a contradictory mixing of God’s and the world’s economies which, unfortunately, far too many believers (consciously or not) yet subscribe to. After all, the perfect embodiment of God’s economy faced death. Yet God offers us the incredible privilege of partnering with him in his ongoing work of reconciliation. As we seek to be more Christlike and spread his Kingdom on earth, we are returning the world to its truest, most fundamental reality.
Easter thus stands as the liturgical reminder not only of our redemption, but also our calling. As we relive the divine, historical drama of Christ’s death and resurrection, we are powerfully reminded and reassured of the world’s truest reality: generous justice, lavish love and power that exists to serve. As those redeemed by God, who bear his name and carry his Spirit, we are called to join him in restoring the world to its true nature.
Notes:
[1] Here is meant power in its most common sense: not as a neutral force, but used for self-aggrandizement.
[2] Certainly no comment on women’s abilities, but this would have been received at the time as an unexpected plot twist.
[3] Josiah was eight when crowned king, but eighteen when he initiated the repair of the Temple, which resulted in the rediscovery of the Book of the Law.
[4] Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Collier Books: New York, 1972), 159.
[5] Ibid, 160.
