The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
April 12, 2009
Vol. 12 no. 15

Everything But...
           Christmas is easy. We celebrate the birth of a wonderful, extraordinary baby with gifts and songs and pilgrimages to see the new child. We do the same to see our newborns with equal amounts of joy and wonderment. The Incarnation part - God becoming one of us - is a little fuzzy for most of us, so it is overlooked as much as possible during the season. Every child is an act and gift of God as far as we are concerned.
          Easter is not easy. The week preceding Easter is rough in its events and emotions. Even the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday is no longer a nice meal, but a poignant and devastating farewell. On Saturday, Nothing Happens, not unlike the day after many of the deaths in our experience. Sunday, just how do you explain it? Much of the world winces or laughs when they hear about it.
          The four Gospels each present a little different version of what happened early on the third day. Actually, what really happened, what is called the resurrection of Jesus, is not described at all. What is mentioned is how different disciples witnessed what happened afterwards.
          One angel, two angels, gardeners, stones and no stones, women in conversation or fleeing in mute fright telling no one anything. No one is contradicting another, for this is too big a story to describe precisely. No matter how much we say, we always say too little about resurrection.
          Life and all its possibilities and probabilities are changed. In the first and twenty-first century we prefer to believe that people and life work only according to a formula, according to past performance. In other words, we usually condemn one another to death - saying that there is no new life that can come out of you. To that God says today, No!