On Having and Celebrating Life, Real/Eternal Life

Life ◈ Love ◈ Light ◈ Liberty: These are the “4-Ls” about which I wrote in my March 9 post. Today I am focusing on Life, the first of those four. Over the next few weeks, I will write about the other three.

Real life is more than physical life. As I said in the March 9 post, the foundation of my emphasis on life was Jesus’ words as recorded in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (v. 10, NRSV).

Having abundant life focuses on the quality of life, not just its quantity. Physical life is something that people either have or don’t have. That is, they are either alive or dead. But living abundantly means living with meaning, purpose, and joy.

The emphasis on life, real life, was prominent in the Christian Studies courses I conducted at Seinan Gakuin University in Japan. In 1975, I taught a required course for second-year Economics Department students. Horiuchi Akira-san was one of the students enrolled in that class.

On his 70^th birthday in January, Horiuchi-san posted the following comments (in Japanese) on Facebook: “When I was a second year university student, a missionary teacher of Christian Studies said, "The purpose of Christianity is to help people to have life and to have it abundantly."

In a personal exchange on Facebook Messenger, Horiuchi-san (whom I should call sensei since he has been a Christian pastor for most of the years since he finished his theological education in 1981) wrote, “I am who I am today because of my encounter with you. Thanks.”

Real life includes valuing and protecting physical life. Even though it is more than physical life, having real life leads to more than just enjoying the richness of one’s own life. It also seeks life for groups of people, robust physical life as well as meaningful societal life.

This generates opposition to war, to violence of all kinds, to capital punishment, to ecological destruction, and to all exploitation and/or degradation of people because of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or anything else.  

Conservative Christians of the present have preserved the important emphasis of evangelicalism on real life for individuals by faith in God through Jesus Christ, but so many have largely failed to emphasize the equally important matter of helping marginalized groups to have vigorous physical life also.

The New Testament term eternal life is basically the same as what I call real life. I have used the latter term because of the misunderstanding or ambiguity of the word eternal, which was long expressed as everlasting in English.

For centuries, the majority of Protestants (including most Anglicans) read the King James Version of the Bible, which dates back to 1611. Many of us older people memorized John 3:16 in the KJV:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

That was the basis for the widespread belief in unending life, which was generally understood as life after physical death.

But beginning with the American Standard Version, published in 1901, the Greek words previously translated as everlasting life began to be translated as eternal life. This became more widely the case after the Revised Standard Version was published in 1952.

Bible scholars increasingly began to emphasize that eternal, especially in the Gospel of John, primarily refers to the quality of life, not its quantity. Thus, eternal life is the type of life that we can have and enjoy now, not just life after physical death.

Life (real life) is the theme of Easter, which Christians around the world will be celebrating tomorrow.

It is because of the resurrected Jesus that all can receive new life = eternal life through him. That is the life that Horiuchi-san received the year after he heard about real life in my Christian Studies class in 1975.

His kind words of gratitude were primarily for my sharing the Gospel of life with him and his classmates, most of whom never accepted that message. He did and that made all the difference.

Happy Easter!

“The Garden of Impending Bloom”: Hope in the Face of Apocalyptic Doom

In my April 9 blog post, I wrote about embracing comfort and hope from George F. Händel’s Messiah, first performed publicly 280 years ago on April 13, 1742. This post is about the hope of theologian Catherine Keller as seen in her book Facing Apocalypse—and also about a much greater hope. 

Keller’s Book

Catherine Keller is Professor of Constructive Theology at Drew University, and Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy and Other Last Chances (Orbis Books, 2021) is the first of her several books I have read—and it was a delightful, and somewhat difficult, read. 

Catherine Keller (b. 1953)

While the content of Keller’s book is deeply theological/philosophical, the written style is more that of a contemporary novel than that of most academic works. 

Although the book is primarily a general exposition of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, Keller repeatedly alludes to the political and economic situation of the world in the last few years.

