Easter Sunday
April 8, 2012

A Risen People
by Tom Cox

I met a young man who had made an earnest study of Christianity,
Judaism and Islam. He had compared texts and come up with an elaborate
swoon theory (that Jesus fainted and was later revived).  He would
believe anything it seemed but a resurrection. And really this is what
is at the core of Easter. That someone died, definitively, executed by
professional soldiers, was buried and yet….lives. It’s not
reincarnation, or swooning - it’s Resurrection.  Resurrection is more
than a belief that you accept or not. It is about practicing it.

Maybe we should change on Easter Day the Creed from “I Believe” to “I
practice resurrection”. After all, something happened to the first
followers of Jesus that first Easter. They were sealed up in a tomb
like room also. There they lay, dead to the world, hiding after the
crucifixion. But after the resurrection, they walked back out into the
world. They became braver and stronger. Strangers were visited,
boundaries were crossed, the Good News broke out of a tiny
middle-eastern confine to embrace the world. They were truly a Risen
People.

We are just four years away from the Centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising.
In the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin, you will find this poem by
Liam Mac Uistin on the children of Lir monument. The words and truth
it speaks are as eternal as scripture. It reads:

 “In the darkness of despair, we saw a vision. We lit the light of hope and  it
was not extinguished. In the desert of discouragement, we saw a vision. We
planted a tree of valour and it blossomed. In the winter of bondage we
saw a vision. We melted the snow of lethargy, and the river of resurrection flowed from it.

We sent our vision aswim like a swan on the river. The vision became a
reality. Winter became summer. Bondage became freedom. And this we left
to you as your inheritance.

Oh generations of freedom remember us. The generation of the vision.”


The promise of Easter is that we can, not that we can’t. It is not
about looking at, or detailing the various tombs of the landscape of
21st Century Ireland. We are not to live like the dead among the
living. Easter tells us He is Risen and so are we. Practice resurrection.

I practice resurrection when I console a person widowed much too young.
I practice resurrection when I encourage a young person to try again.
I practice resurrection when I help a fearful man or woman in midlife
facing a new career
I practice resurrection when I compassionately accompany a friend with
deep depression whose drive to live are meagre.
This is the truth of Easter: practice resurrection.

(Comments to Tom at tomasmacconchoille@googlemail.com )