Every year an avalanche of snow, like a huge rock,
lies before the tomb of winter, holding spring captive within. Impatient after a long weary winter, we cry
out, "Who shall roll the stone for us?” A solitary robin appears and
hoists her wings against the rock of winter.
Some snicker at her, and think she's silly, because there’s surely one
more good late winter blizzard still waiting in the wings. But all know by now
the back of winter has been broken, and that from now on it's the snow
that's silly. The robin eventually wins, and spring finally bursts forth with
its hints and hunches of immortality
all over the place. The poet calls them
"Intimations of Immortality." And for a moment they quiet the
intimidations of mortality, those fears of the grave that eventually nag away
at us.
There's also a huge rock in front of the tomb of
Jesus, holding Easter faith captive within. The rock is an accumulation
of doubt or unbelief arising from the tragic dimension of human
existence. There are the
tragic “acts of God,” those ravages of nature reported in the evening
news: floods sweeping away thousands of
human beings; earthquakes entombing whole villages; famine starving the life
out of hundreds and thousands of living skeletons.
Then there are
the tragic “acts of man.” There is the inextinguishable hatred that drives
ethnics to eternally cleanse themselves of each other, or the unspeakable
terrorism that demolishes Federal Buildings and the lives of countless innocent
victims, many of them dead and many of them alive. Then there is the recent rash of school massacres none of which
has yet outshined the one at Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. Among the “acts of man” there are also the
hate crimes like the one that beat to a pulp Mat Shepard (the gay student from
Wyoming State) and left him to die tied to a fence out in the country. Or like
the hate crime that dragged a black man from Jasper, Texas, behind a pickup,
until the man’s head fell off. But no
“act of man” in recent centuries surpasses the tragedy of the Holocaust. The
accumulation of doubt and unbelief arising from that unspeakable event is as
mountainous as a pile of six million dead human bodies. Because of the Holocaust, the doubt now is
not whether God is personal or whether God is loving or whether God is really a
caring Father who hears our prayers for deliverance; the doubt now is whether
God is at all! Because of the Holocaust (and for other reasons as well)
there rose for a brief moment “The Death of God” theologians in the middle of
the twentieth century.
The
accumulation of doubt or unbelief peaks for us in the very
personal experience of death, as we carry the bodies of our loved ones to their
graves. There amidst the rows of the
dead, the rock of doubt or unbelief assumes an almost overwhelming proportion.
There, before the tombs of our loved ones, we find ourselves exclaiming, “Oh
life, where is thy victory?” There, especially in the graveyard, we find
ourselves calling out for help: “Who
shall roll the stone away for us?”
There before that huge stone we find ourselves asking the Easter question: “Does goodness really overcome evil? Does the light really overcome the darkness? Does life really overcome death?” The “E” question is a universal question: not only Christians ask it, so do Moslems and Jews. (When it comes to Easter, we Christians are not as alone as we think we are.)
Viktor Frankl, Jewish author, psychiatrist, and famous survivor of Auschwitz, Germany’s infamous concentration camp, relates an occasion when he was working in a trench at daybreak. As he was silently speaking with his dead wife, and as he was angrily questioning the meaninglessness of his living and dying, he sensed his spirit piercing through the darkness and transcending that tragic world of his. “Then suddenly from somewhere out of the dying night,” he writes, “I heard a victorious `yes’ in answer to my question.” (He was asking himself the “E” question.) At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in that miserable gray of a Bavarian dawn. Then this Jew, persecuted by gentiles, quotes the gospel of St. John: “Et lux in tenebris lucet” – “And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it” (Jn 1:5). Frankl, the Jew, like the best of us Christians, asks the Easter question.[1]
The Easter answer
Easter answer to the Easter question is, of course, “Yes, goodness does overcome evil; yes, light does overcome the darkness; yes, life really does overcome death?” (That’s Easter faith, at least on the lips.) And like the Easter question the Easter answer is a universal answer. It's the answer of all those who in prayer speak with their beloved dead. Moslems do that. So do Jews: Viktor Frankl was speaking with his dead wife when he heard his victorious ”Yes” to the “E” question. (Again when it comes to Easter, we Christians aren’t as alone as we think we are.)
It’s in the heart.
The Easter answer is also a heart-answer,
not a head-answer. That is to say, the proof that goodness does overcome evil,
that the light does overcome the darkness, that life does overcome death,
doesn’t rest on some nifty argument in the head but rather on some proof that
resides in the heart. Easter faith
rests upon heart-proof, not head-proof.
What should that mean?
