Er Ist Wahrhaftig Auferstanden! He Is Risen Indeed!

Christ Is Risen. He Is Risen Indeed!  The story of cross and empty tomb only has meaning if we are willing to LIVE that story. Unless we are serious about embodying the truth of the resurrection with our lives, we lose its power.  Brian Wren and Adolfo Perez Esquivel will help me make that point.

Wren's 1989 poem reminds us of the "Power To Change" inherent in the Good News. Perez Esquivel's picture "Triumph of Life" depicts the Resurrected Christ leading a march of landless Campesinos, with the ships of the conquistadors and the factories of globalization in the background. 

A body, broken on a cross, with watching women's helpless grief,

and men in heedless, headlong flight, through fear, despair or disbelief --
in this, though still we find it strange, are life, and hope, and power to change.

A people weaponless and weak, not many wealthy, great or wise,
but women, laborers and slaves, absurd to Greek and Roman eyes,
their Caesar's rages could forgive, out-die, out-suffer, and out-live.

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: Station 15: Triumph of Life 

And still today, abroad, at home, from suburb or from shanty-town,
the Spirit's new, surprising word, in ours or other faiths, or none,
our sad routines will disarrange with gospel-hope of power to change.

When disillusion chains our feet and might and money turn to dust,
when exile, desert, or defeat have left us nothing else to trust,
at last our spirit understands the strength of peaceful, nail-scarred hands.

A nation drifting in decline can turn to just and loving ways,
and people empty, bruised, ashamed, can find rebirth to joy and praise,
and churches, wakened, can exchange a huddled death for power to change.

("Power to Change" by Brian Wren)

If indeed we have "decided to follow Jesus" (as we sang at St. Paul's on Good Friday), our place is NOT with the mighty ones, but with those "sinned against", those who are oppressed and pushed to the margins. Christ Is Risen. He Is Risen Indeed! Hallelujah!

Matthew 28: 1-10

P.S. For more reading on Holy Week and Easter, take a look at my "Holy Week Companion", found on my website, at http://sites.google.com/site/fritzwendt/theologycabinet -- the links are in the middle of the page.

That was the day ...

That was the day they killed the Son of God

On a squat hill-top by Jerusalem.
Zion was bare, her children from their maze
Sucked by the demon of curiosity
Clean through the gates. The very halt and blind
Had somehow got themselves up to the hill.

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: 2nd Station: Rejected and Abandoned 

After the ceremonial preparation,
The scourging, nailing, nailing against the wood,
Erection of the main-trees with their burden,
While from the hill rose an orchestral wailing,
They were there at last, high up in the soft spring day.
We watched the writhings, heard the moanings, saw
The three heads turning on their separate axles
Like broken wheels left spinning. Round his head
Was loosely bound a crown of plaited thorn
That hurt at random, stinging temple and brow
As the pain swung into its envious circle.
In front the wreath was gathered in a knot
That as he gazed looked like the last stump left
Of a death-wounded deer’s great antlers.

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: 3rd Station: Crushed by the Cross 

Some who came to stare grew silent as they looked,
Indignant or sorry. But the hardened old
And the hard-hearted young, although at odds
From the first morning, cursed him with one curse,
Having prayed for a Rabbi or an armed Messiah
And found the Son of God. What use to them
Was a God or a Son of God? Of what avail
For purposes such as theirs? Beside the cross-foot,
Alone, four women stood and did not move
All day. The sun revolved, the shadow wheeled,
The evening fell. His head lay on his breast,
But in his breast they watched his heart move on
By itself alone, accomplishing its journey.
Their taunts grew louder, sharpened by the knowledge
That he was walking in the park of death,
Far from their rage. Yet all grew stale at last,
Spite, curiosity, envy, hate itself.

They waited only for death and death was slow
And came so quietly they scarce could mark it.
They were angry then with death and death’s deceit.
I was a stranger, could not read these people
Or this outlandish deity.

Did a god indeed in dying
cross my life that day by chance,
he on his road and I on mine?

("The Killing", by Edwin Muir)

John 18:1 - 19:42