Is the resurrection, the event toward which our season of Lent points, as some of my atheist friends have told me, parochial?  Is it really so small and insignificant that it affects only a very small corner of an infinitely large universe?  Is one itinerant Jewish preacher's return from death really that important?

     The resurrection is only important if it actually happened.  And the resurrection could only have happened if this vast universe is the creation, in some way, of a personal being.  Only personal beings rise from the dead; impersonal things were never alive to begin with.  If we look at the universe as the product of impersonal forces, well, we will indeed consider the resurrection to be irrelevant.  Why would life be expected to continue after it is over?  Deciding that the universe is the result of personal intelligence and creativity, however, changes the equation, profoundly.  A necessarily eternal creator inserts a potential into the fabric of the cosmos that would not be there otherwise, the potential to experience, somehow, some way, eternity.

     In this light, the resurrection becomes anything but parochial.  Indeed, it comprises the sum of existence.  The resurrection means that life is more than itself, that life as we know and love it is not all there is to experience.  There is more to life than meets the eye.  Or the ear.  Or the heart.  The resurrection means that this present is only the beginning of a far greater present still, a present that will never end.
     What did the apostles say on Easter morning?  "He is risen!"  In Jesus' rising, God communicated the heart of what it means to be alive:  to know that, now and always, life is the work and vision of God.  We're only along for the ride.
     But oh, what a ride!  We live our lives richly, for we live them as if they will never end.  And they won't.  As Jesus told Martha in John 11, "He who believes in me will live even if he dies.  And he who believes in me will never die."
     There is life again.