It’s a scandal (and that’s a very good thing)

I am writing this text on the morning of Easter Sunday, half-asleep. We attended the Easter Vigil.

We held candles, sang and prayed. (Interesting detail: A guest who was present, who apparently struggled with himself and yet was there, flew into a foaming rage, was visibly shaken when the priest sprinkled us all and thus him too with holy water. If I hadn’t believed in the real power of holy water before, I would believe it now. We took an extra bottle with us.)

Today is now Easter Sunday. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It is advisable and edifying – if only for the sake of cultural education! – to study the complete accounts of the Resurrection (for example in Matthew 28).

After the Sabbath had ended (see „To the Spirits in Prison“), women from Jesus’s following want to look at His tomb. But an earthquake breaks out, and the stone is rolled away from the tomb.

A luminous angel appears. The tomb guards freeze in fear.

And then the Resurrection is announced to the women as witnesses (very unusual for that time!):

But the angel said to the women: „Do not be afraid! For I know that you seek Jesus, who was crucified.

He is not here, for he has been raised, as he foretold. Come, see the place where he lay.

Now go quickly and tell his disciples: ‚He has been raised from the dead and is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him again; heed well what I have told you!'“

– Matthew 28:5-7

It is a scandal, and that is a good thing. Let me explain!

For the Gentiles a Foolishness

In times of universal lies, we have learned, speaking the truth is a revolutionary act. (And thus it is prosecuted as a threat to the system.)

In scandalous times, however, it is the true scandal when your life and your faith are not a scandal.

Today, in cynical times, when the authorities believe in nothing, when the powerful plan wars and manage pandemics (and sometimes earn well from masks and weapons stocks in the process), in these times it is a scandal to say: Yes, I believe that Christ has risen.

For while on the one hand the Jews demand miraculous signs, on the other hand the Greeks seek worldly wisdom, we proclaim instead Christ as the Crucified One, who is an offense to the Jews and a foolishness to the Gentiles; but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, (we proclaim) Christ as the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men (are), and the weakness of God is superior to the strength of men.

– 1 Corinthians 1:22-25

What we translate as offense is actually the Greek word σκάνδαλον – Skandalon. In the Greek sense it means „stumbling stone.“ We may understand it both ways: stumbling block and scandal.

Unless You Turn Back

Yes, it is half a scandal today to speak the simple truth that Jesus was a Jew who first turned to the Jews – and was rejected. That Jesus’s message is a „foolishness“ for the Gentiles – and yet will overcome them, just as Jesus’s love and teaching will far outlive, for example, the violence of a Genghis Khan.

It is a scandal to truly believe that the bread is his body, not „symbolizes“.

We actually know that this holds true:

Truly I say to you: Unless you turn back and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

– Matthew 18:3

More courage for scandal! In cynical times, dare the scandal of living the opposite of cynicism. Marvel like children, for whom everything is new and wonderful. And then believe like children, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Yes, it is such a soothing scandal to know with the „faith of a child“: Resurrexit sicut dixit. – He has risen, as He said.