Resurrection life is elusive and disruptive—and changes everything. (Listen here.)
Christ is risen! Alleluia! And have a chocolate egg. For weeks, we’ve being seeing displays of cute little bunnies, colourful eggs and images of a European spring. After a long hard winter, when all has been dark and dormant, it’s time to celebrate the resurrection. For the goddess Eostre has returned to the earth once more, bringing with her the dawn, the light, and the new life. And she is why the days are lengthening, the bunnies are hopping, the eggs are hatching and we’re all gathered here today. Alleluia! It’s Easter! Praise Eostre!
Whoops! I’m getting a little confused. I mean, now I come to think of it, here and now the days are shortening and rabbits are a menace. And aren’t we actually in Wombat Season, four months until the Season of Orchids? And is it really Eostre who we’ve come to celebrate today?
Well, for much of the church, I suggest it is: for the resurrection has been almost inextricably linked with the metaphor of a European spring. This is why European Christians attached their resurrection celebration to an old pagan party in honour of the goddess Eostre, and it’s how we got the word ‘Easter.’ It became just one more festival in an annual cycle which goes around and around and around. The world goes dark then light again; seeds fall, die, sprout and grow again; and Jesus rises from the grave to heal and teach again, before being born and dying once more. It seems that resurrection is simply regeneration, and nothing is ever really new.
And yet, as similar as it might seem on the surface, Jesus’ rising has nothing to do with the return of a European spring. That is just a metaphor. Instead, Jesus’ rising is the beginning of something so new, so different, so completely and utterly unexpected, that we cannot really describe it. That’s why we use metaphors; but every metaphor has its limits; every metaphor can become an idol. Because reality has been fractured once and for all, and everything has changed. And why? So that we might no longer be captive to the way things are, the ways things have always been, the ways things ‘should’ always be. Way back near the start of Luke’s story, Jesus announces he came to free the captive, and a resurrection faith liberates us from the systems and patterns and powers of the world. It’s an eruption of reality so strange and new that we can barely recognise it.
We glimpse this strangeness in Luke’s story. Two disciples walk and talk with a stranger, not realising he’s their beloved teacher. In John, Mary Magdalene encounters her beloved rabbi but thinks he is a gardener. On the beach, the disciples don’t dare ask a stranger who he is; they both suspect and are scared of the answer. For resurrection life is not resuscitation; things look different; everything’s changed.
More, resurrection life reorders the world. In Luke’s story, women go to the tomb to tend the body of their beloved friend, but when they get there they find it empty. Instead, two messengers appear. They tell the women that Christ is risen and entrust them with the news. But when the women return and speak of all they have seen, the men don’t believe them. The men are still trapped in the way things are, where women know nothing and only men speak: indeed, ‘the words seemed to them like idle talk.’ But resurrection faith? It recognises testimony from all sorts of witnesses: women, queer folk, disabled folk, children.
In Matthew’s account, the women don’t just receive a message from angels, but encounter the Risen Christ. This makes those women the first apostles, the first witnesses to the Risen Jesus: yet few in the church honour them as such and not many can tell you their names. But resurrection faith? It recognises authority wherever it’s granted, even when she’s a woman.
In John’s account, when the men hear Mary Magdalene’s testimony, they race each other to the tomb. Peter sprinted, but the other disciple was faster and won that particular race. In their mistrust of the woman’s testimony, they compete to be the first man there. But resurrection faith? The first shall be last and the last, first, in all of life as well as in sermons. All are united as siblings in Christ, and rivalry is no more.
Pushing into Acts, we see resurrection faith keeps disrupting the way things are, and people keep glimpsing it, then resisting. Peter has a vision and eats with gentiles and baptises them into the faith; but the Jerusalem church is initially appalled, and Peter later draws away from his new friends. Paul becomes convicted that circumcision is no longer necessary and successfully makes his case; yet soon afterwards he himself circumcises Timothy to ensure Timothy is fully accepted as a missionary. Whenever resurrection faith breaks through, it seems, the powers that be get their knickers in a knot and insist that it’s foolish or needs to be regulated, even persecuted.
These glimpses tell us something important: that despite inbreaking newness, the biases of the world were woven into the church from the beginning. The men would not accept the testimony of women; they could not let go of rivalry; they had to be persuaded to admit outsiders; and any newness led to conflict. When we look around at the church now, nothing much seems to have changed. Great crowds of people are still actively excluded from full participation; the vast majority of all church leadership is emphatically, intractably male; and almost all churches are absolutely resistant to anything or anyone new.
When I look around the churches (and I visit many), I see little desire for resurrection. Instead we long for regeneration; it’s all we seem to want or expect. Regeneration: to be busy like we were in the eighties, filled with passion like we were in the seventies, handing down a faith essentially unchanged generation after generation after generation. We want to sing the same songs and use the same service styles and employ the same teaching methods which worked in our youth; we long to hear good preaching as long as it echoes everything we’ve heard before. We scramble for volunteers to fill the same rosters, doing the same tasks that need to be done. We demand the same style of pastor renew the church and return it to the glory days.
And while we might fiddle with the window dressing from time to time, we block any real challenge to existing powers and structures, and reject any deep transformation. With the world-weary author of Ecclesiastes, we seem to believe that ‘what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.’ (1:9). It’s just the same old earth going through her cycles, and the same old faith being handed down, and here comes Eostre trailing the dawn behind her, with the light, and the life, and the bunnies.