She concludes her book with “PostScroll” (pp. 195~205)—and ends that conclusion with the words she had recently seen on a hand-painted sign: “The Garden of Impending Bloom.”

Keller’s Hope

Keller’s earlier work, Apocalypse Now and Then (1996), was written with the fear of nuclear holocaust in the background. But she said, by the time that book was finished, “the nuclear threat had dissipated” (p. ix).

(But now in 2022 with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, some have again begun to fear that same threat again—and the terrible prospect of MAD, mutual assured destruction.)

Keller correctly points out that the 2021 “nightmares” were, “for instance, a climate-forced collapse of civilization within not many years, escalating mass migration and starvation, white supremacism, degrees of fascism, elite escapes, population decimation, and possibly worse” (p. xiv).

She realizes that many who understand the plight of the present have sunk “into a savvy nihilism.” Such people “see hope as delusional, and surrender to the spiral of our species’ self-destruction” (p. 2).

It is against that background that she attractively articulates the auspicious content of the biblical Book of Revelation. And by her erudite exposition we glimpse her underlying hope. This is especially seen on pages 132~6 where she referred to Händel’s Messiah (as mentioned in my previous blog post).

A Greater Hope

While Keller does briefly mention “the prophetic dream of a collective resurrection” (p. 135), she sees seven possible scenarios ahead, ranging from “exhumanity” (“the extinction of our species”) to “the age of enlivenment,” the optimum human response to the present ecological crisis.

In harmony with her worldly hope, Keller closes her book with the dream of a garden of impending bloom. It is an appealing dream, but since it depends on humans doing the right things, I don’t share her optimism. Impending doom seems more realistic.

So, I have been drawn back to the writings of German scientist/theologian Karl Heim (1874~1958). The last section of his book The World: Its Creation and Consummation is “The Future of the World in the Light of the Gospel of the Resurrection,” and indeed, he presents a much greater hope than Keller.

Keller mentioned the “savvy nihilism” of the present, but savvy or not, Heim wrote about nihilism in the 1950s. He contended that we humans are faced with two possibilities: “The first is the radical hopelessness of nihilism, . . . The second possibility is the universal faith of Easter” (p. 149).

The stupendous meaning of Easter is not the resuscitation of the physical body of a crucified Jewish man. Rather, it is a divine act with cosmic dimensions. It is the beginning of what will eventually become “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1).

I certainly don’t know how, or when, that will take place, but it is the living hope to which I cling.

_____

** The second edition of Heim’s book Weltschöpfung und Weltende (1953) was published in 1958 and the English translation of the latter was published in 1962 with an additional subtitle The End of the Present Age and the Future of the World in the Light of the Resurrection. It was probably the next year (59 years ago!) when I first read, and was invigorated by, that book as a graduate student. (I wrote a bit about Heim in my April 15, 2021, blog post).

Händel’s “Messiah”: Words of Comfort and Hope

George Frideric Händel’s Messiah oratorio is said to be “the most famous piece of sacred music in the English language.” The world premiere of that masterpiece was 280 years ago, on April 13, 1742, at a concert hall in Dublin, Ireland.  

A Bit about Händel

The man whom Beethoven claimed was “the greatest composer that ever lived” was born in Halle, a major city in what is now Germany, on February 23, 1685. (I remember his birthday every year because my dear granddaughter Naomi was born on Feb. 23.)

Despite his father’s objection, Händel became a musician and even though he was fairly successful in what is now Germany and Italy, in the 1710s he settled permanently in Great Britain, becoming a naturalized citizen there in 1727.

In October that year, he provided four anthems for the coronation of George II. The year before King George’s death, Händel died on April 14, 1759, and was buried in Westminster Cathedral.

A Bit about “Hallelujah Chorus”

By far, the best-known part of Messiah, Händel’s superlative oratorio, is the “Hallelujah Chorus.” It comes at the end of Part Two, the 44^th of the 53 movements. The lyrics of Messiah are all directly from the King James Bible, and the words of the Chorus come from Revelation 19:6, 11:15, and 19:16

During the London performance of Messiah in 1743, King George is said to have stood up during the “Hallelujah Chorus.” And when the king stands, everyone in his presence must stand! And so, for more than 275 years now, the audience rises to their feet when the “Hallelujah Chorus” is sung.

