2 January 2010
Newton GarverEaster 2010
Easter is a celebration of resurrection. It is a celebration of the spirit of love and reconciliation that survives crucifixion or assassination – that is, the spirit that survives the death of its exponents and exemplars. The season of Easter is also, for most of us in the northern hemisphere, the time of the resurrection of the living earth, green again after months of hibernation. Here in Western New York the most noticeable change is in the woods – the trees remain bare, but much of the ground is filled with the thin green sprouts of the wild leek, which will flush out to a carpet of green by Easter morning. It was a stroke of genius, from our local perspective, to arrange for the Resurrection to be celebrated just when the earth, too, is coming to life again.
Easter is the most important Christian feast. Nothing is more important to Christianity than the message that the spirit of love and reconciliation, practiced steadfastly and creatively, survives the death of its exemplars. To suppose that the body of Jesus came back to life therefore seems a distraction. The important thing is that one important part of the man Jesus, his spirit, – which is what his executors mainly hoped to destroy – was magnified rather than destroyed by his death. His followers encountered his spirit, as a living image, in the days following his crucifixion. Some of his followers encounter it still today.
Easter 2010 falls on April 4, three days earlier than Easter 1968. In 1968, the Thursday of Passion Week fell on April 4, the day that Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. So this year Easter falls on the 42nd anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King. The life of Martin Luther King, like that of Jesus, exemplified the spirit of love and reconciliation, just as his speeches eloquently expounded it. It was that spirit that his assassin hoped to crush and blot out. Instead it has been resurrected, magnified, and remains alive today. Recordings of his speeches inspire me still. But the most vivid image of his resurrection, to my mind, is that of 200,000 people in Wenceslas Square in still-Soviet Prague, twenty-odd years after his death, singing over and over, “We Shall Overcome.” That was the key event in the nonviolent termination of decades of Russian domination of the Czech people. What power there was then in the resurrected Martin Luther King!
The story of the Resurrection is a myth, if you will, but the most powerful and hopeful myth that Christianity has to offer to the world, if only it can be released from the straightjacket of rigid doctrine and exclusivity, and from the silliness of bunnies, eggs, and fine chocolate. The miracle is unbelievable and the uniqueness is unacceptable. What makes the myth powerful and valuable is just the part that has been suppressed by the Church and the theologians – the recurring, universal, and eternal truth that the spirit of love and reconciliation survives and ultimately overcomes the forces of oppression. Of course its exemplars and exponents succumb to bullets and bombs, but their spirit lives on.
So it is worth giving some time this Easter Day to remember the 42nd anniversary of the “crucifixion” of Martin Luther King and to celebrate his "resurrection."
Copyright by Buffalo Report, 2010