Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life. Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!
There is no other story.
This story of death as the door to new life is the paradigmatic human story. We can't get 'round it. This is the way it is done. New life.
Choosing death, choosing one's own death as distinct from insisting on pimping off the death of others. The gate, the way, the door. Dying to death, to deadly half-life and allowing oneself to be swept under. Only to be risen, to be in the flow of rising and lifting and, my favorite way of putting it, "auferstanden." Does that not sound like it is, standing up again.
I believe I've written it here before, I'm pissed at Jesus for making it look so easy. Not the dying. That is pure hell. But the rising. An angel, so the story goes, rolls away a big rock trapping him in a tomb and by some divine power, tada, he's up.
Not always how it works for us. Not often how it works with us. Slow, up and down, in and out, back and forth. But it is, nevertheless, relentless.
Relentless. The trajectory of our lives is resurrection. That is the way we're moving. It's the road we're on. Some days we run, some days we may sit on a bench and simply trust that the next steps we're ready to take are headed that way. Resurrection. Auferstanden. Getting up. New. Life.
Whomever we are, however we walk, we are connected to this paradigmatic way of being. It has claimed us. Set our feet on the path. Or set our butts on the bench along the path. But in any case, it's a gravitational pull.
"Out of the rot and ruin comes a rumor of resurrection." That's us.