In her book Facing Apocalypse (2021), theologian Catherine Keller tells of hearing the entire Messiah performed live in Carnegie Hall—and that takes time. The complete oratorio is about two hours and 20 min. long, but with applause and two brief intermissions, it is closer to two hours and 45 min.

Keller said she was caught off guard when the “secular, cosmopolitan, diverse” audience, including some Jewish friends she was with, “sprang to its feet for the whole of the Hallelujah Chorus” (p. 134).

Comfort and Hope in Messiah

Although performances of Händel’s Messiah are common in December (before Christmas), they are also numerous on the days before Easter. There are many scheduled across the country for tomorrow, Palm Sunday.

For example, First Presbyterian Church in Wichita Falls, Texas, will perform Messiah on Sunday afternoon—and it will be their 75^th year in a row to do that.

While Messiah is primarily about Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection, it begins with words of prophecy from the Old Testament.

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.

These words from Isaiah 40:1-2 are, indeed, words expressing comfort and hope, words that were greatly encouraging when they were first written—or sung at the first public performance of Messiah in 1742. And how we need words of comfort and encouragement in this present day!

Part Three of Messiah (movements 45~53) is about resurrection—and thus the basis for public performances at Eastertime. The very next movement after the Hallelujah Chorus begins with words from Job 19:25-26 and I Corinthians 15:20:

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep.

During these troublesome days in which we now live, may the events we celebrate at Easter (whether we fully comprehend them or not), aided by the words and music of Händel’s marvelous Messiah, help each of us embrace the comfort and hope we so badly need.

_____

** Here is the link to a YouTube recording of Part Three of Messiah (with the lyrics shown instead of the singers.) And this link shows the score with the words as they are being sung. 

Thinking about Triage

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, triage means “the sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors.” In a broader sense, triage can refer to choosing who will live and who will die in crisis situations.

Triage and the Covid-19 Pandemic

The April 4 issue of The Economist includes a short article titled “Triage under trial.” Already by then, in the U.S. and Europe many doctors were “faced with terrible decisions about how to allocate scarce resources such as beds, intensive care, and ventilators.”

The practice of utilitarian triage was suggested as the best solution, that is, using resources (medical staff, supplies, and equipment) for “the patients who have the greatest chances of successful treatment, and who have the greatest life expectancy.”

The article concludes that “humans tend to be inclined to treat others according to need and their chances of survival. That framework seems broadly morally acceptable. Even so, it will involve many heart-wrenching decisions along the way.”

We can hope that during the current covid-19 pandemic, triage, if or when necessary, will be implemented in this way rather than giving precedence to those who are wealthier or more socially prominent to the neglect and detriment of those who are poor and disadvantaged. 

Triage in The Devil’s Arithmetic

At sundown two days ago, on April 8, the Jewish Passover began, and for many Jews it began with the Seder meal, an elaborate ritual based on recounting the Jewish deliverance from captivity in Egypt.

The Devil’s Arithmetic, the 1988 juvenile historical novel by Jane Yolen and the 1999 movie by the same name, begins with an extended Jewish family in New York celebrating the Passover Seder meal together.

I recently read the book and watched the movie after hearing that Carl, my 12-year-old grandson, is going to be reading the book, which evidently has been used in middle school curricula for many years. (I now wonder about the wisdom of having children of that age reading a book with so much violence and suffering/death.)

The Nazis in the Jewish work/death camps used a form of negative triage to decide who to kill, not who to save. Those who appeared to be the sickest or the weakest were chosen for the oven and to go up the smokestack.

Terrible triage, indeed!

