Last weekend Steve and I welcomed Easter and the arrival of springtime weather with a wander around the lake at the Peaks of Otter Lodge, a lovely spot a little ways north of us on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Though it’s been some time since I attended a church service to celebrate Easter, I typically honor the holiday in two ways: I spend some time in nature, and I reflect in my journal on spring’s promise of renewal. This year I’d already been thinking about and writing on the lessons the story of Jesus’s resurrection offers when I saw a post by clergyman Jayson Bradley, shared by a former student of mine, Kerri Clark, who is now herself a Lutheran pastor. Like Bradley, I’d seen a lot of “He Is Risen!” posts come across my social media news feed, and my gut response–which I’d been contemplating in my journal–was that that wasn’t the most important part of the story.
That may sound like sacrilege to some, but as Bradley so aptly explains, such posts seem to celebrate a kind of “consumerist” approach to Easter: “‘Hey, remember when Jesus *did* that thing so that I could *have* this thing?'” Bradley goes on to explain that, for him, for many years, “[t]he annual memorialization of the crucifixion/resurrection was meaningful because it was a reminder of the day a celestial being made a significant purchase for me that was beyond my means.” He notes that this transactional focus elicits gratitude, but it doesn’t transform. In fact, it reinforces a kind of “spiteful exclusivity,” as many read the story to say that only Christians have access to eternal life, a belief that damns (or shrugs off) a significant part of the planet’s population. It’s that insistence that Christians have a monopoly on the truth that I’ve long found troubling and have, for many years, been unable to reconcile with the inclusivity the stories of Jesus often model.
Given how closely I walk with my own mortality these days, you might well think I’d be happy, comforted, even greedy to hold on to a belief guaranteeing me a life after this one. In part because of my resistance to the “it’s Jesus or else” demand, I’ve stepped back a bit over time from my Presbyterian upbringing and at present identify simply as a spiritual seeker. My outsider-who-used-to-be-an-insider perspective has encouraged me to shift my attention in relation to the biblical resurrection story. Instead of focusing on it as a model for how we die, I see its primary value as a model for how we might better live in community with one another.
One important lesson of the biblical Easter story–one many of us, based on much of what I’ve seen this year, have yet to learn or embody–is a willingness to make individual sacrifices for the greater good. I don’t mean literally sacrificing one’s life, as Jesus does. But we’re coming off a time when far too many people have refused to do so much as inconvenience themselves for the sake of others. If the commandment is to “love one another as I have loved you,” and Jesus lays down his very life, then the least those who find value in his message can do is, say, wear masks and get vaccinated in the interest of public health. Proclaiming gratitude to God is nice, but it doesn’t actually do good in the world.
I also think the lesson of forgiveness is powerful, though I come at that, too, from a less conventional perspective. Rather than putting all the emphasis on a God who forgives and rewards believers with heaven (more transactional thinking), we would do better to focus on God’s forgiveness as a model to follow, as we forgive ourselves and each other. Whether we’re Christian, or Buddhist, or atheist, we’re all human, and we will make mistakes, and our mistakes will hurt others. Before forgiveness, though, there must be a reckoning–an acknowledgment of the wrongs we’ve done, sincere apologies, and genuine efforts to right those wrongs. Here I think about systemic racism, complicity, and how we’ve been reminded again and again that we must take active steps to learn to become anti-racist. It seems incredibly selfish to ask God’s forgiveness in the privacy of a prayer and expect to be rewarded in the hereafter, without making any concrete effort to make amends in the here and now.
I’m not (obviously) a theologian; I’m not, by many people’s definition, a Christian. And you may well be asking what any of this has to do with living with cancer. I spend a lot of time contemplating my life’s meaning, what contributions to a greater good I have or haven’t made. Easter, for me, is connected to the concept of renewal. As the daffodils bloom and the dogwoods blossom, I’m reminded of how nature cycles through death and rebirth each year, and how each day brings new chances. I’m also reminded that I am not merely a passive consumer of spring’s bounties. I can plant seeds, tend the soil, and participate in acts of renewal. That, for me, is the greatest lesson of Easter.
Still Life, Beyond Cancer 