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Why Easter? Why does God give us Easter? God gives us Easter because Easter is about first things and last things, basic things. Easter is about the most basic gift of God, about life and faith and hope and love. The gift, God's Easter gift, began his journey long before Christmas. He was there in the beginning. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning." The gift was there, known by God, long before he was knit together and formed in Mary's womb. But God delivered the gift at Christmas. And just as the angel said, we found him "wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger," the Word wrapped in flesh. It was God himself, of course, who wrapped the Word in flesh, but it must have been Mary who wrapped him in swaddling clothes. It is unlikely that it was Joseph who wrapped him, because, as everyone knows, men are not big gift wrappers. Not even the wise men wrapped their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh that first Christmas. A contemporary student of these things proved it just last year. I received the proof by email just before Christmas, but I saved the news until now because it is Easter news as well as Christmas news. "This is the time of year when we think back to the very first Christmas," he said, "when the Three Wise Men, Gaspar, Balthazar, and Herb, went to see the baby Jesus and, according to the Gospel of Matthew, 'presented unto Him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.' These are simple words, but if we analyze them carefully, we discover an important, yet often overlooked, theological fact: There is no mention of wrapping paper. "If there had been wrapping paper, Matthew would have said so. 'And lo, the gifts were inside 600 square cubits of paper,' Matthew would have said. 'And the paper was festooned with pictures of Frosty the Snowman. And Joseph was going to throweth it away. But Mary saideth unto him, she saideth, "Holdeth it! That is nice paper! Saveth it for next year!" And Joseph did rolleth his eyeballs. And the baby Jesus was more interested in the paper than the frankincense.' "But these words do not appear in the Bible, which means that the very first Christmas gifts were not wrapped. This is because the people giving those gifts had two important characteristics: 1. They were wise. 2. They were men. "Men are not big gift wrappers. Men do not understand the point of putting paper on a gift just so somebody else can tear it off. This is not just my opinion. This is a scientific fact based on a statistical survey of two guys I know. "One is Rob, who said the only time he ever wraps a gift is 'if it's such a poor gift that I don't want to be there when the person opens it.' "The other is Gene, who told me he does wrap gifts, but as a matter of principle never takes more than fifteen seconds per gift. 'No one ever had to wonder which presents daddy wrapped at Christmas,' Gene said. 'They were the ones that looked like enormous spitballs.' "I also wrap gifts," this student confesses, "but because of some defect in my motor skills, I can never completely wrap them. I can take a gift the size of a deck of cards and put it the exact center of a piece of wrapping paper the size of a regulation volleyball court, but when I am done folding and taping, you can still see a sector of the gift peeking out. (Sometimes I camouflage this sector with a marking pen.) If I had been an ancient Egyptian in the field of mummies, the lower half of the Pharaoh's body would be covered only by Scotch tape. "On the other hand, if you give my wife a 12-inch square piece of wrapping paper, she can wrap a C-130 cargo plane. My wife, like many women, actually likes wrapping things. If she gives you a gift that requires batteries, she wraps the batteries separately, which to me is very close to being a symptom of mental illness. If it were possible, my wife would wrap each individual volt. "My point is that gift-wrapping is one of those skills, like having babies, that come more naturally to women than to men. That is why today I am sharing these GIFT-WRAPPING TIPS FOR MEN: One, whenever possible, buy gifts that are already wrapped. If, when the recipient opens the gift, neither one of you recognizes it, you can claim that it's myrrh. Two, if you're giving a hard-to-wrap gift, skip the wrapping paper! Just put it inside a bag and stick one of those little adhesive bows on it. This creates a festive visual effect that is sure to delight the lucky recipient on Christmas morning. The conversation will go something like this: YOUR WIFE: Why is there a Hefty trash bag under the tree?Voltaire says that "God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh," but this delightful piece of biblical scholarship is clear evidence that God knew better than to leave the wrapping of his gift to the wise men or to Joseph and suggests that God, too, probably enjoys a good laugh. Christmas and Easter are about first things and last things. Christmas and Easter are about life and death and life restored, about where we came from and where we're going. Christmas and Easter are about God, and about God's gift of life, and his gift of Jesus, and about how God wraps his gifts. First things first. In the beginning, God. And as the Presbyterians put it, the chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. That is why we are -- to glorify God and to enjoy him. But if we are to glorify and enjoy God, we must know God. Not just know that God exists, but know who God is and what God is like. And if Meister Eckhart is right, God would not have created the world in the first place, if we could have known God without the world, because if we could have known God without the world, the world would not have been necessary. But life, like theater, requires a stage, as Richard Rohr has observed. So God did create the world, the stage on which life and faith and hope and love are played out. God did this in order that we can know him, in order that we can know that, from beginning to end, God is life and love and hope. And in the fullness of time, God delivered his gift. And his gift dwelt among us wrapped in flesh. Not as "mere flesh," not as "mere matter," as mere chemicals and electrical circuits, but as life, as mystery, as mystery enfleshed, as faith and hope and love wrapped in flesh and bone in the created world where men and women live and love and hope. And he dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, living among us the truth that we, like him, are more than we can know or see. During his time among us, Jesus was wrapped in many things. Much of the time Jesus wore the garments of ordinary life, the wrappings that spoke of who he was: the swaddling clothes of the baby in the manger, the play clothes of a child of Nazareth. Later he wore the work clothes of the trades he learned from Joseph, and later still, the vestments