In Hebrews
Paul speaks about “argumentum non apparentium,” i.e. “argument for non-apparent
things” (Heb 11:1). A more meaningful translation would be: “argument or proof
for things not seen by the eye.” That kind of proof has us saying, “There’s
more here than meets the eye.” That kind of proof resides in the heart, not the
head. That kind of proof is at work
when we behold a panoramic scene of the Grand Canyon, or a magnificent sunrise over Lake Michigan, or
when we experience the birth of a son or daughter. These events set our hearts
sensing, “there’s more here than meets the eye.” They become for us “argumenta non apparentium” - “proofs of something not seen by the eye.”
Speaking of spring and robins, one spring a robin nested on the elbow of a down-spout outside my kitchen window. I watched her go through all her "appointed rounds": In conformity with an eternally unchanging blueprint, she built her nest. In blind obedience to a mandate within she brought her sacred eggs to term. With unwavering fidelity she kept uninterrupted vigil over her chicks. With unquestioning devotion she sheltered them against a silly late-winter snowstorm. With spontaneous care she nourished them. I stood in awe at those built-in "appointed rounds” of hers. I stood in awe at her standards of excellence, at her miracle of fidelity and obedience unfolding before me. And then one day, led by the eternal ordinance that governs growth and love, she let go of her chicks. They flew away. The nest was empty and I felt lonely. The whole affair set my heart sensing, “there’s more here than meets the eye.” That little lady robin was for me an “argumentum non-apparentium” - “proof of something unseen.”
A TV Easter program on “Heroic People of the
Holocaust” featured an aging Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. He told his
story: A gentile Polish Catholic woman (now long dead) rescued him as a little
boy from the Nazi reign of terror. "She endangered not only her own
life," he said, "but also the life of her six children! I perhaps
might have endangered my own life, but not the life of my children. What she did was incomprehensible. What she
did was not human! What she did was superhuman. What she did I could not have done, because I am an ordinary
human being? For me she was an extraordinary
gentile. She was a saint!"
Then this profound observation:
"She rescued the honor of my God for me. She raised him from the
dead and proved to me that He was alive and well." That woman was for him an “argumentum
non-apparentium” – “proof of something not seen.” It made him say, ”There’s
more here than meets the eye.”
In
her last Easter card a friend wrote: “I like spring a lot. It’s the time of the
year when so many things are giving the slightest inkling, the smallest sign, that perhaps things aren't really what they
appear to be; trees aren't really dead and barren. Seeds aren't really lifeless
pebbles.” She continues, “There is even
a Lady Cardinal taking twigs, one at a time, to a secret place in a fir tree.
That was for her an “argumentum non apparentium” – “proof of something unseen.”
It made her say, “There’s more here than meets the eye.”
The yearly return of spring with its “hints and hunches” of
immortality; with its silly robin victoriously challenging the winter; with its
hearty crocus bursting through the snow-drift above; with its babbling brook
and lapping lake, -- sets the
heart sensing there’s more here than
meets the eye. So does the yearly celebration of the Easter vigil with its new fire struck from cold flint;
with its Paschal Candle glowing in the holy night; with its deacon exulting our
spirit with the "Exaltet," that ancient chant proclaiming Christ "the morning star who came back from
the dead and who shed his peaceful light on all."
It’s accumulative.
The Easter
answer is a universal answer and a heart-answer. It is also an accumulative
answer. Like doubt and unbelief, Easter faith is an
accumulation. It is an accumulation of
breath-taking panoramas, sunrises, blessed events, nesting robins and
cardinals, extraordinary gentiles, burgeoning springs and glowing Easter
vigils. Adding it all up won’t give us
an absolutely doubt-free faith, just
as adding up all the “acts of God and of man” won’t give us an absolutely doubt-free unbelief. Faith is never
absolutely sure “there is” and unbelief is never absolutely sure “there isn’t.”
But adding it all up does rise
to a power capable of rolling the stone away before the tomb of Jesus, and of
freeing the exit for Easter faith. It
does rise to a justification for trusting spring’s hints and hunches of blessed
eternal life, and for singing the alleluias of Easter.
It’s wordless.
Finally, the Easter answer is a wordless answer. Wordless because it does not rest on nifty
arguments in the head with their corresponding smart words on the lips. At Easter
there is really nothing to say, for the matter at hand is greater than words.
Or if we do try to say something, it
takes a lot of words (as I’m taking right now). As preacher for fifty years this year, I have gradually found
myself saying (or maybe complaining) that we have a thousand good words for
Christmas but we don’t have one good word for Easter, so wordless is it. Or come to think of it, we do have one good
word for Easter, and it is