The Logic of Easter

We are now one week into the great Season of Easter, a week of weeks that reaches from Easter Sunday to the Day of Pentecost (May 23 this year). I have always been fascinated by the "logic of the lectionary." What are the deep resonances of the cycle of readings that we share with many Christians for our regular Sunday worship gatherings? What is the internal coherence of the church's rhythms and structures? How does it all fit together? What does it say about Christ, our Hope--and where do we find our lives in Him?

The Easter Season is an extended time for the Church to wrestle faithfully with these questions: What does it mean that this One, Jesus of Nazareth, is risen from the tomb, alive and among us, and making all things new? What does it mean that we who are baptized into Him take the shape of our lives from his risen life? Put more simply: Who is this Jesus and what does he mean for us?

1. The first Sunday of Easter declares the bare fact of Resurrection. Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, has been raised from the dead. He is not simply an historical figure, a person of legend, but a living, breathing being who encounters us. In Christ, Resurrection--which had been seen as a future reality--has invaded the present. All things are being made new in Him. Thus Resurrection it not simply about "where we go when we die," but touches upon every facet of life here and now and in the age to come.

2. The second Sunday of Easter is also known as "Thomas Sunday," for it features "doubting" Thomas as a central figure. However the true central figure (not surprisingly) is Christ himself: showing up breathing peace, giving the Holy Spirit, sending the disciples, entrusting to them the keys to the kingdom and making himself bodily available to his followers as the Crucified and Risen One. One cannot help but see the connections to the Christian celebration of Holy Communion in which the same Risen Christ makes himself bodily available to us, breathing peace, giving the Holy Spirit, entrusting to us the keys of the kingdom and sending us as his disciples.

3. The third Sunday of Easter is a word about forgiveness and rehabilitation and what these realities look like on Jesus' terms. The verbal tie in John's Gospel centers around the charcoal fire. It is around a charcoal fire that Peter first denies Christ; it is around another charcoal fire that Peter is forgiven, made new, and given a new life ("Feed my sheep...").

4. The fourth Sunday of Easter is "Good Shepherd Sunday," with passages drawn from John 10. This year we hear about Jesus' providential care for us, his sheep. We know Him and are known by Him. It is Sunday of deep intimacy and challenge.

5. The fifth Sunday of Easter revisits part of the Maundy Thursday Gospel text as we contemplate what it means to love one as an expression of Christ's love and precisely as our witness to the world. It is a time for the Church to look internally at how it patterns its life together to reflect the One who gave his life for her.

6. The sixth Sunday of Easter revisits the peace given on Thomas Sunday and speaks another word about the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, that Jesus is giving to his disciples.

Ascension (40 days after Easter Sunday) celebrates that God deeply and irrevocably shares his life with us. For as Jesus returns to the Father, he does so as the One who is God and Man, bringing our flesh, which he has redeemed, into the very life of God.

7. The seventh Sunday of Easter explores again the witness of the Church itself and pushes us to consider the sin of disunity within the Church. The "oneness" to be lived by the power of the Holy Spirit among Jesus' followers is the same "oneness" that is shared among the persons of the Holy Trinity.

Easter blessings as we journey together to the Fires of Pentecost...