Auferstehung (this is part 2)

A friend called me last night after reading that last entry, afraid I had either turned emo, or was feeling like ending it all, which makes me feel like perhaps I overdid the drama just a bit.
So let me put it this way – on that day I was feeling a fraction of the hollowness Jesus’ disciples must have felt on the day he died. The messiah, their one true hope, was going to change everything. He would destroy the hypocritical religious institutions, rip apart the oppressive government, overthrow the gluttonous economy and in their place establish a glorious kingdom of God!
And. Then. He. Died.
No one understood him, he was betrayed by those who he came to save, and then he died. And what was there left to hope for?
I know some people who were about ready to flee the country and move to Canada after the outcome of the last election. Jesus’ death must have been infinitely worse than “four more years.” Where is there to flee to after that?
If I’m using political terms here, it’s because the whole thing is very much about a political situation, and on Saturday I felt very much like a zealot. I wanted Jesus to come back and fix everything in a way that I could understand. And of course, I did not understand at all.
This was the attitude I took with me to church on Easter. Because things seemed the same as they were when Jesus first came, because the world was not made anew, the only answer I had for His death was that the world was simply not good enough for Him. And really, that’s not a very good answer.
But God, believe it or not, was ready to meet me there. Our pastor directly questioned the prevailing answers about Jesus’ death – that he died to undo some spiritual bond, so we could have a relationship with God.
“This may offend some of you,” he said, “but when I hear that I just want to say ‘What the hell?’”
And, well to me “What the hell,” sounded like a relief compared to my harsher prayers the day before.
Now Jesus’ mission on earth did allow us to know God more deeply, and I truly believe that. But now I understand it on a deeper level.
Jesus came to change what it means to be a king, what it means to rule. I wish I could just lay this out as if it were points of a sermon, but that’s not how the church service worked, and that’s now how this was revealed to me. I’m not even sure if I can write it well.
Had the world been wiped clean, had existence been overwritten, that would have been no victory.
The glorious firebombing of Earth, God’s failed experiment.
The heavenly reboot button for when the going gets tough.
The divine stomping of those tiny foolish kingdoms.
Oh Lord, how easy it is to see those things on the horizon. How truly our souls clench in fear – even when we wait for them with patience and zeal, how small and hard our hearts become. How hopeless we are . . .
But that is not God’s plan, and that is now how God works.
And suddenly, I breathe a sigh of relief that is both deep and wide, a breath I did not know I was holding in.
How great Your love for us!
Of course Jesus did not establish an earthly kingdom, because such power is a farce, coercive and only temporary.
Jesus is the true king. And his power is not religious. And it is not political. And it is not economic.
Here is a king, who lived courageously and taught what was true. He had absolute power, but when people turned against him, he did not destroy them, or force them to believe. He forgave them.
And then they killed him. And still, he forgave them.
And he lives!
Hallelujah, what power and what glory, what an upsidedown, beautiful kingdom!
I had a vision of Jesus that Easter – not a physical one, but a spiritual one I suppose, of Him clothed in white, lacking all of the signs of an earthy lord, lacking everything I thrash against as a half-way anarchist and full of wide open, sprawling joy.
Never before have I felt so full of love for Jesus.
And I could no longer stand up. I knelt, as I did before the cross the day before, in the presence of God.