We have just celebrated the good news of Easter – how Jesus Christ is alive, through the miracle of resurrection and the wonder of heavenly grace and power. That news is overwhelming. Think about how the first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection fled from the tomb, either shocked into silence (see Mark 16:8) or dismissed as people telling an “idle tale” (see Luke 24:11). Have we gotten any better over the centuries at sharing in words the miraculous, transformative power of Easter?
Perhaps one analogy can come to us from the world of computing. According to a book by George Dyson called Turing’s Cathedral, the modern digital age dawned around 1951 in Princeton, NJ. It was there that a special machine was built – the Mathematical and Numerical Integrator and Computer – affectionately known by its acronym “Maniac.” For the first time, numbers were no longer simple tallies used to count things. They could now be numbers or instructions; data was suddenly both a noun and a verb. The people who built “Maniac” knew that they were on the verge of an entirely new way of treating human knowledge. One engineer quoted in Dyson’s book says this: “A tidal wave of computational power was about to break and inundate everything in science and much elsewhere, and things would never be the same.”
The strength of this analogy is how it captures the sheer power and sweep of the Easter story. Like a tidal wave washing over the entire world, belief in the resurrection of Christ swept over Jerusalem, around the Mediterranean Sea, and throughout the nations of the world. Because of this news, things have never been the same. But there are two flaws with the computer analogy. First, the name is no good. Nothing about Christ’s resurrection power should be linked with the word “maniac.” Second, there is an aspect of chaotic, untamed force captured in the engineer’s description of computer power. But God’s plan is never chaotic – never untamed, wild or destructive. It is in every aspect quite intentional, focused, justice-oriented and loving. So a different analogy is needed.
Andrew Solomon, in his book Far From the Tree, commented on the miracle of child-birth with this clever reminder: “There is no such thing as reproduction, only acts of production.” Despite our tendency to describe giving birth as an act of reproduction (as if children were photocopies of one or both parents), children emerge by acts of fresh, unique “production.” We never quite know who or what they’ll be. Part of the joy of raising children is trying to trace the lineage of the different physical and emotional traits present in our sons and daughters. Parents daily recognize how their children are both related to them and yet so different from them.
Easter was ultimately an act of production, not reproduction. Jesus was not simply resuscitated. He was not brought back to life to reproduce patterns of life he’d fleshed out prior to his crucifixion. Easter was not an attempt to give the status quo a second chance to get things right. Easter was a new thing altogether – a promise of life beyond death, of healing and hope despite brokenness, and of love that is truly eternal. We glimpse aspects of our earthly life in the stories about Jesus’ resurrection appearances, and yet it is something different from daily life. Better than this life, yet offered to us in love. Maybe as we share this story in our day and age, we can capture a bit of that unique, fresh wonder of Easter and what our loving Lord has “produced” for us.