YOU ASK ME HOW I KNOW HE LIVES
I have always been confounded by how little we discuss the resurrection. We celebrate the resurrection but do not examine it. I suspect this is due in part to the inherent difficulty in using words to describe experience. It doesn’t help that skepticism about what happened 2000 years ago feels ‘unfaithful’, if not heretical. So today, within the limits of my words and my ability to describe my own experience, I want to talk about the resurrection.
Our faith begins with a promise. God loves us. And our faith is confirmed by the experience of such love. The promise (The Word) is made flesh and is not only an example but is God’s love; that love is with each of us right now. He Lives.
Loving means proactively cherishing. It means building a bridge to other people and sharing their struggle with them. One of the most powerful ways to do that is to set aside our own agendas long enough to meet people where they are. In ordinary relationships we call this regard, empathy. It is the difference between seeing someone in a pit and saying “It sure must be tough down there” and willingly joining them in that pit. We are creatures — mortal, limited and dependent. If we live long enough, all of us will be helpless. Most of us hate the probability that we will have to depend on someone for the simplest things;it doesn’t change the fact that it is true. By becoming what we can barely tolerate (mortal flesh) God joins us in the pit. You don’t get any more helpless than being nailed to a cross.
There is nothing about being the Son of God that protected Jesus from being discounted, falsely accused, ridiculed, tortured and killed. Likewise there was nothing that Jesus did that was so powerful that all who saw, believed. What is taught instead, is that loving always includes helplessness. This is not a ‘bad’ thing. It is how love works and it is often expensive and painful.
In the big picture, Jesus did not ‘fix’ anything. Rome was in charge before and after he died. Many, many more people needed healing than Jesus ever healed. Genocide continues, generation after generation. What he did was join us. He became present with us. He provided a way to live in the world as a creature—fully acknowledging how difficult that is. Though we are likely to judge what we do not like as bad, by joining us, Jesus loves us as we are. Unfortunately receiving such love requires facing who we really are as well as facing the disappointment that this is how life really is. It is very much like sitting with a grieving person who has buried a loved one. We cannot change death but we can share the pain. And that helps. It is how Jesus saves.
The gift of love must be offered in a language that the receiver can understand. Even then, THIS DOES NOT MEAN IT WILL BE RECEIVED. When we realize that love is a gift, we are routinely confronted with our helplessness. Our gifts of love are often rejected. To continue to love becomes an act of faith.
Here, I run into the dilemma of faith. I am getting better at describing what I have come to understand—but the actual experience can only be pointed to. The connection between understanding the words “I love you” and the experience of being loved is a mystery. I see it happening. I’ve tasted it but the experience is beyond my control. It is a function of the Holy Spirit. I can only put myself in places where it is more likely to occur—and then I must wait. I believe the need and desire to be loved is universal but how and when such an experience occurs is beyond us.
But, if you have felt deeply known and loved, even for a moment, you cannot be the same person afterward. The experience may ‘wear off’. It may not be trusted but for a bit—and maybe forever, you will be transformed. If you have had such an experience, try to describe it. It is almost impossible to find the words.
It took me several years to learn that my job was not to ‘change’ people—even if that is what they asked. My job was to be present to people. My job was to be lost with them and to love them. From time to time, I will have people tell me I am supposed to love them because they pay me. My response is, “You can buy my expertise. You cannot buy my love.” I offer what I can, then I must wait and trust that something new can happen. I remain amazed and awed by the process. It does not always happen but I trust that such transformations can and do happen. It is where I experience God. It is then that all the “God is Love” talk makes sense. But in the end, such an experience is beyond our control.
God says “I love you. I am willing to share every part of your lives. You can rely upon me to listen to you and to sustain you. There is nothing you can do to keep me from loving you. There is no part of you I cannot share. Trust yourselves to me. The dilemmas and hardships of life will remain with you but you will not be alone. God chose to be helpless on the cross. God shows us that helplessness is the price of helping. That is perhaps the hardest lesson of the cross.
When the disciples discovered that Jesus was present with them, they were transformed. The ‘how’ is very difficult to describe but the experience is both visible and invisible in our lives. When my brother died over 50 years ago, I discovered his life had impacts on me that he never intended, and I never expected. In another fifty years, it is unlikely there will be anyone who will speak his name. But the loss of his name will not be the end of him. Seeing the threads of connection, even as they are blurred with time, has helped me to trust the existence of such connections beyond memory and time. My memory will fail me but just because I cannot remember does not change the threads of connection that we call eternal life.
I believe this epiphany is what happened 2,000 years ago—and it is still happening today. Whenever we grapple with these ideas in our Faith and Real Life Groups, Lynn Evans quotes an old Baptist hymn, “He Lives”. The lyric read, “You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart.” My intellect rebels at such simplicity. Yet that experience has been bedrock for her and has slowly remolded me.
God, in Jesus, is reconciling the world to himself. We do not like helplessness, but it is part of being a creature. Recognizing helplessness, something most of us hate with a passion, is part of life and is essential to love. It is counter intuitive and contrary to our biological imperatives. It is supernatural. But, by joining us at exactly that point, God loves us as we are—and directs us to do the same.
Resurrection is the experience of such love in the here and now and the promise that such love continues long after we are forgotten. It is the belief that our lives matter and our loving matters. It is the way to experience God.
He is risen. He is risen indeed.
Live like you are loved.
Live like love matters.
Live like love will prevail. Eternal Life begins now.
Let it be so.
