Easter Edition: Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?
How Beautiful Easter Traditions Create Resurrection Belief
Today, Easter, I pause our Eight Trails story to bring you a reflection, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?” This reflection springs from my mission to speak to you about the symbolic issues of belief. Confusion about religious symbols blocks many thoughtful people from faith and its power for life. It’s my hope that this Easter reflection on Resurrection may spur your own “Aha!” moment.
Did Jesus Rise From The Dead?
How will you celebrate Easter? Will the Easter Bunny visit your yard, hiding colored eggs? Will your kids fuss over their finery of tight ties and scratchy dresses? Will you attend a worship service perfumed with Easter lilies, and rise to sing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus at the end?
Or will you start the day with a caffeinated debate: “Did Jesus rise from the dead?”
Easter can resurrect (sorry!) this skeptical yet sincere question. But it can’t be answered over morning coffee, or in a staged debate. It can neither be answered by scientific exams of near-death experiences, nor radiocarbon dating of some burial shroud.
It especially can’t be answered in one person’s essay.
Instead, this writer must direct you back to those Easter bunnies and dress clothes, those Easter lilies and singing. That’s where the answer is found. These traditions and rituals comprise a “language game” -- that insightful phrase from philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Introduced by Wittgenstein in the 1950’s, his term, “language game” neither trivializes nor disrespects religion. On the contrary. A language game perspective demands we take believers seriously as thoughtful people, paying attention to how they use their religious words and symbols, observing what their “game” accomplishes.
The Resurrection is part of the language game for Christian believers. This language game includes declarative speech, like an Easter sermon. But this game especially uses the language of art: aesthetic symbols like Easter bunnies and egg hunts, special music and clothing. Even the Bible’s empty tomb story is a dramatic work of literature.
Why are they important? Aesthetic symbols profoundly influence how we see, feel, and act. They shape our reality. As philosopher of art Nelson Goodman wrote: “(Art) works work when they participate in the organization and reorganization of experience, thus in the making and remaking of our worlds.”
So, those colorful, empty eggs we search for? They not only remind us of the empty tomb and the search for Jesus’ body; they prompt us to search for Jesus’s spirit here, among the living. And what about that Easter bunny, a pagan symbol of spring fertility? His arrival reshapes our winter world of death to one of hope and birth, Easter’s moral message. And the Hallelujah Chorus? Its soaring notes and stirring words rebuke our weary cynicism. We’re moved to enact its declaration, “The kingdom of our world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.” What an imperative for Easter and beyond-- to remake our world into a realm where love and justice reign!
These aesthetic practices of Easter don’t simply “re-make” our world; they make our world better.
But what about the question of Resurrection?
Suddenly you see that it’s not a stand-alone question, but part of a language game of special symbols that shape our outlook and actions.
But you may still protest, did this really happen?
And here Wittgenstein offers a metaphor that brings us resolution: “hinge.” We don’t inspect the hinges that open and shut our doors. We simply walk through. Those hinges don’t need to be questioned -- if they work. Language games are based on just such hinges. The hinge lets us open the door and get on with life.
The Resurrection is the hinge of the Christian Language Game – and it works. As Wittgenstein observed, people play language games because they “prove their worth.” The worth of Resurrection? It teaches us to hope in the face of chaos, to find renewal when we are gutted, to insist that love and justice will prevail despite death and evil.
This powerful vision is built up through all the traditions of Easter – the eggs, the bunnies, the music, the flowers, the stunning empty tomb story. Here, we could say, echoing Goodman: The Art of Easter remakes our world!
And when your world is changed like that, you just don’t ask, “Did Jesus rise from the dead?”
Eight Trails resumes April 7, the Fourth Trail of Resilience (Episode 17).
To Eight Trails readers: Does this post suggest a moment you’ve experienced and, perhaps, a photo you took? Share your reflections and photos with me by clicking “reply” to this emailed post. I would be delighted to include them in new posts — of course, crediting you!
Joanne, you have always been highly insightful to the beliefs and questions that run through our minds and hearts.
This “chapter” actually brings me back to your dissertation. I recall the question of “What does the resurrection mean to you” and how is it relevant to our daily lives.
I love the analogy of the hinges on the door and, specifically, walking through that door. As I walk through that door this Easter, I am thankful for your friendship and for your motivation to nurture the lives that you touch. Happy Easter!