Easter

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."

What do you do with Easter Saturday? It's such a strange day, much harder to deal with than Christmas Eve, which is all anticipation and warmth and candleglow in the windows. Easter Saturday: Christ in the grave. The pain of his passion behind us, but the glorious hope of the Resurrection still to come.

I was thinking about Kierkegaard this morning, oddly enough -- about the knight of resignation and the knight of faith. It is a strange topic for Easter morning, that most important of days, full of joy. But, then, a lot of things in life mimic the pattern of our saviour, and we must often taste death before we regain hope. I tasted this morning, and it was bitter in my mouth. I was disappointed in life (but no, not merely disappointed; deeply saddened by it). The comforting shell of resignation, the warm blanket of stoicism I wrap my heart in -- I could feel it creeping in again. But then I stopped and thought about Kierkegaard. I thought how so many people can give something up, a life or a dream, but how the difficult part is believing it will be given back to you. Abraham brought Isaac up the mountain, yet he did not doubt the promise given him. And so I made the choice of a fool: I chose to believe that what had died would resurrect, that my hope was not in vain.

And so our lives are a mimesis of that one life that mattered most. "The Son of Man must be lifted up", John tells us; lifted up only to fall to the ground, to be planted in the Arimithean tomb. Our lives have such tombs, those spaces which are dark and empty and cobwebbed. We fear them, perhaps rightly. We fear the falling to the ground.

This is why Easter Saturday is such a bother. The overwhelming pain of Good Friday is in some ways easier to handle than the blank drip drip drip, the waiting in the tomb. There is somewhat of a debate about what Christ's spirit was doing on that day; I'm content to leave it a mystery, but I can see the appeal in having the question answered. Do you know the feeling of having cried so long that you have no strength for tears? Hope has not yet come back, your resolve is not strengthened. You lie on your bed, exhausted. This is Easter Saturday, that terrible inbetween.

I don't think we always leap directly from resignation to faith. The death of a dream must lie in the fallow field awhile, sometimes, before it springs up into life. For me the wait was short this morning -- a few minutes -- but then again a few moments in time can be an epoch. You have no reckoning of day or night when you're in a tomb.

But if it dies, it bears much fruit. This is the promise of Easter morning. How small are our dreams when we dream them ourselves, when we grasp them tightly, terrified to let them slip away. How alone we are then. Even when we dream the right dream, have the right cause, are in the know, when we grasp what we are in fact doing is choking the life out of that which we hold. Yet when we let go -- when the single kernel spirals to the ground -- then we are free. It is the cry of Christ as he breathes his last: Into your hand I commit my spirit. And though we do not always see clearly, rebirth lies in the very seed which falls. We should not be surprised when our shattered dreams bear much fruit. He who raised Christ from the tomb, who restored Isaac to his father, is the same God who hears our prayers, who has conquered death utterly. The tomb does not have the final word. It is only a fallow field, waiting for the seed brave enough to plunge beneath its soil.