An Easter Miracle and Not So Much – Brad Jersak

Brad Jersak

Looking back – Lamenting on Resurrection Day:

“…but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel…
Luke 24:22

An Easter Miracle

Easter morning I woke up to a mountain of text messages proclaiming, “He is risen!” and “Christ is risen” and “Alleluia!” For Christians, the resurrection message reminds us that in our story, Jesus is not merely an inspiring prophet from the distant past, but the One whose conquest of death means he is alive today. His promise, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” is something we experience—something and Someone made real to us. Or some of us. Sometimes.

This morning I also received a detailed imaging report from a friend who, three years ago, had been given no more than six months to live. Tumors permeated his body and the largest of these were growing steadily, threatening to choke the life from his aorta. But as my still sleepy eyes read and reread the paperwork, I was witnessing a medically verified miracle.

“Am I missing something?” I asked.

“Nope. I’m clear.”

“Miracle man!”

“Thank you, Universe!” he said.

“And maybe Jesus,” I added.

“And definitely Jesus,” he said.

“Good news on resurrection morning!” and then I wrote, “You are risen!”

A Different Kind of Miracle

Same weekend, on Good Friday, my friend Dwight lost his mother. Well into her nineties, this faithful old saint ascended quietly into the ‘cloud of witnesses,’ where, because of the Easter miracle, she has been gathered with her husband and her granddaughter at Mount Zion, in the presence of Jesus.

We grieve, but not as those who believe this is the end. We know in our hearts—not as wishful thinking but as the direct apprehension of faith—that death, for her, is a doorway to eternal life. As my friend Syd, a widower, wrote this morning in Haiku:

Death, our lonely door
To life who, when lifted up,
Bears us o’er its sill.

And Not So Much

Same weekend, on Holy Saturday, a reader described the mixed feelings we have around the human experience of affliction:

I visited a children’s hospice, where every child was expected to die within six weeks. It was full of joy! So much so that a volunteer surgeon, an atheist, wanted to talk to folks about the reality of Jesus.

But also…

…one of my closest friends, a remarkable human, exceptional athlete and church leader, died of a brain tumor. When he was in hospital on his death bed, full of tubes, he said this. “I am content. (He looked peaceful and with joy as he had when healthy) I am content if Jesus heals me or if he does not.”

And again,

Yet my church leader’s wife has an extremely painful illness which has had her bedridden for months. There is no effective pain control. It’s terrible. She doesn’t seem to be saved from that in any way….now…. But in the previous thirty-five years, it was still awful but she lived generously despite the deteriorating disease.

In all these cases, I’m very resistant to the platitudes of ‘theodicy’—rationalizations for human affliction. I’ve rarely met a theodicy that, in trying to solve the problem of evil, didn’t ultimately call good evil and evil good.

There are stages of grief and depths of suffering where even the promise of a glorious afterlife feels shallow and, frankly, offensive in the moment. I have often wanted to shriek at these fumbling efforts, “Stop trying to fix this! You’re making it worse!”

Co-Suffering Lament

Same weekend, another lament.
A long message from a precious soul.
I’ve distilled the message to these five lines.

“After seven years, the cancer is going out of control.
It’s not my job to fight to stay alive.
Loving God makes no sense.
I don’t want to die like this.
I don’t know what to do.”

I wonder why she sent this to me.
She thought I might be a ‘safe place.’ I don’t know.

But it feels like a Psalm. Like Psalm 6 or 13.
Psalms don’t ask for an explanation even when they pose questions.
Maybe the only right response is silence, non-judgmental listening, tears.
Or maybe better, we can practice co-suffering love by singing along.
Alleluia in minor chords.

It fits the story better when I sing my lament in Gethsemane or at Golgotha or by tombs sealed by death-dealers. But for this woman, I will sing it today, amid the Easter miracles and between the lines of my Resurrection alleluias.

Yes, dear one, we know it’s after Easter… “but we had hoped that he was the One who was going to redeem” us. For now, I can’t tell you how it ends happily ever after. I am here for the Easter Miracle… and the not so much.”

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