A whispered suggestion came to the disciples, a rumor that Jesus had risen from the dead.
They would not believe it. “We had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel,” they said, and the tense was weighted with regret (Luke 24:21).
The disciples were in a pitiful state. They had shadowed Jesus faithfully throughout his ministry, fueled by anticipation: that he would fulfill the messianic prophecies, that he would turn the world on its ear.
Instead, he died.
On the third day after, they received Mary’s news of his rising. And yet they stood about, looking sad (Luke 24:17). These were not days in which people thwarted death, they thought; these were days in which people betrayed one another, and in which the innocent were crucified.
So they said to the risen Christ when he met them on the road.
Were they a foolish generation, or nondescriptly human? How are we to respond to them, standing oblivious before God?
Jesus revealed himself by layers once he was resurrected. He first directed the disciples’ attention to their own arrogance: “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” (Luke 24:25)
He next spoke to them in familiar ways, interpreting scripture as they walked together down the road, their rabbi, their teacher. And still they did not see.
It was not until he sat down with them and broke bread—“do this in remembrance of me!,” he had said—that their sight finally unclouded.
We can choose to dismiss them absurd; that interpretation is available. How could they not recognize him? But it’s probably more fruitful to work toward seeing--to do what we can to understand what is before our own eyes.
Our generation is foolish, too. We are haughty about what we think we know: we are speedy to moralize and quick to condemn.
Sometimes, we are right. We are very aware of some evils. We are quick to call them out. Terrorist actions, despots, third world poverty and inequalities: we see their flaws quite clearly.
But we also tend to treat evil as a virus to which we are immune. Such promises were never made: to love Jesus is not to become a redoubtable being.
We learn this from the disciples, as they grapple with the aftermath of the crucifixion. It is apparent in their confusion, just as it becomes apparent in our own: what we’ve signified as wrong in the behavior of others, we sometimes forget to remain free from ourselves.
Do we cheer in the streets when we hear news of a death? Do we gather at national sites and raise our voices to thank God for such “blessings”? Do we do this and still expect to remain credible in our faith?
We were disgusted to see footage of people celebrating abroad when the towers fell ten years ago. We sat steeped in our grief, counting our losses neighbor by neighbor, mourning those thousands of intrusions upon human dignity.
We became enraged with the perpetrators. We did not understand how anyone could celebrate the violent end of a human life. We still do not understand.
We know why we called the instigators “enemies”—they reviled the selfless love which is the vitality of our value system, which is the foremost imperative of Christ. We knew what their behavior should have been. Despite this detour, this unexpected “triumph for justice,” I’m sure we know what ours should be now.
We cannot allow our judgment to be clouded, even when we linger in our sadness on unanticipated roadsides. We must be better than the impulses which arise when we are grieved or provoked.
Easter is not just a gift, it is a charge. It is a call to exemplify “genuine mutual love, lov[ing] one another deeply from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22). We are asked to run the full gamut of our purest emotions in these days: to go from grief to celebration, to be brought lowly by Jesus’s death and then be raised to inestimable heights by his resurrection.
God so loved the world that Christ became human. The best of our potentialities were realized in Jesus. He was dignity, personified. Because there are always some among us who do not honor that, he was put to death on a cross. And because perfect dignity cannot be destroyed, God gave him new life.
We do not honor God by celebrating violent death. We cast our lot with the Romans of the Easter tale when we do so. There is little heroic about publicly rejoicing over cruelties visited upon our enemies.
Equivocation over the value of human life always begins this way: we find someone unlovable, someone who has displayed a penchant for evil, and we destroy them. We show no mercy, because they did not show any. We stand triumphant over the results.
Yet “one” is always a starting point. We forgive ourselves for not mourning a person who we’ve declared unmournable. But if we don’t recognize the horror and desperation—the inhumanity—of such choices, we begin down a path which does not lead to good, and which certainly avoids godliness.
We can look toward the risen Christ, or lose ourselves in the yawning abyss. Love characterizes one; dispassion and indifference, the other. The whole of scripture has preferenced love. If we linger too long in its opposite, we risk obscuring God’s grace.
There is nothing to celebrate this week which does not have its center in the example of Jesus. We have not stunted evil by killing someone for whom it was a tool; we may even have flirted with it by making a show of his death. There was no “victory for human dignity”; “human dignity” is a hollow concept if we do not allow that it exists in us all.
Even when we deny it in ourselves. Despite our best efforts at its obfuscation. No matter how caustic and relentless the attacks upon it. It is the light we should adjust our eyes to see; it is the truth that Jesus tried, again, to bring to our attention during that stroll down a Jerusalem road.
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