Another thing
I love is something I learned in a religious writer’s workshop a few years ago.
It is the practice of writing little six-word stories or memoirs. There is a wonderful website put together by an online magazine called SMITH that collects these six-word memoirs. People both famous and ordinary have sent in these
little six-word distillations of their lives, highlighting what is important or
interesting about them. The best of the stories has been collected in books. The
first was called “Not Quite What I Was
Planning,” and another “It All
Changed in an Instant.”
Some six-word
stories are poignant: “I still make coffee for two,” wrote someone recovering
from a breakup.
Some are
clever. Comedian Stephen Colbert wrote “Well, I thought it was funny.”
Screenwriter
Nora Ephron wrote: “Secret of life: marry an Italian.”
I bring this up, because for all the
joy and fanfare of Easter, for all the complexity and mystery of our whole
religious life together, and for all the billions of words we use to try and
explain it, Christianity itself has a six-word autobiography, and it goes like
this: “Jesus is risen from the dead.”
Think about
it. There are 775,000 words, more or less, in the 66 books of the Bible, and
not one of them makes sense without these six words. And there are roughly 2
billion Christians around the globe, and not one of us has a single thing to
say without these six words.
All four
Gospels agree that Mary Magdalene was the first witness to the resurrection,
and is the news she and her companions carried from the empty tomb to the upper
room where the other disciples were in hiding. And while she reduced it to five when she proclaimed "We have seen the Lord!" The story is still the same: "Jesus is risen from the dead."
These are the
words that have been passed from person to person, from community to community,
every day since then – sometimes in secret, sometime in awe, in triumph, in
darkness, in celebration, in song, liturgy, art, and theater. “Jesus is risen
from the dead.”
These six
words that have taken us from being a scattered, broken people who are lost to
the largest, most diverse, religion in the world. It is these six words that
have found countless individuals whose lives were nearly or already dead --
broken by pain and suffering, by grief and loneliness, by sin and darkness --
and given them new life.
These are the
words that are whispered at bedsides and shouted from rooftops and shared at
dinner tables and workplaces and in neighborhoods. These are the words that
have been forbidden by governments both ancient and modern, and yet somehow
they have still been spoken, still been shared.
“Jesus is
risen from the dead.”
These are the
words that the martyrs sang as they were being burned at the stake, attacked by
persecutors, and heckled by cynics. These are the words that Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, the German martyr who opposed the Nazis, taught his students in the
secret seminary that he founded.
These are the
words that Oscar Romero was speaking as he was gunned down while celebrating
the Eucharist in El Salvador. These are the words that Martin Luther King Jr.
held fast to as he opposed the violent racism of our culture. These words
inspired Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s work in South Africa. These are the words
that Mother Teresa hung on to even as she experienced her own crisis in faith
while continuing her work with the poor.
“Jesus is
risen from the dead.”
Are these
words true? If they are not, Paul says to the Corinthians, then “we are of all
people most to be pitied.”
Of course, we
hear all the time that Jesus’ resurrection cannot be proven, because nobody saw
it; that it defies science; that it cannot be true, because people still
suffer, they still die; that we cannot believe it, because it seems so utterly
unbelievable. And all too often, whether for political gain or to make a quick
buck, some have tried to reduce these six words to a mere slogan, chant, or meme.
But the truth
and power of these six words knock down such malarkey just as easily as the
stone was moved aside, as powerfully as God leading His people through the Red
Sea, as wonderfully as the Spirit’s arrival on that first Pentecost. “Jesus is risen from the dead.”
How many
lives have been transformed, starting with Mary Magdalene and her companions,
falling to the ground in utter shock, upon hearing these six words? How could
we possibly count the ways that billions of hearts have been, in the words of
John Wesley, “strangely warmed,” by hearing these six words?
What could we possibly use to measure the impact
that these six words have had upon the world -- the ways in which forgiveness,
joy, reconciliation, self-giving love and charity have wrought healing, miracles,
and abundance on the face of this earth in the time since we have first heard
these that Jesus is risen from the dead?
Is it true?
Listen to the stories.
C.S. Lewis
once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not
only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
This is the
story of our lives, the story of the life of the world, the story of life
itself. It is the story of how life is stronger than death, how God’s love for
us is stronger than death. It is, in the end, the only story that there is.
And so, in
Easter, we hear these six words again: “Jesus is risen from the dead.”
How will
these words change your story?
Where in the
essence of who you are do you hear the call to new life -- to come out of the
tomb you’ve been sealed in, the tomb of fear or the tomb of hopelessness or the
tomb of dreams that have been lost or delayed? Where are you looking for the
living among the dead? How will you receive this news that has been handed from
life to life, from heart to heart, from age to age, that is now handed again to
you?
And how will
these words change the world? What does our story still have to say to a world gripped
by terror, a culture that is forgetting how to even listen or talk civilly, a
culture at odds, a people in pain? How will we be sure that they will hear our
story of hope?
Every day we
write our story again, and we say that it is no less true today than it was on
the first day; it is no less miraculous today than it was on the first day --
no less shocking, no less joyful, no less important, no less life-changing and
meaningful. Run and tell the others what you’ve seen and heard: “Jesus is risen
from the dead.” Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
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