Easter 2011

Christos anesti!

Yes, I know it's a few hours early but the anticipation is there, the impatience to give up the sorrow and pain of the past two days and get to the joy that I know is waiting.

I remember the first time I heard anyone use the Easter greeting "Christos anesti!" It sounded exotic but she wasn't satisfied until everybody in the congregation responded at almost the top of their collective lungs, "Alithos anesti!" She did it again the next year and with some prompting of memory as to the proper phrase, it didn't take nearly as long for the assembly to fall into the routine. The third year, it was almost automatic.

Anne was a dear soul, beloved by almost everybody. She was funny, deep, intelligent, tough, experienced and as open to listening as she was to speaking. She was easy to love -- and at times, very hard to love. But then, isn't anyone worth loving in the first place sometimes very hard to love or even like? I have a feeling even Jesus' disciples felt that way. Sometimes Jesus made things so hard ---

I can still feel some of the pain of his disciples and followers on that Good Friday. All their hopes, all their dreams, several years out of their lives spent following, listening, helping (and sometimes hindering a bit) this Jesus who was so suddenly snatched from among them. What to do now? They couldn't (or wouldn't) even be there to see his death because they were afraid his death might mean theirs as well. What they must have felt when they learned the tomb was empty -- a message brought by a mere woman who, with several others, not only dared to go to the tomb to anoint the body but who stood at the foot of the cross itself in all its blood, gore, agony and death.

What happened that Easter morning? Was it a resuscitation? A true resurrection? A hallucination? A case of wishful thinking? Something unfathomable? Something to just accept as fact and let ambiguity take care of the rest? It all depends on who you ask but specifics aside, Christians agree something happened. A tomb was empty, a beloved master was seen and heard. A ghost? Could a ghost break a loaf of bread? Cook a fish? Act very un-ghost like by walking around in places not associated with the death?

"Christos anesti!" gives me some sense of the mystery and strangeness of that first Easter morning. It sounds strange and the tongue stumbles a little on the unfamiliar syllables just as the suddenness of the appearance of a man who was, everybody knew, dead on Friday but alive, walking and talking on Sunday morning must have been to his friends, family and followers. "Christos anesti!" It is a cry of triumph, a Greek equivalent of the "Hosanna!" shouted at Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. "Christos anesti!" It is a proclamation that death is not the end, there is hope for a better day, God is with us and will continue to be so.

Χριστός Aνέστη! Christos anesti! Christ has risen!

Αληθώς Ανέστη! Alithos anesti! He is risen indeed!

Aλληλούια ! Allelouia! Alleluia!