Thought for the Week: Kenneth Bird on Easter
‘Way-markers are there even for those who think they know the path.’
‘Christ is risen! He is risen indeed’. So goes the paschal greeting that is exchanged on Easter Sunday in many churches. What meaning does it hold for us Friends?
We may not join wholeheartedly in observing the great Christian festivals, but nor should we ignore them; way-markers are there even for those who think they know the path.
During my National Service years I was walking one Sunday morning along the road to Effeld in Germany, when I came upon a wayside shrine with a simple message: Wanderer bist du bereit, heute zu ziehen in the ewigkeit – ‘Traveller, are you ready this day to meet with eternity?’
The breaking in of the light upon our consciousness is unexpected and not at our instance or bidding. Yet for those who follow the discipline of Lenten preparation, there is the joyful assurance that the end is in view, and a shared jubilation when it is accomplished. A myth holds its truth because it contains a truth, let us remember that. And as we ponder its truth, we might recall too that gospel narrative when Jesus talks with Nicodemus about the rebirth of humanity, when the spirit is revisited in the flesh. Can one be born a second time? This gives a renewed meaning to Mary’s experience of motherhood, of all motherhood, with the realisation of the first stirrings, a quickening of life in the womb: ‘I know that my redeemer liveth.’ This truly is not a resurrection in any physical sense. It is something more wonderful, it is a new creation.
Can something be so personal yet universal? The Magi on their journey thought so, as they became ‘no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation’ as TS Eliott had it. And this is the other side of the Easter story, as William Littleboy (1853-1936) wrote in his journal (once quoted in our book of discipline): ‘To be a Christian consists not in feeling, but in following; not in ecstasy but in obedience.’
What does love require of us in our situation? If our way-marker is seen in the life of Jesus, then that way lies the cross. The pearl of great price is not at the end of the road, at the end of our seeking. It accompanies us along the way. We each have our own path, our own furrow to plough, for the seed that is sown in our hearts is part of our evolutionary DNA. Ultimately that cannot be denied, yet we can choose to nurture or to lay waste that inheritance. The last commandment came for Peter by the lakeside after the resurrection: ‘Feed my sheep.’
The meaning of the risen Christ remains hanging in the air at Eastertide.
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