Triage and Good Friday

As today is Good Friday for Christians around the world (except for the Orthodox Church that celebrates it a week later this year), let’s consider a type of triage decision that led to the death of Jesus.

According to John 11:48, the religious/political leaders of the Jews in Jerusalem were worried about the growing popularity of Jesus. They fretted that because of Jesus, “ the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our people” (CEB).

In response to that expressed fear, we see the high priest Caiaphas’s employment of “triage.” He asserted that “it is better for you that one man die for the people rather than the whole nation be destroyed” (v. 50).

The Roman rulers were always on guard against subversion—and the Jewish leaders were, probably rightly, afraid that Jesus would be increasingly seen as subversive. So according to John 11:53, “From that day on they plotted to kill him”—and the plot succeeded as Jesus was crucified on what Christians consider the first Good Friday.

So, note that Jesus was not crucified by the Jews because of religious reasons; he was crucified by the Romans for political reasons. And, according to the verses we have looked at in John 11, the Jewish leaders sought Jesus’ death in order to keep the Jewish nation from being destroyed.

Caiaphas’s triage worked—at least for a few decades.

However, Jesus’ death turned out to have a whole new level of significance that neither the Romans nor the Jews in Jerusalem dreamed of.

Yes, today is Good Friday—but Sunday’s coming. Happy Easter!

A Resurrection-Shaped Life

In this article I am sharing some reflections on Episcopal Bishop Jake Owensby’s book, A Resurrection-Shaped Life: Dying and Rising on Planet Earth (2018), and relating it to my cousin who was buried yesterday.

Characteristics of a Resurrection-Shaped Life

1) Those who live a resurrection-shaped life are hopeful. Owensby’s slim book is neither directly about Jesus’ resurrection nor the resurrection of Jesus-believers in the future. Rather, it is about one’s manner of living in the here and now.

Owensby asserts that “it’s in the depths of loss and sorrow that hope brings us to new life” (p. 51). Jesus had said to his disciples, “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matt. 5:4). Even though they did not understand this as they mourned Jesus’ crucifixion, they experienced that blessedness when Jesus was resurrected.

So, “the resurrection of Christ gives new meaning to our experience of grief” (p. 52). Those who live a resurrection-shaped life embrace, and are embraced by, the blessing of hope even in the midst of grief.

2) Those who live a resurrection-shaped life are joyful. Perhaps it is largely because of their hopeful attitude, a resurrection-shaped life is characterized by joy as well as by hope.

Owensby (b. 1957) doesn’t write much about joy in this book--except for his several references to Joy, which is his wife’s name. But joy definitely seems to be a by-product of a resurrection-shaped life.

The third chapter of Owensby’s book is “Recovering from Shame and Blame.” (I was pleasantly surprised to see this chapter just after posting my article about shame on April 5.) Those who live a resurrection-shaped life have learned to overcome shame. That is because, as Owensby writes,

Overcoming shame involves changing our minds about ourselves. And Jesus came in part to help us do precisely that. Jesus changes our minds about ourselves by changing our minds about God (p. 36).

3) Those who live a resurrection-shaped life are helpful. That is, they regularly engage in loving service.

To cite Owensby again,

Life centered on caring for ourselves turns to dust. A life devoted to the growth, nurture, and well-being of others stretches into eternity. A resurrection-shaped life is love in the flesh (p. 102).

And this gets us to my cousin Carolyn, who was my oldest first cousin on the Seat side of the family.  

The Resurrection-Shaped Life of Cousin Carolyn

Carolyn Houts passed away on April 12 and her funeral/burial was yesterday, on Good Friday. Carolyn, who celebrated her 77th birthday last month, died peacefully, sitting in a chair waiting for the delivery of her Meals on Wheels lunch.

After serving for nearly 34 years as a Southern Baptist missionary to Ghana, Carolyn retired in 2010 and had lived in Grant City, Missouri, since 2011. My blog article for 7/5/10 (see here) was about Cousin Carolyn, just as she was returning to the U.S., and I hope you will read it (again). 

