“Just a Belief”
Many years ago on the day before Easter, a member of my Wilmington, NC, church and I were at a park testing the sound system for the next day’s Sunrise Service. Since it was a beautiful afternoon, we had plenty of company. Two women with cameras followed a trio of toddlers, snapping pictures of them as they trailed a pair of ducks around the water’s edge. A man with a camera perched himself in front of an azalea in full bloom, angling for the perfect close-up of its pink blooms. A woman in a lawn chair read a book while her two school-aged children raced each other back and forth across the bridge. Made curious by our activity, she politely asked us what we were doing.
“We’re having an Easter Sunrise Service here tomorrow morning,” we told her, “Since it will still be dark when we arrive to set up at 6 am, we’re checking the sound levels today. This way, we’ll be set.”
By this time, the woman’s two boys had come back. “They’re setting up for a church service,” she explained to them. “Tomorrow is Easter and they’re going to have a Sunrise Service here.”
“Can we come Mama?” asked one of the boys.
Mama was diplomatically non-committal. “We’ll see,” she said, and with that she picked up her chair, wished us a Happy Easter, and headed off.
Momentarily, we were interrupted again. A man who looked to be in his sixties, his graying hair disheveled by the wind, walked up to where we were working.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Going to have a concert? Having a wedding or something?”
“No,” we answered, “We’re having an Easter Sunrise Service tomorrow morning.”
With that, his voice took on a brusque, defensive tone.
“Well,” he huffed, “it’s just a belief. You can believe anything you want, I guess. But that’s all it is – just a belief.” Whereupon he harrumphed, turned, and walked away swiftly.
There you have it. Within the space of five minutes, two different responses to Easter: one cordial, the other antagonistic. From one person, a polite smile. From another, a cynical sneer.
Fifty years ago, while on a church youth group trip, a few of us sat up late into the night at a youth hostel engaged in a conversation with a man who was a very articulate atheist. For every argument we teenagers put forth for the existence of God, he countered with a reasonable argument to the contrary. Back and forth we went into the wee hours of the morning until I decided to summon the heavy artillery: I went to get our minister. I was certain he would come down to the lobby and say the very thing needed to melt the hard heart of our opponent. The man would then make his confession of faith and we’d go to bed having won one for the Lord.
I was wrong. My pastor didn’t say a word to the man. In fact, he didn’t come down to the lobby at all. He didn’t even get out of bed. After I had awoken him and told him what we were doing, he said, “David, Thomas Aquinas once said, ‘For those who don’t believe, no explanation is possible. For those who do believe, no explanation is necessary.’” He said that and then he told me to get some sleep.
I was about to say something in defense of my faith in the resurrection to the cranky guy in the park that afternoon long ago when Rev. Cox’s words came echoing down through time and stilled my tongue. The next day, as I looked out at one hundred some people sitting on folded chairs in the pre-dawn darkness, I couldn’t help but to wonder at this thing we call faith. Why Easter is welcomed by some while scoffed at by others, I still have no explanation.
Rev. Cox spoke his words to me in the summer of 1975.
They came back to me twenty years later in the spring of 1994.
They returned thirty years later this past weekend as Broadway Christian Church hosted three Easter services to accommodate the 434 people who worshipped throughout the morning.
“Easter,” said one of my professors, “is not a day for explanation, it’s a day for proclamation.” Stephen Fearing, a Presbyterian colleague with whom I did Bible Study in Lexington and is now in North Carolina adds the words “and jubilation.” No explanation on Easter, just proclamation and jubilation. Amen to that.
Which reminds me of another Presbyterian colleague, the Rev. John Leggett at Second Presbyterian in Lexington, who receives the same phone call every Easter Sunday afternoon. His phone rings, he answers, the voice on the other end says, "Jesus is on the loose!" and the call ends. It’s his roommate from seminary. The call is his good-humored way of saying “Christ is risen!” Not risen and seated on a throne in Heaven. Rather, risen and on the loose in our world “making all things new” (Revelation 21:5).
Rev. Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood, who spent thirty-five years (1974-2009) at St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn and is now at Mt. Pisgah Baptist in Queens, said, “Not only did a resurrection happen, but there’s a resurrection goin' on!” Indeed! Jesus isn’t a one-and-done Savior. He keeps coming back to bring life out death, healing out of brokenness, and hope out of despair.
As the late Frederick Buechner put it, “Resurrection means the worst thing is never the last thing.” We do ourselves a disservice when we think of Easter only in terms of its promise of life after death in the hereafter. It’s that to be sure, but Easter also has to do with life after all the painful deaths we face in the here and now – the failures and frustrations, the separations and setbacks, the turmoil and tragedies, the unfairnesses and injustices. On Easter, God makes a way through those deaths to new life.
Pardon me. I digress. I got to preachin’ there for a few paragraphs!
How did that happen? I started off calmly recalling the guy in the park who, when he learned why we were setting up a sound system in the park on a Saturday, said Pshaw!, grunted, grumbled, and told us the entire Easter enterprise is “just a belief.”
I then segued to the memory of unsuccessfully trying to argue that belief down an someone’s throat before being told by my wise pastor I was engaged in a fool’s errand and would do better to get some sleep.
Then it happened – I set aside explanation and went to proclamation with jubilation:
Jesus is on the loose!
Not only did a resurrection happen, but there’s a resurrection goin' on!
Resurrection means the worst thing is never the last thing.
This is all to say I had the privilege of proclaiming the resurrection for the 42nd time on Sunday. It’s just a belief, but a powerfully precious one. Here I am seventy-two hours later still riding the wave of wonder that sent the women scurrying from the tomb on that first Easter falling all over themselves, rapt with joy.
