A writer recently paraphrased Susan Sontag and said that “biography is the revenge of research upon the intellect.” What she meant is that biography takes a lived life—a human existence full of events both mundane and extraordinary—and turns it into “the life,” something described as a “coffin full of rattling facts and spectral suppositions, less an invitation to read than a handy, bulky excuse not to.”
Think of how many biographies line the shelves at libraries and bookstores; these weighty tomes that celebrate lives past, but do so in dense packages that few read any more. They are like “coffins full of rattling facts,” telling one version of a person’s history, but leaving so much unsaid and largely forgotten.
This imagery is something that has strong overtones to our Holy Week and Easter season. Jesus himself challenged the scribes and Pharisees of his day by calling them “white-washed sepulchres” full of the bones of the dead (Matthew 23:27). And from Good Friday through Easter Sunday, our focus is on a hilltop for crucifixions, as well as a cemetery of literal tombs, coffins, and rattling bones. We are never fully at ease exploring cemeteries, and this is evident when we overly intellectualize the last days of Jesus’ earthly life. We turn the richness of his life and ministry into something abstract and theological. We talk about ancient prophecies that had to be fulfilled and a Savior whose death was ordained as a payment for our sins, but we risk losing the human being that Jesus was.
We should never turn Jesus into a biographical subject—allowing research and theory to diminish the wonder of his lived life. Instead, our faith would have us fill in the blanks in Jesus’ gospel biographies. Faith would have us imagine times when Jesus laughed and smiled, when he listened intently or kept walking down a road even when physically exhausted. Faith would never let Jesus be a figure of “rattling facts or spectral suppositions.” He was a complex, amazing person whose life, healing graces, and sacrificial death far exceeds our ability to reduce him to a simple biography.
In the same way, the Jesus of Good Friday merges with the Christ of Easter to forever chase away the shadows of a bone-filled tomb and turn the page to a richer, deeper story of resurrection hope. It too surpasses the ability of our intellects. It too merits our full attention and humble acceptance. This Easter season, may Jesus Christ—the one who lived and loved, died and rose again—be more than a biographical figure confined to a dusty volume, but the risen Savior who calls you anew into the fullness and richness of Christian life.
—Randy Bush