Pisteo in Christus Resurrexit

I believe that my wife is a treasure to me.  But when I fail to act on that belief, what does it say about me as a husband?  And if I believe that Christ rose from the dead, but that belief doesn't impact my life choices, what does it say about me as a Christian?

As we leave church on Good Friday we stand like Lazarus, facing the exit from our tomb of doubt.  The possibility that faces us outside is the Easter Mysterium, the rising from the dead of Jesus of Nazareth.  In The Case for God Karen Armstrong makes a distinction that can serve us well as we confront the stone imprisoning us.  She names the stone Credo.

Credo, the Latin “I believe” gives us the word “creed”  a statement of belief that we can accept…or break into sects or religions over, or as in the Crusades, use as a reason to kill.  Credo entered the Latin Vulgate Bible in translation from the original Greek pisteo which means not claiming or holding a belief, but being impacted by it.

So as we encounter this week the real stretch that Easter is, perhaps we can spare ourselves the intellectual flagellation of doubt, and look instead at our lives lived in response to the possibility that this might be true, that death does not really matter.

Can we be pistons, the things inside our car engines that are propelled by the explosion of the gasoline in our cars that is ignited by the spark?  Can our lives be similarly energized by the spark of the Spirit that we feel in even considering the possibilities that we see laid before us this week? 

A song goes through my mind.  It’s not a church song, but one that makes me think of my wife when we were dating.  It’s Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me”.  Kathy was only 10 in 1957; I was just 11.  But ten years later, she’d become the spark of my life, and she’s sent me ever since.   Are we willing to let God who lives beyond death send us?   What a ride!