How often we divide our life narratives into “before and after”. We are all products of a particular generation and social milieu. We speak of “before the war” and “after 9-11” and “the day President Kennedy was assassinated” or “the day Princess Diana died”.

But more personally and particularly, we all have our unique personal narratives which are marked by our very personal recitations of before and after. Before I was married. After our daughter was born. Before my husband died. After I graduated. Before my surgery.

The Bible itself is through and through a book of before and after: “before the Fall”, “after the Great Flood”, “before the Exodus”, “after the Babylonian Captivity”. And of course the most important before and after of all: “before and after the Advent of Christ”.

The events of this Holy Week we are currently observing display striking contrasts of before and after.

Before Jesus’ arrest there are “Hosannas”; after, the crowds cry out, “Crucify him, crucify him!”

Before his crucifixion, many “had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21); after, there is fear, confusion and despair.

Before the brutal climax of that week, there are stirring teachings and dramatic confrontations in the Temple; after, the solemn quiet and stillness of a borrowed tomb.

Jesus himself lived this out in a very human swirl of conflicting emotions: on the one hand, “My time is near”, he says, and “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him” (Matthew 26:18, 24); on the other hand, he cries out in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me…" (Matthew 26:39).

The passion story contains and mirrors all the pathos of our own myriad pairs of before and after, up to and including those unique sets of dates – (19XX—20XX) – that contain the total possibilities of our human existence. But the Resurrection is utterly distinct and unique. It is not part of any “before and after”, nor is it the consequence of any humanly driven chain of cause and effect.

The Resurrection is God’s absolutely new and final verdict upon human history and upon our own personal histories, spoken and implemented from beyond before and after. It is God’s “yes” to Christ’s faithfulness and God’s “no” to humanity’s violence and faithlessness.

To embrace the Resurrection and to commit our lives to the Risen Christ is to live beyond success and failure and beyond life and death as ordinary history knows them, with absolute courage and freedom. This is the message and the invitation of Easter.

Dr. David L. Wheeler