But Eostre is not Christ, and keeping a corpse on life-support is not what Jesus is on about. Our call is to follow him through life into death and beyond: for only then will we experience resurrection. And our hope lies in exactly the same stories which demonstrate people’s resistance to his newness. Because despite people’s refusal to let the resurrection turn their world upside down, despite men’s unwillingness to accept the testimony of women, despite disciples clinging to old systems of rivalry and status and domination and power, despite the persistence of ingroups, we see Jesus trying again. Whether it’s at John’s breakfast on the beach, Matthew’s conversation on a mountaintop, or Luke’s walk on the Emmaus Road, or whether it’s through the many people filled with Christ’s spirit in Acts, or whether it’s through the countless spirit-filled people ever since, Jesus keeps bursting through with newness.
The encounter on the Emmaus Road is a great example. In their bleakness, two disciples meet a stranger. Their teacher has been killed; the empire has won; the world is exactly as it has always been; and here comes Eostre trailing the dawn behind her, with the light, and the life, and the bunnies. The stranger listens to their sob story of sameness, but instead of offering the words of comfort we expect, he rebukes their lack of understanding. Then he deconstructs scripture and gives them a new theology which puts everything into perspective and turns the world right-side-up. But it’s not until they break bread together that they realise who he is. Yet he’s entirely strange, not as he was before; and when they do finally glimpse him, he disappears.
This is not a resuscitated Jesus: they don’t recognise him. It’s not regeneration; the stranger isn’t offering them more of the same. Everything is different, and the newness cannot be grasped or contained. And it is this newness, this resurrection life, that we are called to embody. Not what has gone before or the glory days or even the first century church. Not the thing or way that is already known; not the regular cycles of death and rebirth: but something surprising, something shocking, something new.
I’ll close with some final comments on this newness. One, that it has hallmarks. It’s a break with the old, but there are precious things which carry through. Our story suggests that the Risen Christ is present when scripture is not the same old same old, but interpreted in new yet faithful ways which fill hearts with holy fire. So when our hearts burn at the interpretation of scripture, I suggest we pay attention. And our story suggests that we might glimpse Jesus in the breaking of bread and the sharing of resource with a stranger; again, let’s pay attention at these times.
Two, this Jesus cannot be contained. Whenever he is glimpsed, he disappears. He can never be fully known or described; he cannot be tied down; he is not limited to any theology or institution or metaphor; and any faithful speech about him will be partial, incomplete, slantwise. For the resurrection did not establish a tidy new religion. Instead, it’s a disruption, a transformation, a paradigm shift in the world, anchored only in the interpretation of scripture, the breaking of bread, and the shock of ongoing encounter.
Three, this newness is never easy. Whenever people meet the Risen Lord, they are uncomfortable. The women run from the tomb trembling and bewildered; in Mark’s account, they tell nobody because they are afraid. The Emmaus travellers’ hearts burn not with gentle warmth but refining fire. In the locked room, the disciples are startled and frightened to find Jesus among them. On the beach, they don’t dare ask, ‘Who are you?’ On the mountaintop, they worshipped him but they doubted. Unease, discomfort and even doubt are part and parcel of encounter with the Risen Christ.
Finally, despite this discomfort, I am absolutely convinced that the resurrection is good news. Because I don’t know about you, but I am tired of the old. I am tired of stale old theologies and stale old songs and stale old forms of gathering. I am tired of churches full of stale old people who are deeply resistant to change. I am tired of the same old people being in charge and making the same old decisions and preaching the same old sermons and insisting on the same old suffocating structures which benefit nobody but themselves. And as someone with many beloved queer folk in her life, I am more than tired of the same old people being rejected and shown the door.
Instead, I need a faith which is open to life in this world now and which is able to grow and change. I need a faith which is robust in the face of terrifying power. I need a faith which can talk back to white supremacy and Christian nationalism and the horrors of institutional child abuse. I need a faith that is expansive and generous with plenty of room for all God’s children. I need a faith which is anchored in this continent and in conversation with its short and very long term histories. I need a faith which can guide us through a changing climate and the end of predictable seasons. I need a faith that is so much bigger than Eostre and northern Europe and the patriarchy: and I find it in Jesus’ resurrection power. And I hope I am gathered with a people who will embrace this faith with me, however strange and disturbing, and who will trust the testimony of the unexpected. For what we need here and now will not be found in the old ways or in certainty or in what has gone before. The church keeps trying these things, and all around we can see that it is dying. We can scramble and struggle and try to resuscitate the past, but sometimes the corpse is dead.
If we are brave enough to acknowledge this, we can lament and mourn, but then wipe away our tears. Because the Risen Christ has defeated death once and for all, and is indeed doing something new. So let us devote ourselves to the spaces where the Risen Christ might be encountered: the interpretation of scripture, the sharing of resource, the breaking of bread. Let us make room for the testimony of unreliable witnesses and the presence of uncomfortable strangers. And let us sit with the anxiety and fear that newness brings, as our hearts and lives are set on fire. For Christ is risen to banish all weariness, expel all hopelessness and upend all despair. Christ is risen to release the captive from age-old habits of thought, mind and culture. Christ is risen to do a new thing in us and with us and among us. Christ is risen: and here! Alleluia! And let us be open to change. Ω
Reflection on Luke 24 shared with Westgate Baptist Community Church on 20 April 2025 (Easter Day Year C) © Alison Sampson, 2025. Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash.
Alison and the whale 