It Will Be Alright

It is probably scandalous to admit, especially on Easter, that  I have always struggled with the likelihood of resurrection.  I have never been able to "just believe" it.  While I was in seminary, I had a professor who insisted that Jesus' resurrection was not a historic event.  Dr.Joseph Weber would point to the four Gospel accounts to back up his assertion that no one is reported seeing or in any way experiencing the actual resurrection.   If there are no personal accounts of what happened when the dead body of Jesus became alive, then it is not a part of recorded history.

As I continue in my Lent discipline of following Kathy Staudt's challenge What if it's All True, I again face my doubts.  I must insist that I see doubt as the refiners fire for faith, and I am in no way disparaging doubt.  But what if it is true, which is not about if the events are factual, but as Kathy notes, "(w)hat if the whole thing is a whole lot bigger than we thought?"

Mark Harris, an Episcopal priest in Lewes, Delaware and blogger at Preludium, describes a recent dream in his post: A dream: It will all be alright.  In his dream, he found himself in a room with anxious people, and realized he was in a gathering of people perplexed by the death of Jesus.

The feeling is that of a funeral parlor where a person had died unexpectedly or out of order. There is the anxious and questioning presence of a doubt – the doubt that there was meaning in this life and if in this life, in ours as well.  Very quickly, and without much contact with others in the room, I took on their anxious questioning.

And then someone entered the room who seemed to absorb all that anxiety, and without addressing the group as a whole,  and without even being a person of note ( I don’t have any sense of what he or she looked like, although I knew the presence of the person, as did everyone else), the person spoke and said,

“It will all be alright. Just as I said. It will be alright and what I promised will be true.”

I was positive it was Jesus, and that I was one of his friends and a follower and that I was meant to be there.

(I recommend reading the whole article and look at the block print that he created after the dream.)

Rev. Harris' description of a presence, a person, who absorbed the anxiety, spoke of reassurance and pointed them to the future seems very right to me.  As he notes, "At the same time I didn't see Jesus, or at least not to recognize him. But I knew he was there." 

That kind of knowing something is true, that kind of shift in perspective to seeing something or someone not previously seen or understood makes more sense to me than magical appearances and disappearances.  I have experienced times when a Presence has calmed my fears and released me from doubt. But those kinds of experiences are also impossible to describe or explain to someone else. 

So maybe in telling that story of people's experience of the resurrected Christ, as we all do when telling a story, the actual facts were rearranged, some dropped and a few bits added to make it better?  So, the story we have may not describe exactly the events, but does carry the essential truth of the experience?  That sounds like truth to me. 

As we sing together "Christ the Lord is risen to today!" this Sunday morning, I will be able to accept my doubt while also knowing that it is true:

Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!

Love's redeeming work is done, Alleluia!

 Bruce Calvin