Bishop Baxter Writes...

Reflections on Easter Faith and Death
                    

Every religious person, by embracing a religion, is asking the question, “What is the destiny of humanity?” And every religion, including Christianity, seeks to answer the same question. For in this question are summed up all other questions about the human predicament, such as dealing with evil and tragedy.  It also concerns the questions about what is the true essence of being human. These questions are relevant in every age, especially to us as modern beings.  For, despite our great scientific knowledge and medical skills and our amazing technological advances, we are keenly aware of our inescapable vulnerabilities: our frailty to evil, violence, tragedy, aging and sickness, loneliness and death. The power of religious doctrine and spirituality is to enable us to answer these queries intellectually and experientially, theologically and spiritually.

In Jesus we discover a God who knows us just as we are, who loves us just as we are, and who affirms that there is value in the particularity of our humanity. Jesus came as a gender, with a race, part of a culture and class, shaped spiritually by a specific religion (Judaism). He was vulnerable to evil, pain, and tragedy as well as joy, laughter, and friendship. What is created –human reality – is good. The Bible teaches us that God labored to create the world and all of its creatures – including our humanity (our gender, race, color, sexuality, and so on) – and then called it good!

But on the cross of Christ, all of these distinctions also died to remind us of our oneness to God – God’s love for us which transcends our particularity. As St. Paul says, “[In Christ] there is no longer Jew or Greek [race], there is no longer slave or free [class], there is no longer male and female [gender]; for all are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). Yet, even on the cross, God was sharing our reality by sharing death.

Jesus’ death and resurrection was an act of faith in God. When the New Testament (especially Acts and the epistles) speaks of Jesus’ resurrection it always says: “whom God raised from the dead.” Just as Jesus placed his fear of death into the hands of God, God demonstrated for us life is more than death and that we can trust God. In Jesus, we know that God is ultimately trustworthy and faithful. The writer of I Peter (I: 21) put it this way: “Through Jesus [Christians] have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, [and this was done] so that your faith and hope [for eternal life] are set on God. “

You can know God in personal and private prayer life. Is there a time in your day when you are quiet with God? It can be before the family stirs or after they have gone to bed. A time in your workday – a coffee break or a devotional book you keep on your desk. If you become serious about prayer, I guarantee that you will not only see life differently, you will discover a personal relationship with God – one that will give you power and perspective in the most dire moments of life.

What joy there is in knowing that eternal life is really “life with the Eternal!” That the power of hope and love cannot be defeated; they are eternal. This experience of faith, this Christian truth, is not truth to discredit others. It is the joy that is ours to share with others, whom God loves and whom we are called to love. This joy of the soul does not dismiss fear of life’s tragedies or even death but tempers it with a deep confidence and trust in God, who is our “friend and not a stranger.”

Remember: for the Christian, eternal life is life with the Eternal. It is living intimately with God in the trials and rejoicing in this life. And by such faith experience in daily living we come to a confident trust that this is the God who awaits us in the life to come. Whatever the perception of afterlife is for others, as Christians we can have the confidence that we shall be greeted by a friend who knows us and loves us and has promised to meet us in the Resurrection.  This is why we begin the burial service with the Easter Anthem:

I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord.
Whoever has faith in me shall have life,
Even though he dies.
And everyone who has life,
And has committed himself to me in faith,
Shall not die forever.

May each of us have lived through out our life with experiences of intimacy with God---of prayer and worship, of redeeming experiences in this life that in the hour of our death, above our fears and doubts, our soul can sing its own Easter Anthem of hope:

As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives
And that at the last he will stand upon the earth.
After my awaking, he will raise me up;
And in my body I shall see God.
I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him
Who is my friend and not a stranger.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

+Nathan D. Baxter,
Bishop of Central Pennsylvania