Easter Sunday

It is said that on the evening of June 18, 1815 a man stood in the tower of England’s Winchester Cathedral gazing anxiously out to sea. At last he found what he was looking for – a ship sending a signal by use of lights. He strained to see the message. All of England held its breath with him, wanting to know the outcome of the war between their military leader, the Duke of Wellington, and the French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte, who had once ruled all of Europe bar England remained a threat, and now the decisive Battle of Waterloo had been fought. As he stood in the tower of Winchester Cathedral our man waited to relay the news that would determine England’s future. The signal came just as a heavy fog was rolling in. It only just got through, but how he wished it hadn’t, for the signal read: “Wellington defeated.”

The man signalled to other stations and the news spread across the countryside, bringing great gloom and sadness. A few hours later, the fog lifted, and the message was sent again, this time in full: “Wellington defeated the enemy.” The messenger realized his mistake, he had received only half the message, but thought it was the full message and made a huge error. He swiftly signalled the full message now to the other stations and England’s sadness was turned into jubilation. This story helps us understand how the apostles must have felt in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Like the disciples, we often end up trapped between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It was only three days that the apostles had to endure of doom and gloom, but to us I think it can often seem much longer. We don’t realize that we have got only half of the message, we do not have the broadness of vision to see beyond the fog that is clouding out the other half of the message.

There is a proverb in Shona that says nyamunatsi ndiye nyakutsvirwa nemba – literally meaning that it is the person who is generous who gets his house burnt down. This proverb speaks to the fact that if you are a forgiving, generous and accommodating person, people will normally walk all over you like a door mat. This proverb and those who believe it are like the inhabitants of England who were downcast and gloomy having only received half the message and taken it for the full message.

In Franco Zefferelli’s mini-series Jesus of Nazareth, gives us an intriguing portrayal of the character of Judas as a member of an internal Jewish group known as the Zealots. We have Judas coming to Jesus with some of his Zealot confreres and trying to persuade him to join forces with them and lead them into battle against the Romans. They can scarcely believe their ears when Jesus starts extolling the virtues of loving one’s enemies and forgiving those who persecute you. They walk away disgusted, and if they knew this Shona proverb, they probably would have quoted it. As they watched Jesus die on the cross, they probably would have been saying to each other – we told him so. And for all we know they went to their own graves thinking that they were right. I think that we all know people like this, people who walk through life dousing the flames of hope in others through their cynicism. There are no end of real-world events that they can point to in order to prove their pessimistic view of human nature. The tragedy is that they are walking around spreading doom and gloom and robbing people of their joy and hope because they have only received half of the message.

Another illustration of this same message comes from another imaginative reconstruction of Jesus’ life, this time from season 4 of The Chosen. Spoiler alert, if you haven’t watched it yet, but in episode 3, Ramah, one of Jesus’ female disciples, who is betrothed in marriage to Thomas, one of the twelve, is tragically killed by an overzealous Roman soldier who is keen to stop a confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees. In the next episode, Jesus and his band of intrepid disciples must go to Teldor, Ramah’s home village, to bury her with her kith and kin. But as they approach the village, they are met by a hostile group of Teldorians, led by Ramah’s father, Kafni, who is furious with Thomas and even more so with Jesus, whom he regards as a false prophet. Kafni curses Jesus and lambasts him for being so reckless with the life of his daughter who is now dead because of his pretentious efforts at being a Rabbi. He treats Jesus as an irresponsible adolescent whose play-acting has gone and got someone killed. It is a poignant scene, because there is nothing that Jesus can say in his defence. He realizes that no amount of explaining or justifying himself will make a difference or will persuade Ramah’s father that his daughter did not die in vain. Jesus knows that Kafni is only living with half the message and so he gently urges his disciples to leave Ramah’s body with her relatives and quietly set out on their way. Jesus realizes that he must simply put up with looking like a fool.

There is also an interesting comparison to be made between Thomas and Kafni. Immediately after Ramah has been stabbed by the Roman soldier, Thomas turns to Jesus and looks pleadingly at him asking him to heal Ramah and save her life. But Jesus refuses Thomas’ request for reasons that Thomas can hardly understand, since he has seen Jesus heal hundreds of people and even raise someone from the dead. Yet even as Thomas does not understand why he must live with this grief that Jesus could have easily taken away, he does not abandon Jesus, he does not think that Jesus is a fraud as Kafni does. I think that this is a powerful lesson of how Jesus’ presence in our lives does not mean that all our pain will be taken away. Thomas decides to continue following Jesus and adhering to his values of love of enemies, unlimited forgiveness and taking the high road to being the bigger person in order to witness to the gracious bounty of God the Father. Even though this incident happens before the resurrection, it speaks to the faith that the resurrection is trying to elicit from the disciples. For the resurrection does not take away all our pain and suffering. It is not some quick fix. Rather the resurrection is about believing that in spite of the pain and suffering we endure, God is still a loving and bountifully gracious God who calls us to witness to the same love. The resurrection is about believing that when we fall, God will catch us as we fall and in some mysterious way redeem the pain and suffering that come with that fall. Thomas decides to remain a disciple of Jesus, for he knows that the truth that Jesus has brought into his life is worth more anything else he has encountered.

This is the crucial difference between Kafni and Thomas. For Kafni probably went to his grave thinking that Jesus was a fraud. For after his resurrection, Jesus only appears to those who have faith in him. He doesn’t go to the Zealots and appear to them, and say to them: “Ha! I proved you wrong!” He doesn’t appear to Kafni and say to him “who is the fraud now?” Because the resurrection is a ministry of Jesus and not a spectacle. Some people like to think of the resurrection as the greatest miracle that Jesus performed in order to get people to believe in him. If this was so – Jesus would have appeared to all those who were sitting on the fence, or to those who were positively against him to change their minds about him. Jesus cannot appear to those who are so full of themselves that they are convinced that the message they are living by is the full message. In order to operate, the resurrection needs some level of doubt that the current status-quo is not all is there is to life. This is why Jesus only appears to those who actually realize that maybe they don’t have the full message. It was only Jesus’ disciples who were sufficiently confused enough to allow for the fact that maybe Good Friday was only half the message. who were closest to him, to give them hope and tell them that they were not wrong to trust in him. The resurrection is all about a ministry of hope to those in the depths of despair. The resurrection shows us that we are not wasting our time and effort by being loving and forgiving, because even if our house is burnt down, God will build us a new house, even better than the one we had before. Questions for reflection

1. Have there been instances in my life where I have quoted this proverb, or the sentiments expressed therein to someone who I have thought was too naïve? Have I doused the fire of the resurrection in someone else’s life through my cynicism?
2. Are there any examples I can think of in my life that prove this proverb wrong? Have I seen generosity and forgiveness returned in kind?
3. To whom am I called to be a minister of hope in the midst of their despair? How might I show people that they have only received half of the message?