I’m not quite so sure what the
resurrection means anymore. Now,
before you take my head off, hear me out. What I’m not saying is that I don’t believe in it, or that it’s pointless to
talk about, or that it didn’t happen. After five years of Bible College and
being exposed to tests and lectures on the historical evidences for this event,
I found that I had available reasoned answers for something that I hadn’t even
begun to question, and I was ready to fight anyone who would contest it.
Besides, Paul even writes that without the resurrection, our faith is in vain.
What I am saying is that I just don’t know what it means anymore—or in other words, how it changes my approach to life
in the daily grind.

Now, I just might be a horrible
missionary, but to be completely honest, remembering the resurrection isn’t one
of the many things on my “to do” list in a given day, nor does the significance
of it enter my thoughts as the daily shuffle floods my consciousness upon
waking in the morning.  It doesn’t come
to mind as I order dinner, enter the pharmacy, or talk with Luigi the pastry
maker as he walks his dog Charlie down my street. Is it possible to affirm that the resurrection happened and yet
have a faith that’s in vain because you fail to embrace what it implies?

It would probably be pretty
accurate if I were to say that most of the people that walk down my street
would not deny that the resurrection happened to Jesus. But if I were to ask
them, not, “Do you believe it
happened?”, but “What are the implications of the resurrection for your life?”
they might be at a loss for words. I know I would be. I mean, really, when you
get sucked into the daily grind, doin’ what you do, does the resurrection
orient the way you are towards others? The Sunday school answer is of course, “Yes!”
But come on. If you were to really examine the way you are towards others,
those outside the church building (and sometimes those inside), would you say
that your life reflects one that’s been touched by the resurrection? Be honest.
Does the resurrection really transform our approach to life as we fill our
coffee mug begrudgingly on our way to work in the morning? Does it direct our
thoughts about what we choose to dwell on, or focus our eyes on the plastic bag
blowing down the street? Does it ever seep in to our way of sizing up the
world? If it does, does it only serve as a way to escape the here and now and
long for the pie-in-the-sky, sweet by and by? I’m not so sure what the resurrection
means anymore.

Eugene Peterson makes this
observation, “resurrection is not something we can use or control or manipulate
or improve on. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the world has had very little
success in commercializing Easter—turning it into a commodity—as it has
Christmas? If we can’t, in our phrase, ‘get a handle on it’ or use it, we soon
lose interest. But resurrection is not available for our use. It’s exclusively
God’s operation.”

There are usually two scenes that come
to mind when one thinks of the crucifixion and resurrection. The first scene
that pops into our minds might be that of Michelangelo’s Pietà—Mary calmly holding the corpse of her son on Good Friday. The
interesting thing is that this scene never appears in the biblical narratives.
Mary doesn’t show up on Easter Sunday either at the tomb. Perhaps this is
because she has believed that her son lives and needs no evidence to satisfy the
apostolic doubt. The second scene that comes to mind on Easter Sunday is that
triumphant portrait of the risen Christ in dazzling white coming out of the
tomb. This too is not found in the Gospels. It would seem that the Gospels are
not concerned with when or how the resurrection happened, but in
how it affected those who encountered the empty tomb and the risen Christ.  Which makes me wonder, how does it make me
respond?

Peterson says that, “Fear is the
most frequently mentioned resurrection response … We’re afraid when we’re suddenly
caught off our guard and don’t know what to do. We’re afraid when our
presuppositions and assumptions no longer account for what we’re up against,
and we don’t know what will happen to us. We’re afraid when reality, without
warning, is shown to be either more or other than we thought it was.”

Now in our culture, we have no
problem living lives of fear and distrust. It would be enough just to go to an
airport and go through the enormous amount of security because of the fear that
the flight you’re about to get on is the one that will be used for terror. We
are poised by the media to view persons of color with raised eyebrow. But I don’t
think this is the kind of fear that the resurrection is meant to evoke. If I could
adjust Peterson’s observation, fear
is the biblical word that’s used, but I think the word attentiveness would carry a more accurate meaning for how we are to
respond to the resurrection.

The first thing that St. Benedict
urged his followers to do in his rule of life is to, “Listen carefully, and
attend … with the ear of your heart.” I think he was trying to get at what it
means to, in Wendell Berry’s phrase, “practice resurrection.” Attentiveness is
what makes good prayers and poetry. It is what allows us to get at and cast out
that inner swirl and stir of our souls. If I’ve lost the meaning of the
resurrection, I have a feeling that it’s because I’ve allowed the days to pass
without running my fingertips over what it is that I should be noticing, if I only
had this last moment to experience it.

Attentiveness orients our thoughts
and helps us “pay attention” to the everyday things in a way that seeks not to
posses them but behold them. Attentiveness is an act of humility that says I am
not the center of the world and that I live on given breath. This act allows us
to notice what is going on, it allows things to get our attention. I believe
that this is what the poets are trying to get us to understand. Attentiveness
also allows us to see the immense blessings that the Lord gives without
overlooking them. The resurrection implies that we live life with
attentiveness, which keeps us from making the idolatrous shift of using God
instead of worshipping Him. As C.S. Lewis constantly reminds us, unless we can
be attentive to God’s presence in the everyday events of life, we won’t know
them in the more earth-shattering—or even the more painful—events.

Attentiveness makes for good
poetry, but also for good prayers. Kathleen Norris makes the following
observation, “Prayer is not doing, but being. It is not words but the
beyond-words experience of coming into the presence of something much greater
than oneself. It is an invitation to recognize holiness, and to utter simple
words—‘Holy, Holy, Holy’—in response. Attentiveness is all; I sometimes think
of prayer as a certain quality of attention that comes upon me when I’m busy
doing something else.”

Death will come to visit me one
day. I want to soak up every possible experience and nuance of life before
then, and this requires an attentiveness to do so. But Christ has taken away
both the fear of death and has conquered death itself! Death is something that I
will experience biologically, but I don’t think that it touches the part of me
that loves, that part of me that wants to be like Christ. There must be
something that the resurrection touches that death cannot. Death still comes
for us all, so one may ask, “What’s the point in trying to fulfill the desires
you seek if they will only be taken away from you in death?” For me, the point
is that in doing so, I become who I am. In loving another, I risk like God
risks, and yet I become a greater person in the process. In stepping out into a
resurrection-centered life, He brings aspects to my story that otherwise would
remain a monologue. In choosing to “stay put” in attentiveness, I give myself
the space needed to grow and develop my storyline.

I think it’s this desire for
attentiveness that the Apostle John refers to when he was taking all of Jesus
in with ears, eyes, and hands. And it’s this attentiveness that propels him to
share with others. The apostles saw, handled, listened to the “Life of God”
take shape before them. In being attentive to this taking shape, their own
lives began to take shape as well. The apostle experiences attentiveness in
communion with the Father and desires that others might be drawn up into it.

In being more attentive, I find
that I want to live deeply in Christ. The resurrection incites within me a
desire to be attentive in the face of death which is the risk and road one
makes on his journey towards a fully-formed, well rounded love. I want to live
steadily and deeply in the Love that loves us first and compels me to love back
and be loved. This open, resurrection life is the one that Christ opened up for
us to live into. So, I press the ear of my heart, which is slowly becoming less
and less like concrete, hard into Him.