By Nancy Bean
Easter IS the Common Peace Community IS the Resurrection
The Common Peace Community is our expression for what Jesus refers to as The Realm or Kingdom of God. The Common Peace Community is the resurrection and the life that Jesus talks about. Debating the resurrection as physical or literal or spiritual or metaphorical distracts from the meaning of Easter morning. The resurrection is communal. The resurrection is social.
In Luke, Jesus is revealed in the breaking of the bread at meal with his disciples. In John, Thomas intimately fingers the wounds, the frailty, of Jesus in order to experience the reality of the living Christ.
In his parables and in his ministry, Jesus invites his disciples and the crowds to participate in God’s life of community: the Common Peace Community where the dishonorable is honored, where the least is greatest, where the outcast is the cherished child, where the blind see, where the deaf hear, where the sick are made whole, where the prisoner is free, where the hungry is full, where the stranger is welcomed.
The Common Peace Community is the Resurrection. It is Easter.
Below is a song I wrote for Easter, 1988 which reflects this Resurrection Easter Life of Community. (The candle-spirit-shine line has become a joking password in our home, but still, I share with you.)
WHY SEEK THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD
Nancy Bean, Easter, 1988
Why seek the living among the dead?
If you look to heaven you will surely be misled,
If you search in paradise
To find the one who said,
“I am here among you
In the breaking of the bread.”Unveil the face of faceless friend,
The babies and the beggars when
The bread, the water, and the wine
Are mixed with life before your eyes
And taken in by hungry mouths
With candle-spirit shine.Cup callused hand, raise heavy head,
Receive the ancient wine and bread.
The Lord of love beside you stands,
In flesh and blood before your eyes,
Inviting weary ones to taste
Life from his joy-torn hands.Why seek the living among the dead?
If you look to heaven you will surely be misled,
If you search in paradise
To find the one who said,
“I am here among you
In the breaking of the bread.”