Carolyn Houts (1942-2019)

As I said in the eulogy that I gave at her funeral yesterday, it seems quite clear to me that Carolyn lived a resurrection-shaped life. Hopefulness, joyfulness, and helpfulness were definitely characteristics of her life.

As we observe the celebration of Easter tomorrow—and I realize there will be a great variety in the way readers of this blog will celebrate Easter—my deepest prayer is that we all will not only know what a resurrection-shaped life means but will, in reality, be able to live such a life.

Happy Easter!

Interpreting the Resurrection of Jesus

Even though today is Good Friday, this article is about the Easter story and how Jesus’ resurrection can be affirmed by contemporary people.

A Novel Interpretation

The writing of this article was spurred by my reading of a novel: Martin Gardner’s The Flight of Peter Fromm (1973, 1994). After finishing it in 2012, I wrote this in my “books read” record: “One of the most challenging theological novels I ever read. A book of great profundity and erudition.”

Last month I finished reading Gardner’s book for the second time—and I was impressed and disturbed by it again.

If you haven’t read the novel, I don’t necessarily recommend it. Why? Because debunking the resurrection of Jesus is one of the main themes of the book.

At the beginning of the novel, Peter Fromm is a precocious, fundamentalist, Pentecostal Christian boy from Oklahoma who chooses to go to the University of Chicago Divinity School. There he is “slowly but surely” led by Homer Wilson, his mentor who is a part-time professor and a Unitarian minister, to question and then to reject many of his Christian beliefs, including the reality of Jesus’ resurrection.

On Easter Sunday, shortly before he is scheduled to receive his doctor’s degree, to marry, and to be ordained and assume a full-time church position, Peter preaches at his mentor’s church—and has a dramatic psychological breakdown.

Questionable Interpretations

In spite of being a minister and seminary professor, early in the book Wilson acknowledges, “I do not consider myself a Christian except in the widest, most humanistic sense. I do not, for example, believe in God.”

Homer Wilson spends considerable time discussing theological ideas with Peter, who gradually begins to discard belief in the reality of the resurrection—along with ideas about the transcendence of God. So Peter comes largely to adopt what Wilson calls “secular humanism.”

Wilson tells Peter that one who preaches to modern people has “to choose between being a truthful traitor or a loyal liar.” In order to serve in a paid church position, he believes, it is necessary to choose the latter: that seems clearly to have been Homer’s choice, and Peter also apparently comes to accept that position. The duplicity of that choice, however, leads to Peter’s breakdown.

Much of the problem in accepting the reality of the Easter story centers on the interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection as being the resuscitation of his physical body. Peter assumes that that is the view of resurrection found in the New Testament.

Of course, Peter also considers, and rejects, Jesus’ resurrection as simply the spirit or idea of Jesus being “resurrected” in the minds of his disciples.

Recommended Interpretation

My interpretation of, and belief in, the resurrection is based on firm belief in the reality of God and in transcendence. Thus, my affirmation of the reality of Easter is grounded in a worldview quite different from that of secular humanism.

If one believes, as Homer Wilson and then Peter Fromm did, that the physical world, which can be fully examined by science, is the totality of reality, then resurrection cannot be affirmed in any historical sense.

My views are in general agreement with those of the eminent New Testament scholar N.T. Wright as summarily presented in his book Surprised by Hope (2008), which I highly recommend.

For me, and for Wright, Jesus’ resurrection can be, and must be, understood as something other than literal resuscitation and certainly as something other than a metaphorical, completely non-historical story.

Firm belief in God and transcendence, however, makes affirmation of Jesus’ resurrection possible, understandable, and a matter of great joy and hope.

Happy Easter!

The Resurrection and Fake News

Last month Christianity Today published “The Resurrection: Good News vs Fake News (An Easter Sermon Idea).” That article is by Karl Vaters, the pastor of an Assembly of God church in the suburbs of Los Angeles. It would be interesting to know how many Easter sermons will use his central idea—as I am in this blog article.

