Lenten Journey to Return to Our Calling: Easter as a Metaphor for Today (Week 7)

Happy Easter! It’s easy for us as Christians to recognize there’s significance behind this holiday. We teach students for confirmation that Jesus Christ’s resurrection stands as proof that God has power even over death. Theological resonances of Easter indicate God’s love for us, desire to be in relationship with us, and power to change the very foundations of this world for the better.

One might expect Brueggemann to affirm these truths, and there’s little to suggest in this devotional book that he’d disagree outright with those claims. Yet this past week’s readings instead develop another theme: that there is in Easter a galvanizing metaphor that should stir us toward building the better world that God desires, today. Brueggemann indicates that we should be drawn toward “Jesus’ way in the world … generosity and forgiveness and hospitality,” and drawn “away from greed, away from fear, away from anxiety, away from brutality.” 

One example of that comes in the Last Supper, when Jesus washes the disciples’ feet and then commands them to carry out the same example. Brueggemann points out four observations from that: “you have come from God; you are not your own,” “you will go to God; your future is assured,” “the space between you and others is filled with a towel,” and as you go, “you will be safe in vulnerability, treasured in obedience, and free from anxiety.” We are heirs to this alternative community, set in the midst of empire and militarism to envision a different world where people can gather and trust one another.

And so we’re also called to relive out Easter in our day. Brueggemann challenges us: “Do not give up the question for a heavenly, transcendental transaction out beyond worldly reality, for these are real people struggling over real power. Friday is the ultimate day in which the church asks with unblinking honestly about the moral quality of reality. Or is it just money talks and might makes right?” 

And in that movement framework, we’re often caught in Saturday: knowing that Jesus is gone but not yet assured that resurrection will indeed occur. Brueggemann mourned the “Saturdays of Katrina and 9/11 and economic collapse,” and one can easily imagine him adding the Middle East once more and recent administrations’ fever dream pursuit of bloodless war without sacrifice. But we’re to move forward in that uncertainty, knowing that Sunday will come, and to rise in civil disobedience against the empires that militate against self-giving love, sacrifice, generosity, forgiveness, and community. 

Reflection Questions:

• What is your specific calling or mission for this time? How is that going?

• What would it look like to join God’s call for us?

Prayer (From Brueggemann, A Way Other Than Our Own, Good Friday devotional):

“God of the poor and powerless, you have taught us how to speak in the face of inhumanity—you call us to tell the truth and expose the false orderings of power that oppress and kill. Make us bold to follow the example of Jesus and to speak your word, trusting in your justice and deliverance. Amen.