I had time on my own this past week and I took this opportunity to read, to binge read to be precise, a novel a friend of mine let me borrow from her. Not just a novel but a thriller actually, kind of a gruesome story to say the least, and yet, as those stories often are, quite engrossing. A great amount of deceptions, betrayals and murders all revolving around the disappearance of a young woman twenty years earlier. I guess this was a good story, “unputdownable” as critics like to say. On top of that, I liked it that in the end there is a little surprise, no just a twist mind you, there was already a twist in each chapter, but in the last chapter the author took a liberty I thought was interesting: After he has resolved all the plots of the story, he wrote a last chapter untitled “The privilege of the novelist” in which the narrator describes how he believes that the assumed death of the young and beautiful woman was not death after all, just the disappearance of her body, and that she was actually saved at the last minute by the man who was about to bury her corpse, and he nursed her back to life and helped her make her way in another country (in New-York actually, because it’s a French story). And the novelist declares that he believes this assumption of his is the truth because he says: I am sure I saw her once reading a book on a bench in Washington square.
Well, I thought it was interesting. First of all because the author does not claim to be Christian at all, if anything quite the other around, yet ironically, to someone acquainted with the Gospels, this little addition certainly does sound like a Resurrection story, the disappearance of the body, the new life and the appearances. Moreover and mainly, I was interested because I realized that this little addition changed all the tone of the whole story, all that happened before shone in a new light. This gruesome, tragic and kind of horrific story, was, in fact, a good story, a story full of plots and twists and surprises, a difficult, painful but great adventure, and we are left with hope and a kind of joy knowing that the narrator, in love with that woman twenty years ago, may find her again and start all over with her.
And this is it you know. If the main character does not die in the end, does not die at all, then it does not just change the end of the story, it changes the whole story, the past, the present and the future. The victim becomes a hero. What was a tragedy is in fact a great adventure. Where there was no possibility to start something new, there is the beginning of the sequel. I grew up hearing again and again the Little Red Riding hood story, the version where the little girl does not die in the end after all, but is rescued by the lumberjack who opens the stomach of the wolf and here she comes, alive and well and intact because in his haste, the wolf had swollen her whole. Another Resurrection story, I guess where the victim becomes the heroin, where the tragedy becomes a comedy.
Now let’s not get it wrong. Jesus did die in the end. If you’re not sure about that, I invite you to have a look at the interview the journalist Lee Strobel realized of Dr Robert J. Stein in his book The Case for Christ (“The Medical Evidence”). I will spare you the details, just know that Dr Stein’s conclusion is that no one could survive a crucifixion and even if they did, which is already impossible, there was no chance in the world they would have enough strength, three days after that,to roll a huge stone and roam freely in the neighborhood. Stories told about how Jesus just fainted on the cross are scientifically unreceivable. Jesus dies in the end, and the story of Jesus’s passion is a gruesome, tragic story, the story of the best, most loving person that has ever walked the earth brutally tortured and put to death by his enemies, the story of the most holy, filled with faith person who died believing God had abandoned him. So yes, maybe it can be tempting to try to rescue Jesus, to hope that he didn’t die in the end because it’s indeed too unfair and to cruel, but all evidences point to the fact that, surely, die he did.
But it does not really matter. It does not really matter or at least this is not the point because this is what we have to understand when the angel proclaims in our Gospel today: “He has been raised from the dead“, we have to understand that this is not a survivor story, this is not a story of being revived, this is the genuine Resurrection story: not trumping death, but defeating death, not avoiding death but going through death, not postponing death but putting death behind, Jesus died to death and will never die again. The end of the story is not the end of the story and it changes everything. The victim becomes the savior, the tragedy of sin, violence and suffering becomes a story filled with adventures, surprises and hope, the end of the story is the beginning of the sequel, the lover is reunited with his beloved. As in my novel, this is the privilege of the narrator, the privilege of the writer of the story, this is the privilege of the author of the book and the privilege of the author of life, this is the privilege of God who revisits and rewrites the story, the story of Jesus and also our story, if we let God do it.
We all die in the end, even the good ones, and the innocent, those who tried their best, those who gave their everything. For a long time, I wondered what it meant this Christian belief that “We are unable to save ourselves“. For the longest time, I assumed it had something to do with the fact that we couldn’t redeem ourselves from our sin and it didn’t seem that obvious to me. But as I am growing older, I understand now it’s probably just saying that, no matter what we do and how hard we fight, we are essentially unable to avoid suffering, failures, and death in the end. There is no way out and no way around. And yet. Yet the story of Jesus shows us that there is a way through, that we are like a character trapped in a story that may at times feels like a bad dream or even a nightmare, but we can let God re-writes the story and let God have the last word and everything is changed. Not only we are rescued from the tragedy, but our whole life shines in anew light. Everything that was difficult and hard and senseless becomes what happened to us and how God transformed us and claimed us as God’s own through all of this. Our failures and pain are filled with love and glory. At some point in the Gospel, Jesus compares life to a woman giving birth. He says that even if the pain is horrible, and it is, once the child is there, everything is forgotten, and even more than that, everything makes sense again and the mother is proud to have given birth. I believe this how Jesus felt about his own sufferings for us, and I believe this is how we will feel in heaven.You will see for yourself: every kind of thing shall be well. (Jesus to Julian of Norwich)
Now, it certainly does not say that suffering does not matter. If anything it says to us that God wants to defeat death and will defeat death and all the powers of death with it, and if we let God re-writes our story, we have to write our story with God, living as of today as people of Resurrection, bringing in a world of violence and sin forgiveness, healing and hope. This is why Matthew tells us twice, first in the angel’s words and later in Jesus’s own words, that the disciples are invited to meet again with Jesus in Galilee. It is because it is the place where it all started and the disciples are invited to take over Jesus’s ministry: proclaiming the good news and helping those in need. Far from dismissing the world, our belief in the Resurrection should incite us to start right now to receive this new life God wants to give us and live according to this new life filled with love and glory despite our failures and our sufferings. May this hope and this faith so fill our hearts that all may know that there is another story that is told through our words and actions.
Happy Easter.