The Day the LORD has Made
by Michael Phillips

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; John 20:1-18

C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" details one
of the greatest representations of the Easter message I have ever
encountered.  Four children, Peter, Edward, Susan, and Emily, discover the
magical world of Narnia by departing this world through the back of an
upstairs wardrobe.  They encounter a host of creatures divided into two
camps, one of good, the other of evil.  Aslan, the Lion, is the leader of
those who wish to preserve the land of Narnia from falling into the hands of
the White Witch, who plans to turn the landscape of Narnia into a desolate,
wintry realm under her rule.

One of the children, Edward, is captivated by the alluring snares of the
White Witch, and betrays the other three children as well as Aslan.  Toward
the end of the story, Edward learns the errors of his ways, and repents.  He
returns to Aslan's camp and is immediately forgiven and embraced by Aslan
and his three friends.  When the White Witch discovers his departure, she
appears in the camp of Aslan to demand Edward's death.  She reminds Aslan
that the ancient magical incantations that created Narnia included the
punishment of death for anyone deemed a traitor.  Edward had betrayed his
friends, and the White Witch demanded the creatures of Narnia abide by the
law by returning Edward into her charge as a sacrifice on the holy stone
table, the most sacred altar in all of Narnia.

Aslan departs the scene to speak with the White Witch alone, and
upon returning, announces that Edward is freed from his fate.  The White
Witch departs, seeming quite happy to leave without Edward in spite of her
legal claim to him.  Later that night, Aslan slips out of the camp alone,
but Susan and Emily follow him.  Admonishing them to remain out of sight, he
allows them to accompany him to the clearing where the stone table lies.
There, he surrenders himself to the armies of the White Witch.  They shave
his mane, bind him with chains to the altar, and execute him.

The two girls steal into the clearing after the White Witch and
her armies have departed to prepare war on all of Narnia in the absence of
Aslan, their king.  Victory seems assured.  The two girls are devastated to
behold the corpse of Aslan, and remain in the clearing throughout the night.

In the morning, a great noise awakens the girls, and they rush to the stone
table where Aslan's body had lain.  The table was cracked down the middle,
and Aslan was nowhere in sight.  Suddenly, he appears, alive, and they
rejoice with him as his strength returns.  He roars a great roar of victory.

It is then that the girls question him.  "We saw you dead," they
insist.  How is it that you're now alive?  Aslan confesses that the White
Witch was right in all she had to say, and that the code of Narnia demanded
the death of Edward, the traitor.  Aslan had offered himself in his place as
the sacrifice.

"You see," said Aslan, "the White Witch knew the word spoken at
the beginning of all of time when Narnia was created.  However, she was not
present in the silence before time and Narnia were brought into being."  In
the silence before time, Aslan told the girls, another word, an older word,
promised that if an innocent offered himself as the sacrifice in place of a
traitor that the great stone table would crack and death would be denied.

"But then, you knew!" the girls protested, as if to suggest that Aslan had
put them through all of this knowing that everything would be alright.
  "No," Aslan insisted, "I knew of the word that had been spoken before time
and creation, that's true, but you see, it had never been put to the test."

Most of us are aware that the love God showers upon us is
extravagant, undeserved, and beyond our ability to fully comprehend.
However, how often do we consider the love of God to be reckless?  There is
some sense of the recklessness of God's love in Aslan's statement that he
based his willingness to exchange his life for Edward's on a word that had
never been put to the test.  He was, as the Greek is able to say while the
English is not, "faithing" - placing his trust and confidence in something
he believed all the while knowing that there were no other witnesses to its
truth.  In so doing, he became the very witness the creation sought - the
witness who proclaims there is something before all of time as well as
beyond time.

We are saved, the Scripture tells us, by the faith of Christ.  We are
redeemed, the Scripture tells us, by the faithfulness of Christ.  In effect,
Christ's faith becomes our faith.  Christ's faithfulness becomes our
faithfulness.  The gift of Christ to us that he both believed in a word
spoken prior to every other word and then, became the very witness to that
word that we required in order to be able to say, "It has been tested and it
has been found to be faithful."  This is the day the Lord has made.  Let us
rejoice and be glad in it.  This is the day when God bears witness to both
Christ's faith and God's faithfulness.  Christ's faith redeems us, while God
's faithfulness restores Christ to life, and in Christ, we find that life as
Christians.

Christ's victory, [then, by the grace of God,] is our victory, for Christ is
risen for us - both as a witness to faithfulness and an example of faithing.
Christ rose to convert us, not from earthly life to something beyond life,
but from something less than life to the possibility of being fully alive,
fully what God would ask of us, for we were unable in our own strength or
power to faith ourselves into the ways of God without a true and faithful
witness.  Irenaeus, an early teacher of the Christian Church, said, "The
glory of God is a human being fully alive."  Alan Kelchner, in Lectionary
Homiletics, says, "Perhaps Easter is not so much about escape from the grave
as it is about the triumph of seemingly powerless love over loveless power"
(paraphrased).

You see, death comes in many guises.  It comes wherever folk live life and
affect the lives of others with a loveless power.  Death it seems,
specializes in the power to say no, the power to deny, the power to accuse,
the power to gossip, and the power to sit back and watch while no's,
denials, accusations, and gossip hold sway in the lives of our neighbors.

Yes, death is also, finally, about the loss of life, the lonely separation
of loved ones, and the absence of family and friends.  The burden of death
among the living often strips us of life as well, and it is there that death
finds its true power - to destroy life, not merely in the fact of death, but
also in the fear of death that robs us of living life fully, now.

It is into the arena of death that reckless and extravagant love charges,
refusing to deny, refusing to say no, and refusing to accuse or to gossip
about others.  Instead, reckless and extravagant love affirms that God has
unleashed a powerful act of renewal into the world in which death reigned -
a power so fearless and faithful that even when death has had its say, even
after death has stripped away the life of a human being in all its varieties
of tactics, God can take what is dead and breathe new life into it.  God can
take shattered dreams and make them alive again.  Resurrection can enter our
hearts and minds in God's creative capacity to find ways around and through
the death-dealing ways of those who exercise loveless power over others.

"Just when we think the world has ended, God makes a new world."[1]  This is
the day the LORD has made - where death does not have the final say - where
resurrection is the first and last word witnessed by creation.

Garret Keizer, in the Christian Century, May 17, 2003, said, "On the day
when I can no longer believe in the Resurrection, I shall no longer be able
to follow Christ.  It's not that I require a reward after death; it's just
that I refuse to have a dead guy running my life."[2]

One could also say, I refuse, as a Christian, to participate in
death-dealing ways.  I refuse to exercise loveless power over others even
when it seems the only alternative, a powerless love, will cost me
everything.  I refuse, not based on some stubborn ideal that recklessly
throws life away, but I refuse because I know, I have seen, I have
experienced the reckless and extravagant love of God in Christ that
witnesses to the reality of  life-giving ways that defeat death-dealing
ways.  This is true not only in the world that is coming, but here, now, in
the world that is, even if it seems impossible.

God has chosen to infuse creation, where death reigns, with a constant
source of renewal, a constant power of re-creation that finds its voice in
the message of Easter and the person of a resurrected, living Christ.
Christ is risen!  This is the day the LORD has made.  Let us rejoice and be
glad in it.

References:

 Emphasis, Volume 33, Number 6, p. 45 (from which ideas in the preceding
paragraph are also drawn).

 Ibid, p. 45

(Comments to Michael at mphillip@epix.net.)
First Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 
Berwick, Pennsylvania (Susquehanna North Branch)