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Inside
NCR Seeing
the resurrection as unfinished business
Christ's resurrection is one of the
most popular subjects in the history of art. After all the centuries, though,
it's a challenge to find ever new ways of representing an event at which there
were no witnesses. This Easter, we have a radically original depiction on page
one, a stylized drawing by NCR proofreader Pierre Jorgensen. Asked for an
explanation, he said:
"Imagine Jesus, still in death, yanked abruptly awake. In the
last few hours of his life as a man, his back had been flayed to shreds, his
scalp ripped open by thorns, his wrists and ankles torn by metal spikes, his
side slashed with a lance. He has died slowly of thirst and sheer physical
trauma but has had the respite of death. Now, his wounds open again, and the
horror of the preceding days fills his eyes and ears, if only for a brief
moment.
Then there is, maybe, a flash of light, a violent tug, momentary
agony. Maybe he fights it, wanting to lie down again. Or, more likely, he rises
above it -- and there follows absolute relief and peace as he joins
God."
Of course it didn't happen exactly like that -- whatever happened
is wrapped in mystery. But there is here a leap of imagination to grasp some
spiritual reality. It catches the continuity between crucifixion and
resurrection. It hints not so much at the more commonly confident Christ with a
flag in his hand that echoes a triumphalist church; it reflects rather the
unfinished business of ongoing Easter.
Pam Schaeffer's page one story offers another angle on Easter as a
movable feast. The early Irish Christians carried on a hectic, centuries-long
battle with Rome over the date of Easter. The resurrection has consistently
been a sign of contradiction and bone of contention.
A poem by Elizabeth Cheney captures this unfinished business
aspect. Finding Jesus on the cross, unable to get down, the poet -- who
presumably speaks for us all -- volunteers to take the nails out:
But he said: "Let them be, For I cannot be taken
down Until every man, every woman and every child Comes together to take
me down."
What can I do in the meantime, the poet wants to know. The answer
is obvious:
Go about the world -- Tell every one that you
meet, "There is a man on the cross."
And he is in the throes of rising from the dead.
-- Michael Farrell
National Catholic Reporter, March 28,
1997
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