Oh, Easter. Oh, resurrection. What in the world are we supposed to do with you?
Today is the fourth Sunday of Easter, so it has clearly taken me a while to get around to an Easter post. Partly, this is because Lent was so brutal. Partly, this is because I’ve gotten myself in totally over my head this semester, taking a class, writing for a few local papers, plus the usual work and home responsibilities. But mostly I’m late because Easter befuddles me. Sometimes resurrection seems like sweet, clear water in a parched world, and sometimes it seems like a bad joke.
Just before Holy Week this year, I happened into a conversation among clergy about teaching children during Holy Week. “How should we talk about Jesus’ death?” someone wanted to know. I barged my way into the conversation: “Death is easy,” I said. “Kids can get that. It’s teaching the resurrection that’s so complicated.”
Maybe that sounds overstated, but I mean it. My kids understand death. Their understanding is incomplete, of course, but my understanding of death is incomplete too. When my grandfather died last month, both of my kids understood in ways appropriate to their ages. (When someone at the visitation commented to my daughter that it was sort of like my grandfather was having a long sleep, she set him straight: “No,” she said. “He died.” She gets it.)
And I believe there are very important, very concrete ways to teach kids about Jesus’ death too. Jesus loved people that others didn’t love. Jesus made powerful people angry. Jesus said things that were true, and people didn’t want to hear it. Jesus’ friend cared more about power and money than about Jesus. For all of these reasons and more, people killed Jesus.
Those may be difficult things to say to a child. They may be difficult things for some children to hear. But those truths are everywhere in our world, and kids, as they grow, see that more and more. We give them immeasurable gifts by sharing those truths with them, telling them--right now, not when they’re all grown up--that Jesus lived and suffered under those truths just like we do.
But then Sunday comes. And we have to tell kids, “And then Jesus rose! Hooray!” And of course this is good news--right? this is good news?--but it’s confusing to kids when we’ve been teaching them the whole rest of the year that dead means dead. The flowers they picked for mama can’t be replanted. The dog isn’t coming back. We won’t see Papaw--or whomever else--again. Ever.
Then again, so what? This is probably just as well. Isn’t confusion just as instructive as anything else? I’m confused too. I’m confused about how it’s Easter but everything feels the same. Why do marriages keep ending and children keep dying and earthquakes still rock the world? Why does living in the season of resurrection--which, by the way, is a scant 40 days out of 365--still look, smell, taste, and sound so much like Holy Saturday, the most godforsaken day of the year?
Today I was thinking about the disciples. They lost their guide, their friend, their Lord, source of their hopes for the future and maker of meaning for their past. They lived for three days (oh, let’s be honest: it was only about half that) in the shock and grief of that loss. And then: wonder of wonders, joy of joys--resurrection! Jesus returned to them. He wiped their tears and took them in his arms. He ate with them; he taught them; he encouraged and challenged them. The glory days were back and better than ever.
And then he left. Yes, I understand that theologically, it makes all the difference in the world that Jesus rose from the dead. God has endured ridicule, shame, and death. And God has triumphed. Death has not won. Alleluia!
But--the disciples. What about the disciples? They met a grief that sent them into locked rooms, reeling. And then they had a 40-day reprieve. And then he was gone again. In the real, personal, concrete ways--the ways that matter to me when I’m talking to my children--how did resurrection help? When the disciples missed Jesus’ comfort and guidance and maddening habits and shared humor, was it really a comfort to them that he’d visited life one more time?
I don’t have any magical way to tie up these wandering thoughts. Today, I’m angry, sad, tired--so very tired. I make a point of being honest when my children ask me questions I can’t answer: “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s mysterious,” I tell them, even though neither of us knows what that word really means either.
On the way to my grandfather’s funeral, my husband and I talked to our kids, our daughter in particular, about what was going to happen. We explained how we would see my grandfather, how he would look sort of like he was sleeping, but sort of different. We explained how he would look sort of like he looked when we saw him alive, but sort of different. We explained that when you die, your heart stops beating, so your blood stops flowing, so you look different, and we explained how the people who cared for my grandfather’s body used makeup to make him look as much as possible like we remembered him.
We also talked about the other people at the service. “Some people may look sad,” we told her. “Some people may be crying. Other people may be laughing. Some people may be crying and laughing at the same time. And they may be feeling lots of things at the same time.
“All of that is okay,” we told her. “People feel lots of different things at funerals. And however you feel is okay too.”
When we despiritualize the passion story, when we try to confront it in the concrete, fleshy realities of the world instead of only offering the spiritual narratives (“Jesus died on the cross for our sins!”) it gets… complicated. But the fleshy reality, the concrete reality, is my children’s reality. And by the way: wonder of wonders, joy of joys, the fleshy reality was Jesus’ reality too.
So, okay. I’m going to try it out: I don’t know. It’s mysterious. However you feel is okay too.
