Live the Resurrection

GUEST EDITORIAL BY RUSSELL POLLITT SJ

Have you ever wondered why our churches overflow on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, but on Easter Sunday the number of congregants reflect those of any other Sunday?

Is it a sign of what we really believe? Or might it be that we have become so accustomed to living in a society which relentlessly drenches us with bad news that we find it much easier to identify with the ash and the cross?
Perhaps we hear so few stories with a happy ending that we are no longer attuned to good news. Bad news (in all its forms) is all around us; its become our staple diet in South Africa.

It’s easy for us to tell the bad news stories; its easy for us to point to all that is wrong in our own lives and in our country. The media remind us constantly of the ever-present ash and cross. Yet our Christian story does not end like so many stories around us, it does have a happy ending the ending we celebrate on Easter Sunday.

Jesus, in his resurrection, sees beyond the bad news and invites us to do the same. It wasn’t easy for him and it isn’t easy for us (remember, after his resurrection Jesus hands and feet still bear the wounds of crucifixion). Like Jesus, our wounds should not be and are not the end of our story.

Our celebration of Easter is a proclamation of our triumph over the ash and the cross. It is an invitation to us to name experiences of victory over bad news in our lives and in our world.

We are invited out of the tomb of bad news (death) and defeat into the glorious light of resurrection. It is a celebration in which we rejoice that Jesus has risen from the dead and that, in our own lives, some of our stories end in happy endings. Can we identify and name those stories?

The Good News of the resurrection has a dramatic effect on the disciples from being fearful runaways they become bold witnesses! The Good News of the resurrection gives them newfound confidence in themselves and God. It gives them new vision and empowers them to tell others. Our good news stories will do the same. How different our country would be (and our own state of mind?) if we had a resurrection story as the lead story on TV and in our newspapers every day?

I had a powerful encounter with a 16-year-old in a trauma ICU. She was a victim of a terrorist attack. She almost lost one of her legs completely and the other was seriously damaged. Many of her companions lost their lives in the bomb. In a second her life was changed, the brutal inhumanity of one group towards another. Every day she was fighting to keep her legs and underwent many surgical procedures. One day she was in the most indescribable pain and the threat of infection loomed. Through her tears she told me that she hated what had happened to her and found it so sad that people could do this to each other. Then she told me, and this was beyond comprehension, how she couldn’t hold this against them: I forgive them, she said.

This was a moment of resurrection. In the midst of her bad news I heard words of good news. This young lady, like Jesus, was triumphant over the forces of darkness. She taught me something about resurrection.

All of us have a good news story to tell, and it doesn’t have to be dramatic. Celebrate your story with Jesus resurrection; rejoice in the triumph he won. Live the resurrection, not the ash and cross.