Allowing Christ's Risen Life

The current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, poses an important challenge regarding our use of the symbols employed with particular power during Holy Week and Easter. In his superb book entitled Easter, he writes "It is precisely when Christ's sufferings and mine are brought intimately together that the image of the crucified is indeed in danger of degradation. We experience ourselves as sufferers, as victims, and so experience Christ's cross as a symbol of who and what we are." (p.77) His point is well taken, as it is more than evident that faithful laity and clergy alike often find it difficult to embrace a deep identification with Christ's Risen life. By way of contrast, to use St. Augustine as but one example, the early Church was alive with hope and joy. Augustine writes that "The saints, while they lived, were rejoicing in their age." "Some," Augustine says, were performing their worship "with continuous merriment/hilarity." In precisely these times, without, of course ignoring the dangers we face in the world, or the various challenges we face in the church, it is, I believe, of the greatest importance to give voice again to the central claim of Resurrection Joy.

There is a kind of suffocating seriousness which subverts the very life Christ gives. I'm not, of course, suggesting that the Joy of New Life in Christ can be forced. It is not yet another obligation, and an emotional obligation at that, to which we are summoned. We are not under some bounden duty to smile or otherwise look happy. This joy is a given Joy. As pure gift, and as the very face of forgiveness, the Risen Lord invites us, in union with him, to live again.