FAKE NEWS IS NOT NEW

In the past few months we have heard much about “fake news.” But the fake news phenomenon has been around for a long time. In fact, Wikipedia’s article says, “Significant fake news stories can be traced back to Octavian's 1st-century campaign of misinformation against Mark Antony.

Vaters sees evidence of fake news long before that, though. He avers that fake news was “how the serpent tempted Eve. By taking what God really said and twisting it just enough to make her doubt reality.”

Propaganda is a common type of fake news that has been around for centuries, and it has been widely used in religious squabbles, in politics, and especially in times of war. As I quoted in my 7/25/16 blog article, “The first casualty when war comes is truth.”

FAKE NEWS AND THE RESURRECTION

To quote Vaters again, “The first challenge to the gospel wasn’t an alternative idea, a better philosophy or the refutation of an argument.” No, “The first challenge to the truth of the gospel was the planting of fake news to compete with the real news.”

As Vaters points out, according to Matthew the Roman soldiers who had been guarding Jesus’ tomb were bribed to spread a fake news story. (If you need to review that story in Matthew 28:11-15, you can find it here.)

There are many today who do not believe in the Resurrection of Jesus. That is not surprising if (a) one does not believe in a transcendent God (who is also immanent) or (b) one does not believe that there is any reality beyond the material world, which can be fully analyzed by science.

Such people must find some way to dismiss the claims of all those who believe the good news about the Resurrection. So whether they use those words or not, they reject the reports about the reality of the Resurrection as just fake news.

THE GOOD NEWS OF THE RESURRECTION

There are, however, no reports that have been longer lasting or of greater significance than those of the Resurrection. It has been believed by hundreds of millions of people around the world for nearly two millennia now.

Even during the heyday of atheistic Marxism in the Soviet Union, strong belief in the Resurrection remained in the hearts of multitudes of primarily Eastern Orthodox Christian believers there. As was true before and since, on Easter morning someone would call out,

Христо́с воскре́се! (Christ is risen!)

And the people within earshot would respond,

Вои́стину воскре́се! (He is risen indeed!) 

One of my favorite musical compositions is "Russian Easter Overture." It was composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) in 1888, nearly three decades before the Bolshevik Revolution. It expresses well the power of the ongoing Russian Orthodox belief in the Resurrection.

I encourage all of you to listen tomorrow (or anytime) to this magnificent 15-minute piece as performed by the Mariinsky Orchestra, one of the leading symphony orchestras in Russia, on YouTube here or here as conducted by Dmitri Kitayenko (b. 1940 in Leningrad).

Listening to that moving music reinforces my belief that the Resurrection is real! It is the reports denying that pivotal point in history that is fake news.

Happy Easter!

“Easter Is a Shout of Victory!”

Many of you read my 3/20 blog article about Óscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador who was assassinated on March 24, 1980. While celebrating the anniversary Mass of a friend’s death, he was shot and killed in the chapel of the Divine Providence Hospital. That hospital served as a hospice for cancer patients in San Salvador and was also Romero’s place of residence.

Just the day before his assassination, which was the fifth Sunday in Lent, he preached his last Sunday sermon. Here is part of what he said on that occasion:

Easter is a shout of victory! No one can extinguish that life that Christ resurrected. Not even death and hatred against Him and against His Church will be able to overcome it. He is the victor! Just as He will flourish in an Easter of unending resurrection, so it is necessary also to accompany Him in Lent, in a Holy Week that is cross, sacrifice, martyrdom. . . .

Lent, then, is a call to celebrate our redemption in that difficult complex of cross and victory. . . . all who have Christian faith and hope know that behind this Calvary of El Salvador is our Easter, our resurrection, and that is the hope of the Christian people” (cited in Scott Wright, “Oscar Romero and the Communion of the Saints,” p. 127).

In an interview he gave earlier that month, Romero said, “My life has been threatened many times. I have to confess that as a Christian, I don’t believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people.”

