‘My Lord and my God!’ Thomas saw, and believed. What he couldn’t receive on anyone else’s report, he now accepted as real. It wasn’t fantasy. It wasn’t wishful thinking. Thomas knelt and worshipped.
‘Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.’ That’s us. We too can say (at least sometimes), ‘My Lord and my God.’ It can seem very wonderful. But time passes. We start to wonder, ‘So what?’
That question is all the more challenging if, like me, you’ve held the Easter faith for as long as you can remember. I absorbed it at such a tender age that I never became a Christian. I just was one. But of course, my faith, like everyone else’s, is more lively at some times than others.
I have had – and still have – moments of real doubt, even rebellion. They don’t worry me. I’ve come to recognise them as parts of a pattern. Baron von Hügel spoke of souls as comets, travelling in elliptical orbits around their suns – sometimes close in (where it’s light and warm), and sometimes far out (where it’s cold and dark). These cycles just happen.
But because I never became a believer, I never had to readjust my life to take account of faith. Nevertheless, like every Christian, I still need to ask: what difference does it make that I actually believe God raised Jesus to new life? Does Easter make any difference to the way I live, or think, or relate to other people – to my priorities, to what I fear or hope for?
This question becomes much harder to answer if I allow Easter to blot out Good Friday. That’s fatal. The Resurrection doesn’t stand alone. It is God’s vindication of Jesus’ willingness to put more value on love than on his own life.
The Resurrection means very little as a detached event. Christian faith starts with God as Creator. God creates out of love, and he loves what he creates. He loves us. That’s the overwhelming message of Jesus. It has big implications. If God loves us so much, we have an obligation to love both ourselves and each other. We’re not always very good at this. In fact, we’re often quite bad at it – and we can resent being shown up very deeply.
It was that sort of resentment that got Jesus crucified. And his Resurrection is not about physics, or biology, or even history, than about the seal God sets on Jesus’ unswerving commitment to love – whatever the cost.
If life itself is a mere accident – if there is no God, no intention or purpose behind the universe – then the only value life can have is whatever we create for ourselves. We shouldn’t underestimate this. Human creativity is a kind of miracle, even if you don’t believe in God. But if it’s the whole story, then anyone who is unable or unwilling be creative loses out. The value of our lives becomes dependent on our capacities, our education, the accidents of our birth.
Meaning, purpose, value – these become abstract qualities pondered by philosophers, while most mortals live and die as mere units of an anonymous population. My real quarrel with atheists like Richard Dawkins is that their stance seems to imply the devaluing of ordinary people.
In human terms, Jesus was a failure. His mission failed. He was abandoned, robbed of his very identity. He suffered horribly, and his life was snuffed out. Yet in all this he remained the incarnation of God’s love, even though he thought God had abandoned him. And his Resurrection implies that God is not just stronger than death, but intimately and personally concerned with every human being, even when he or she seems to have no value or significance at all.
If God is concerned with someone like Jesus, there is surely no one with whom he is not concerned. However insignificant or meaningless or anonymous you, or I, or anyone else may seem, God loves us. He values us. And he’s just as concerned with everyone as with you or me.
When I read about child slaves in Africa, or concentration camps, or multitudes in South America living on rubbish tips, I suddenly see myself as a witness to Jesus’ murder. If I didn’t know about such horrors, I might be guiltless. But I do know. Not all the ghastly details, but enough. And all too often, like Pilate, I wash my hands in the vain hope of avoiding complicity.
If God raised Jesus to life at Easter, it must follow, as an unavoidable consequence, that we should be discontented – even outraged – with our world as it is. We must accept a duty to work for a world where all people are valued – valued as God values them. For myself, I can’t escape the conclusion that Easter is profoundly revolutionary.
No society on earth looks very much like the kingdom of God. Some, perhaps, are closer than others. Many advantages we enjoy here in Britain are the direct result of Christian vision – the NHS, for example (despite all its problems). But I repeat: nowhere on earth is there a society where everyone is valued in the way we dare to believe the God who raised Jesus values them.
My concern for you is the inescapable consequence of my perception of God’s love for me. Easter faith can never be private, involving only God and oneself; and Easter is less a simple ‘fact’, than the symbol of a whole mindset.
So the answer to that question, ‘What difference does it make?’ is this. Being a Christian means learning to be fundamentally discontented with the world as it is, despite its wonders and delights. But even that’s not enough. If we take God’s love seriously, we have an obligation to try and change the world.
That’s a tall order. It’s tempting to pull back into religiosity, singing beautifully crafted Alleluias by the world’s great composers, and feeling wonderful. That’s fine, as far as it goes; but it’s not what Christianity is for. All our worship, all our prayers, all our study are worth nothing if they don’t energise us to do God’s will – to help build his kingdom.
That means taking every opportunity we can find, or make, to heal human relationships; to create conditions for peace; to treat everyone with equal justice; to truly forgive those who hurt us against us; never to measure anyone’s value by economics or worldly standards; to try and love everyone as our brother or sister – as God’s dearly loved child.
And it means doing this, not just as individuals, but in a coherent, strategically effective way as the Church. The Church is meant to be the sign of God’s love.
The Death and Resurrection of Jesus show us God’s kingdom is possible. We can sing our Alleluias without escapism or self-indulgence, because our worship anchors us in the mystery of salvation. Salvation is not something we receive. It’s something in which we actively participate.
We are not just God’s children. We are his agents. It’s an astounding vocation.
Happy Easter!