of teacher and rabbi, all garments that indicated his occupation or station in life, because that's the way it's done in life in the world. During his time among us some people wanted him to change his attire. The clothing makes the man, the world says, and some people, hearing that Jesus might be the expected Messiah, wanted to tailor him for robes of royalty and seat him on a worldly throne. Some wanted to fit him for the sword that would surely drive the Romans out of Israel. But when, in the fullness of time, Jesus wanted his disciples to get down to basics, when he wanted us to get down to first things and last things, when he decided it was time for him to show us what he was really made of, deep down in the mystery of the gift he was from God, on the night before he died, he "took off his outer clothing, and he wrapped a towel around his waist. And he poured water in a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him" so that we might know that he comes among us not to be served, but as one who serves, so that we might see that God's gift comes among us clothed in the substance of God himself -- in compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, faith, hope, and love. Of course, Caiaphas and Pilate and Pilate's soldiers had no time for such nonsense. And later that night they arrested Jesus. And they mocked him, as the world usually mocks the gifts of God. If he is a king, they insisted, he should be wrapped in purple, in the vestments of power, with a crown on his head. And they dressed him up like the king of a banana republic, and laughed at him. But after they had their sneer and their fun, they put his own clothes back on him, his humble wrap. And then they marched him to the Cross. And maybe that's why Voltaire thinks that we are too afraid to laugh, because we're talking about life and death here and, after all, sooner or later all of us end up being carried to the cemetery, if not to a cross. And that's not funny, because death is death, and it makes us wonder why God created the world the way he did it. And we wonder why, if God is going to send messiahs, he sends such strange ones. And we wonder if Jesus really has anything worthwhile to give us after all. And so fear chokes back any joy or hope or laughter we had in us as we watch him being led up the hill to Calvary. But Jesus himself seems sadly content rather than fearful. "It is for this reason that I was born and came into this world," he had said to Pilate when Pilate wanted to know if he really was a king. And at dinner last night he told us not to be afraid. "Do not let your hearts be troubled," he said, "I am going away, but I am coming back to you. The prince of this world is coming, but he has no hold on me." The prince of this world did come, of course, and after they took Jesus down from the Cross on Friday, they swaddled him in a winding sheet, tied him securely up in the vestments of death and laid him to rest, as we say. And good riddance, too, thought Caiaphas, because God knows that Pilate and I can sure use some rest. But as Richard Rohr reminds, us, "every conception needs a dark, patient womb." And when the women arrived at the tomb early on Easter Day, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus, but only the empty winding sheets in which they had tried to tie him up and hold him down. And while the women were puzzling over the mystery of it all, "suddenly two men in dazzling garments stood beside them. The women were scared out of their wits," the evangelist tells us, "and they bowed down with their faces to the ground. But the men said to them, 'Why do you look for the living among the dead? You are looking for Jesus, who was crucified? He is not here; he is risen. Do not be afraid. There's more to life than meets the eye. There is nothing to fear. He has gone home to prepare a place for you, that where he is, you may be also.'" Every conception needs a dark, patient womb. And never was there a womb so dark, so patient, never a womb so passionate and full of life, as this. What do we have to fear, Jesus asks us, if we are more than we can know or see? There is more to life than meets the eye. This is the gift that Jesus brings us. Maybe God wraps gifts because, like women, he knows that part of the gift is the anticipation, the mystery. Maybe that's why all of us human beings are wrapped as we are, wrapped in humus, wrapped in the dampness of organic soil, wrapped in the chemistry of the created universe. "What is man," asks Loren Eiseley, "but a way that water has of going about beyond the reach of rivers?" Maybe it's in our unwrapping that we discover first things and last things. Maybe it's in our unwrapping that we discover the delight of the gift, the knowledge of who God is as well as the knowledge of who we are and where we came from and where we're going. In the world, the wrapping is what we see, and like children we are often more interested in the wrapping than in the gift. But "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Faith is the evidence of first things and last things, the evidence of the gift itself, the evidence of who we are and where we came from and where we are going. And so at Christmas and Easter we recall the gift itself. At Christmas and Easter we recall the ancient story of faith, the story of joy and hope and laughter. And we remember that when God told Sarah that she would conceive and bear a child at age ninety, Sarah laughed. Abraham laughed, too, "fell on his face and laughed," as Genesis, the book of first things, tells us. When God asks them about it later, Sarah denies it. "No, but you did laugh," God says, thus having the last word as well as the first. "But God doesn't seem to hold their outburst against them," notes Frederick Buechner. "On the contrary, he tells them the baby's going to be a boy and that he wants them to name him Isaac," which, in Hebrew, means laughter. "Why did the two old crocks laugh?" Buechner asks. They laughed at the evidence. "They laughed because they knew only a fool would believe that a woman with one foot in the grave was soon going to have her other foot in the maternity ward. They laughed because God expected them to believe it anyway. They laughed because God seemed to believe it. They laughed because they half-believed it themselves. They laughed because laughing felt better than crying. They laughed because if by some crazy chance it just happened to come true they would really have something to laugh about, and in the meantime it helped keep them going." Faith and hope and love, the Christmas and Easter gifts of God, all wrapped and ready for our attention. "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith is laughter at the promise of a child called laughter." (Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, pp. 24-25) That is why God gives us Easter. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. |