Spring Resurrection

Spring comes gradually, sprout by sprout and bud by bud, a swelling along the maple twigs and a spike of daffodil or crocus the first day, just a slight bit higher the next. Air warms and then returns to cold, but perhaps not quite as cold as before. It’s an unfolding, an evolutionary event. So are we. We believe, hope, trust in the miracle. Rumi says “Spring is Christ raising martyred plants from their shrouds.” For Christians spring symbolizes another miracle, the possibility that the dead can indeed live again, that the opposite of death is birth, that life has no opposite. Life includes both birth and death as the year includes both spring and winter.

Easter is a celebration of the whole Paschal mystery, death and rebirth. Did Jesus have to die? Of course! He was fully human. Did he have to die in the way he did? That is the challenge! Do those men and women and children who are dying today in agony and horror have to die this way? How am I responsible for the violence that exists in our world? Have we learned nothing from what Jesus was teaching when he allowed crucifixion to be his legacy? Was his meaning ‘Go ahead and kill each other, after all they’ll live again.’? Or was he saying, ‘If it’s wrong to murder the Son of God, it’s wrong to murder any of God’s children.’? What have we learned? What do we do?

Surely the most honest response to the murder of Jesus is the desire that no one should die by violence ever again. He prayed ‘Father, forgive them,’ not Father take revenge on them.

The true celebration of the living Christ is to cherish all life, to allow God to raise us up from our shrouds of chosen ignorance and selfish indifference. We can become the Christ ourselves in living his love with a bit more intensity each day, unfolding the miracle of growing spring in our hearts.