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The Easter Joy of God
Resurrection of Christ by Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1898In his 1981 book, My Grandfather's War, William D. Mathieson tells of a Canadian World War II veteran of the trenches walking down the street of his home town. A passerby saw his empty sleeve and began to commiserate with him for the loss of his arm. "I didn't lose it," replied the veteran, "I gave it."
The gospels make it a point to show that Christ's life was not taken from him. He gave it. "No one takes it (my life) from me, but I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:18), said Christ.
It was given. It would have been sad indeed, if a gift such as the life of God, the Passion and the Resurrection of the Lord, had been a grudging gift, God, as it were, counting the days and the sufferings, asking the Father exactly how much giving would it take to bring about the Redemption of humankind..
The gift of reconciliation we receive from Jesus was offered without counting the cost, with a generosity we will never comprehend. The idea of God dying is as repulsive and contradictory as saying that black is white, that a square is round, that death is the same as life. The quintessence of God is life – “I am the way, and the truth and the life” (John 14:6) – and God gave his life in Christ, that we may have – not any life, but his own.
A Caring Christ
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), American author and humoristThe story is told that the renowned author, Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was listening to his Sunday preacher. At the outset his preacher was doing well. Clemens decided he would give him ten dollars in the collection. The preacher then did even better in his sermon. Clemens decided to write him a big fat check. The preacher then got caught up in his own voice and his own words and began to ramble a bit. Clemens became irritated and his irritation grew with every sentence the preacher uttered. At the conclusion of the sermon, when the collection basket reached Clemens, he simply reached into the basket and took out ten dollars!
Sebastian Moore, O.S.B., at Boston College claims that the whole world is afflicted with a massive self-hatred that has blighted humankind since the very beginning. The image humans have of themselves is strictly horrible. According to him, this has accounted for all the wars, murders, suicides, failed marriages, and the general hatred of neighbor — in short this has caused all the difficulties people have in living side by side for endless centuries.
Christ’s Birth Changes Our Self-image
Into this stream of history, Christ's coming on earth is meant to be a renewing, a re-making, a re-drawing of that fateful self-image. A little test might serve to clarify what I mean.