Oh, Easter! You ruin everything. You ruin everything so much that I can’t even figure out how to write about you. I want to believe. I want to not believe. Your four stories don’t line up, even the gospel writers don’t know what to do with you. You’re very confusing.
And Easter is confusing. We’ve barely come to terms with the death of Jesus, when we’re told he’s not dead. And wut? And we’re to believe this so easily? The Church and the culture and the story and the what? No. But. And we try to deal with this and we fail. And every year we try and fail.
And in the midst of Easter, will we let ourselves to try again, to fail better? We must try again, to fail better. I can’t go on. I must go on. We can’t go on. We must go on.
Can we take Easter so easily? And merely cry out “The Lord is risen!”? If we do, then we’re deluding ourselves. Easter is difficult. It is wonderfully difficult. Its reality, its fantasy, its myth, its story. It is difficult to write about. It ruins everything. It ruins all and every expectation. Good Friday may be be absurd, but Easter is even more. It’s amazing. I cannot fathom it. We have hope for hope. And the empty tomb and the conflicting, messy resurrection stories offer a strange kind of hope.
Perhaps, we can even always look on the bright side of life.