The Presence of Christ
“The earliest reference to the Resurrection is Saint Paul’s, and he makes no mention of an empty tomb at all. But the fact of the matter is that, in a way, it hardly matters how the body of Jesus came to be missing, because in the last analysis, what convinced the people that he had risen from the dead was not the absence of his corpse but his living presence. And so, it has been ever since.”—Frederick Buechner, initially published in The Faces of Jesus.
We are resurrection people. I love to sing the hymn, “Christ is Alive!” All our crosses are empty. I love that our tradition makes Easter not one day, but a season of 50 days. Of course, we need more than fifty days to keep in our hearts and minds the resurrection, but it’s a start.
I love the Alleluias. I need all this to store up for the dark times, to remember the story, and never forget it.
Buechner and some of my other favorite writers describe Easter as an event where the loving presence of Christ seems to explode all over the earth. Christ and his love are no longer present as one person, being with a few people at a time. After the resurrection, his love and presence are now all over the world in all of us. We have become his body. Christ and his loving presence are with all of us always. Never, ever forget this. He is with us now in the present time, in the past and future, and throughout all eternity.
If you have difficulty comprehending all this, you are in good company. I don’t think any of us understand it. So if you have difficulty believing this, let others believe it for you. We are not called to understand it but to live it, just as Christ did.
