Friday, Saturday, Sunday: Easter is subversive

In 1922 an estimated 33 million people were in danger of starvation in Soviet Russia. A story is told of Nikolai Bukharin, whom Lenin once called the "darling" of the Bolshevik Party, as head of the Communist International and Editor of the then leading newspaper, Pravda, and later in the 1930s, of Isvestia, at that time the government mouthpiece. Tradition has it that Bukharin was sent from Moscow to Kiev to address a vast anti-God rally. For an hour he abused and ridiculed the Christian faith until it seemed as if the whole structure of belief was in ruins. Questions were invited.

An elderly priest of the Orthodox Church rose. He faced the people and gave them the ancient Easter greeting, CHRISTOS ANESTE EK NEKRÔN, "Christ is risen from the dead".

Instantly the whole vast assembly rose to its feet, and the reply came back like a crash of breakers against the cliff, "ALITHOS ANESTE" - "He is risen indeed".

(from 2007 Easter sermon by John Sentamu, Archbishop of York)

It was with the same words (in English, not in Greek or Russian), that we toasted the risen Lord with champagne at our Easter Monday brunch in Downing College Boat House by the river.

I haven’t known it snow on Easter Sunday before. Some of my housemates went to the backs to capture their postcard-like pictures of Cambridge in the snow.

I haven’t known it snow on Easter Sunday before. Some of my housemates went to the backs to capture their postcard-like pictures of Cambridge in the snow.

The Saturday in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is technically known as Holy Saturday by those who follow the church calendar. This is the in-between day about which Luke says only “On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56) and about which the other gospels say nothing at all. Saturday is the gap between the chapters, the pause before the surprise ending. Scholars have observed that the passion narratives of the gospels are highly structured, polished prose following literary patterns derived from the Old Testament, but the resurrection narratives have a roughness to them which suggests they can’t be easily encapsulated in the terms of the earlier stories. There is a radical newness, a strangeness to them. God is doing a new thing. But on the Saturday there is a pause, a silence, at least from the gospel writers. People have tried to fill in the gaps, especially concerning where Jesus was on the Saturday, what he was doing and what the significance of that might be. Saturday is a threshold, when something is about to happen, but nothing is yet clear.

My Saturday was a full day, meeting up for coffee with a friend who was revisiting Cambridge, attending a wedding and opening up for a seminar on human rights. All were suffused in their own way with the message of the cross and the resurrection. With my friends at Costa Coffee we were talking about how to balance life when it doesn’t fit together very well, how to join work and rest. The beginnings of an answer to this question is that we can never manage to make things fit together – there are always loose ends, extra pressures, lists of things to do – but yet there is a completeness, a peace, a rest that has already been won for us by Jesus and which we can enter into. Jesus has finished the work perfectly that we can never fully do. It is because of the cross and the resurrection that we have that Sabbath rest – this is something which awaits us in the future God has prepared for us and is not fully ours in the present, but yet it is something we can even now enter into by faith. The work is done. Our rest is won. (For a much clearer explanation of this, listen to Tim Keller’s sermon on Work and Rest)

The wedding service I attended focused very strongly on Jesus’ death on the cross as the measure of love which should be seen in marriage, and the joy of the resurrection was there in the singing, especially by the Revelation Rock Gospel Choir. Having an evening reception and ceilidh in the Cambridge Union was also quite fun, especially using the famous debating chamber as a place to leave our coats.

At the seminar, I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout. We looked at how human rights is a useful language in which we can work for justice for the oppressed, but yet it is an insufficient language, which does not fully capture the higher ethic of love and mercy to which God calls us. Human rights is a useful model which helps us to fight for the victims of evil and against the perpetrators of evil. But it is inadequate, because we cannot draw a sharp line between these groups.

Some parts of the Christian church has focused on the crucifixion as an instance of human injustice, in which Jesus is mistreated along with the rest of the poor and marginalised and broken and oppressed by those in power. (Hence Giles Fraser’s column in the Guardian last weekend which denounced Guantanamo Bay as contrary to the message of the crucified Christ.) Some parts of the church have focused on the crucifixion as a ‘spiritual’ transaction in which Jesus is made sin for us and punished by God so that we individually can receive God’s forgiveness. Which is correct? Well, both are, and neither is adequate by itself.

At the cross, Jesus identifies with us in our sin, taking upon himself our curse and the punishment. At the cross, Jesus identifies with us in our sinned-againstness, taking upon himself our brokenness and our shame. He takes the place of the victim and the place of the perpetrator. God fights for the victim and against the perpetrator. But who are the victims? We all are. And who are the perpetrators? We all are. It is only at the cross that this seeming contradiction can be resolved with justice and love.

Likewise the Resurrection has personal and political and cosmic implications. We attended church as a group from Link House on Sunday. It was a family service, involving a cardboard cutout of Death, with a scythe, who is disarmed by Jesus. Jesus has freed us from the fear of death as individuals. But the reign of death has also been broken in the political and cosmic realms. We will receive new bodies, the order of human society will be put right under God and the physical world itself will be renewed.

Janani Luwum was the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda from 1974 to 1977, during the rule of the dictator Idi Amin. He, along with other church leaders, protested against Amin’s violations of human rights through arbitrary arrests and unexplained ‘disappearances’. He was summoned for questioning along with two cabinet ministers. According to state media, the car transporting them crashed and they were all killed. Witnesses at the mortuary reported that the bodies were riddled with bullets. In common with other suspicious deaths, the authorities refused to release the bodies to the families. But the church held a funeral for Janani Luwum anyway. A crowd of about 4,500 people gathered around an empty grave, and the new archbishop Salvanus Wani spoke of another empty grave, repeating the words of the angels: “He is not here. He is risen.”

The responses of two of Janani Luwum’s friends further illustrate a faith shaped by the cross and resurrection. Festo Kivengere, noted evangelist and bishop of the Church of Uganda, fled for his life. But that same year, he wrote a book entitled I Love Idi Amin. Another of Janani Luwum’s friends was a young judge named John Sentamu, who had already fled Uganda and come to the UK (to Cambridge) after sentencing a cousin of Idi Amin’s to prison. John Sentamu’s response to the death of his friend the archbishop was “You kill my friend – I take his place”. He has.

Feminists remind us that “the personal is political and the political is personal”. The Bible agrees. The victory cry of the New Testament which rings out from the Resurrection is “Jesus is Lord!” Jesus is my Lord, yes, and Jesus is Lord over family life, over society, over politics, over education, over the entire universe. Janani Luwum was not simply a social activist motivated by humanitarian concern – he was a Christian who dared to stand up to social injustice because of his belief that, by the cross, sins are forgiven and, because of the resurrection, no dictator can have the last word.

The Resurrection is subversive – it unsettles the patterns of life which seems normal to us in a fallen world, but yet in reality are abnormal. It is personally subversive, because it tells us that our sinful inclinations do not have the last word. It is politically subversive, because it tells us that human authorities do not have the last word. It is cosmically subversive, because it tells us that death and decay do not have the last word.

Jesus has the last word.

He is risen indeed!