There’s this line in “Jesus Christ Superstar” that always stands out to me.
Jesus is brought to Pilate and the crowd’s calling for Jesus to be crucified, but a reluctant Pilate decides to just have him flogged instead. After that, with the angry mob standing by, a frustrated Pilate tries to get Jesus to defend himself. The last thing Jesus says in his response is “everything is fixed and you can’t change it.”
I wonder sometimes if that’s the way we approach the whole Easter story.
There could be two meanings to that “fixed,” aren’t there. One is that everything is all set - set in stone would be a good biblical image - and there’s nothing you can do about that. This is how it goes, everything firmly in its place. The other is that something that’s fixed is repaired, mended or restored. It was broken and now it’s not.
I’m not questioning what’s true at the heart of the story. But sometimes, I wonder if we don’t leave it as flat as the words on the page and forget that there are moments of triumph, betrayal, last suppers, crucifixions, closed tombs, empty tombs and new life in our daily living. If how we experience the story isn’t reflected in our lived experience, then how is it any more than just a story? Can we be led to new life without the experiences that bring it?
In John’s account of the resurrection, Mary meets the risen Jesus and then goes to tell the disciples. She says “I have seen the Lord.” How powerful is that. She’s seen him each day, seen how he lived, seen him die, seen the empty tomb and now she sees him alive. In our lived experience, can we see how Jesus - all that Jesus is and means - is alive in the world?
The other “fixed” is the idea that Jesus’ death and resurrection makes everything better and we have nothing to do with it. “Jesus paid it all” and “our sin is washed away in his blood” are common expressions that can lead to the idea that Jesus took care of everything and now we’re good. What more do we need to do?
Live.
That’s the thing about seeing the story reflected in our own lives. We have a lot of living to do and we’ll encounter many experiences, we may even sin (however you might define that). There’s challenges and opportunities, we may encounter disappointment, hate, anger and especially fear, but we have hope because there is new life, new beginnings rising out of each and every day. It isn’t done for us, we have living to do.
In Jesus life we are shown how the divine spirit is in us and how we can live it into the world and with the world. That’s the part that doesn’t change. From all we encounter, there is new life, new and different experiences that aren’t fixed either way, but are living, breathing opportunities. “Don’t be afraid,” Jesus says more often than anything else, the spirit of life is in you. Don’t be afraid to live.
