Theologian Karl Barth once preached a sermon in which he described the resurrection of Jesus as a threat. I like that. We tend to think about the Easter message in ways that make us feel good.
We speak about the coming of spring after a long, hard winter. Or we stand at the grave of a loved one and console ourselves with the thought that life somehow continues spiritually. We associate the resurrection with beautiful flowers and inspiring music.
But if we think about it, the resurrection of Jesus calls everything into question. It challenges all our assumptions about who God is and what God is up to in the world.
That’s why the American Methodist Bishop William Willimon describes the stark reality of the resurrection this way: “Easter is not about the return of the robin in spring or crocuses or a butterfly coming out of the cocoon or any of that pagan drivel. It’s about a body that somehow got loose. The gospel accounts strain to describe what happened, but don’t make any mistake about it, they’re trying to describe something unearthly: death working backward.”
“So,” says Willimon, “I can’t talk about ‘the eternal rebirth of hope’ or ‘Jesus living in our hearts.’ We’re talking about a dead Jew, crucified, who came back to harass us. And it scares the heck out of us.”
That’s why the resurrection is a threat. It offends us. Sure, it’s an offense to reason. After all, dead people don’t normally come back to life.
But that’s not the real offense. The real offense is that it forces us to face the fact that we can’t beat death. We cannot extricate ourselves from the muck and mire of a sin-soaked world of death and destruction. Only God can do that.
The resurrection is a threat because God intervenes and does for us what we can never do for ourselves even though we think we can: God brings life out of death.
In the resurrection of Jesus, God pushes back at a broken bleeding dying world. We know that things are not the way they’re supposed to be. Not in our communities, not in our churches, not in our families, not in our lives. We live in a world where sin, death and evil reign.
But in the resurrection of Jesus, God declares that things don’t have to be this way. Sin, death and evil do not have the last word. The resurrection reminds us that we don’t simply need a little help to renew our flagging spirits. We are dead and we need resurrection. And only the triune God of grace is in the resurrection business.
The real truth of the resurrection seems too strong for us, says Barth. But it refuses to be hidden in the harmless clothes with which we dress it at Easter. “It always breaks forth; it rises up and shouts at us.” It asks us, “Do you not see that Jesus came to set you free, to give you life?”
“Christ is risen; he is risen indeed.” Words that threaten. Words that offend. Words that give life.
