We know what it’s like to wait for something to happen, to feel that that familiar internal pressure and energy of a pending experience. This was the emotional atmosphere that developed around Jesus as he journeyed from Galilee toward Jerusalem for the annual Passover holiday. He had warned his disciples it would mean a deadly confrontation, and it’s these events the Christian church around the world remembers each Holy Week.
Passover celebrates the day, centuries before, when Israel escaped from slavery in Egypt by the miraculous intervention of God. It was a religious as well as political holiday that for many Jews held powerful connotations for their present day: would God ever help them rise up to cast the Romans off their backs? Provided by Rome with social and political stability but at enormous human cost, Jews were heavily taxed, forcing many into poverty. Would God one day raise up a new King, who would defeat the massive empire, just as young king David once felled Goliath?
Tensions in the city were high. The entire region was part of the Empire, and locally controlled by a governor named Pilate. Rome allowed local religious authorities some measure of influence and control, and in this city, that was the Jewish council who oversaw religious life. The strained version of peaceful power maintained in the city was easily threatened by upstart charismatic leaders like Jesus.
That betrayal then cascaded to a confused arrest, beating, and questioning by Pilate, who by then anticipated rioting. Placing the beaten and silent Jesus before the mass of pilgrims gathered outside his palace, the crowds cheered for his crucifixion. That Friday before the Sabbath, he was executed by Rome, nailed to a cross through his wrists and ankles. There he rapidly bled, suffocated, and died, a warning to the nation to fear the power of empires, religious and political. His remaining friends took his body and buried him in a borrowed tomb. It seemed such a violent and senseless defeat.
Quite early in the Christian proclamation, his death was understood as a human sacrifice in the same way that animal sacrifices were made at the temple for generations. Trying to make sense of this loss, early confessions of the church declared that Jesus was a substitution for human sin, to satisfy God’s demand for our righteousness. You can read this confession in various parts of our New Testament and preached vigorously everywhere today.
But Jesus did not remain dead. Something so impossible happened that his disciples were completely changed and declared that this dead one was now alive again. Incredible! What in the world just happened? They called a resurrection, and that experience changed history.
What if a better way to understand this mystery is to proclaim instead that Jesus’ death and resurrection was a cosmic clash between human power and God’s kingdom? Between the brutal will to own and dominate verses the eternal, expansive power that love creates? This is how I have come to believe what is celebrated in both the cross and empty tomb. That in this failure to grasp his own power, Jesus chose to surrender himself to God’s kingdom. He allowed human power to destroy him, and God’s mysterious power to resurrect him.
This is the Christian proclamation of Easter: love is stronger than death. God’s kingdom of mercy, healing, and love, while seemingly vulnerable to human powers, is the eternal light that overcomes darkness. All the brutality that humans do to one another – betrayals, wars, genocide, all of it – is not the last word. God’s love is bigger than human hatred. This is the central confession of our faith: Jesus has died, and Jesus is alive. The power of love overcomes all death. Amazing! Thanks be to God.