Scotty McLennan

There are conservative Christians who claim that Jesus continues to appear to them today in various forms.  Many evangelicals speak of their personal experience of being born again into a transformative relationship with the living Christ, or of Jesus walking and talking with them, or of being lifted up and carried by Christ when they are in trouble.  Sometimes this is meant metaphorically, but at other times certain conservative Christians explain that they hear actual words being said or see Jesus materialize before them.  Liberal Christians tend to think of the post-Easter Jesus quite differently -- as an historical figure whose teachings still have power, as a continuing example of what it means to be a truly godly person, as someone whose society-reforming "spirit" has abiding force today.  Liberals also talk about personal experiences of resurrection in metaphorical terms.  

There are many liberals in Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, who describe life-changing encounters with their Higher Power in explicitly Christian terms.  For example, author Anne LaMott writes graphically in her national bestseller "Traveling Mercies" of her "resurrection story" of being saved from addiction by sober alcoholics who loved her and brought her home from a "terrifying place of...decay." As is said in the Litany of the Cross in the Stanford Memorial Church on Good Friday, Jesus meets us in "the darkest places of our hearts, where fear, anxiety, self-hatred, and despair threaten to extinguish the light of our love."  Jesus embraces and then redeems "the darkness of the world...walk[ing] in solidarity with the despised and rejected, the untouchable, the unmentionable and the unlovable."

That includes the homeless, for example.  Liberal minister Jim Burklo was once the director of the Urban Ministry for the homeless in Palo Alto.  He writes in his book Open Christianity about the manager of a retail store who immediately hired a homeless recovering drug addict with hepatitis the very same day that the Urban Ministry staff sent him to apply for the job.  Rev. Burklo greatly admired the store manager for taking this kind of chance.  A decade later the employee was still there.  Rev. Burklo wrote, "Today, when I go into the store, I am greeted by the smiling face of this formerly homeless fellow, who is now clean, sober, and healthy.  He is my friend's most valuable employee.  Customers come into the store specifically because of his friendly and helpful manner."  A life is resurrected because of the Christ-like love of a retail store manager manifested with a particular homeless man.

Liberal minister Marjorie Rebmann has written about a woman named Shirley who took emotionally disturbed children temporarily into her own home through a program called "Mentor."  Ten year-old Timmy had been abandoned by his mother when he was three, and lived with his abusive, alcoholic father.  Authorities suspected that both his mother and father had badly mistreated him, both physically and emotionally.  When he came to Shirley and her husband, he was almost completely non-verbal.  They raised rabbits and put Timmy in charge of one of the pens.  He made a special pet of one of the female rabbits and even began to talk to her a bit.  One morning when he came to the pen he found that this particular rabbit had given birth, but she was huddled in a corner with her three tiny babies lifeless on the cage floor.  "Timmy gagged in rage, and beat his fists against the sides of the cage, screaming at her -- 'Why did you leave them alone?  You didn't like them.  You left them to die!'

Shirley restrained Timmy and then reached into the cage, scooping up the three limp bodies.  She ran into the house with Timmy in tow and wrapped the tiny bunnies in an electric blanket.  An hour later Timmy stood flabbergasted at the newborn rabbits squirming and wriggling in the blanket's warmth.  When Shirley was questioned about what seemed to be a miracle, she simply replied, "Oh, rabbits are like that."  Timmy began talking more -- not just to his rabbits, but to people too, in whom he'd long ago lost trust.   Tiny rabbits come back to life.  A resurrection.  And a 10-year old boy comes back to life too.  Resurrection begets resurrection.

On Easter each year we celebrate resurrection communally, singing together, "Jesus Christ is risen today... Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia!"  But the experience of resurrection is usually very personal and intimate indeed.