And then in the homily he gave a few minutes before being shot through the heart, Romero declared,

Those who surrender to the service of the poor through love of Christ will live like the grain of wheat that dies. It only apparently dies. If it were not to die, it would remain a solitary grain. The harvest comes because of the grain that dies.

Those words were based on Jesus’ teaching recorded in John 12:24.

Those of you who, like me, grew up in the rural Midwest know about winter wheat. It is sown in the fall, lies “dead” in the earth through the cold winter, comes to life with greet plants shooting up in the spring, and then produces a harvest in the summer.

That is the image of death and resurrection that Jesus referred to and that Romero believed and emphasized in his last sermon. And that is why he could proclaim, “Easter is a shout of victory!”

According to the teachings of Christianity, the Resurrection is something that Jesus Christ experienced, but resurrection will also be experienced by all of Jesus’ followers—such as Joe Wolven, my old friend who was the best man at June’s and my wedding.

Joe died of cancer on the March 21, just before his 76^th birthday on April 1. (June and I are so thankful that we were able to drive down to south Missouri on March 9 and to have a good visit with Joe and his wife Cathy at their home near Galena.)

For the Christian believer like Joe, death is the prelude of resurrection. Death is not an end, but the necessary prerequisite for new life. Thus, as Archbishop Romero declared, Easter is, truly, a shout of victory!

Happy Easter!

Celebrating Hope

Today is Easter Sunday, and it has different meanings to different people. The practice of coloring, hiding, and finding Easter eggs seems to be an ongoing custom that is likely to be observed, and enjoyed, today in most homes with small children.

Some other Easter activities, though, definitely seem to be a thing of the past. Easter Sunday used to be a time for wearing new clothes and even a time for women to wear new hats.

Remember the Irving Berlin song “Easter Parade”? In the 1948 musical by the same name, Fred Astaire sings, “Oh, I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet / And of the girl, I'm taking to the Easter Parade.”

I wonder how long it has been since any of you ladies reading this has worn an Easter bonnet—and how long it has been, if ever, that any of you have been to an Easter Parade.

I am currently reading “What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian?” (2011) by Martin Thielen, a Methodist pastor in Tennessee: In spite of its tongue-in-cheek title, it is quite a good book. Chapter 17 is titled “Jesus’ Resurrection: Is There Hope?” and I found it quite thought-provoking.

From time to time (like on 4/10), I write about movies I have seen. The chapter just mentioned begins with the author talking about a significant movie he had seen: “Cast Away” (2000). June and I just watched for the first time this month after reading about it in Rev. Thielen’s book. Perhaps many of you have seen that intriguing film starring Tom Hanks.

In the movie, Hanks is Chuck Noland, a FedEx employee stranded on an uninhabited island after the airplane he was on crashed in the South Pacific. Alone there on the island, he opened many of the FedEx packages that washed up onshore. But he keeps one unopened.

He even takes the unopened package with him on the raft when he leaves the island after four long years there by himself—and still has it when he is finally rescued.

At the end of the movie, he takes the unopened FedEx package to return it to its sender. But no one is at home. So he leaves the package at the door with a note saying that the package saved his life.

There is no reason given in the movie why Chuck would write that on the package. Thielen’s interpretation is that the package represented hope.

Thielen goes on to write about “The Shawshank Redemption,” another meaningful movie I have seen a couple of times. It, too, is about hope. But one of the inmates in the brutal state penitentiary is quite negative about it. He exclaims, “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

Those words remind me of a paragraph in State of Wonder (2011), an excellent novel by Ann Patchett. A wife, whose husband is presumed dead, exclaims,

Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don’t know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it’s not. It’s a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it (p. 43).

There is such a thing as false hope. And people don’t always get what they hope for. Nevertheless, there is also well-grounded and well-founded hope. That’s what we have in Easter.

Thielen is correct when he contends that “hope is what the resurrection of Jesus Christ is all about.”

Happy Easter! And may today be, truly, a celebration of hope.