As a nation, we are either coming through or are still in the midst of a season of discontent. No one it seems believes in, trusts, respects, or has any faith in our elected leaders or in our institutions. This distrust has a long history, and the current vehement reaction on the political front is not just the result of contemporary developments or the policies of a particular political party, but is rather the fruit of years of pent-up frustration with “the system” that seems broken, and our collective experience of repeated disappointments, dashed hopes, and tangible losses. The present turmoil in the churches over a range of hot-button issues and scandals only adds to our unease. This indeed is the season of our discontent.

What possible connection does this brief and gloomy analysis have to do with Easter? Why bring it up at all in the context of our celebration? Such a connection might become apparent, however, if we compare our experience to ancient Israel’s. It is important to focus on Israel’s history and experience in connection with the resurrection because Jesus’ life, teachings, miracles, passion, death, and resurrection all relate directly to Israel and her traditions, Scripture, historical memory, fears, and hopes.

We just listened to the prophet Isaiah proclaiming that God is about to create a new heaven and a new earth. “The former things shall not be remembered or come to mind,” the Lord declares through the mouth of his prophet; and then goes on at length about Jerusalem, alluding to the city’s tumultuous and sometimes tragic history. Jerusalem’s long night of pain and distress, the Lord asserts, is finally coming to an end: “no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.” The Lord announces the coming of a new day for Jerusalem, a city that represents all the people of Israel, just as Washington represents all Americans. Jerusalem’s new day will be a new day for the nation. Inasmuch as the temple was located there as well, Jerusalem is also the dwelling place of Israel’s God. Jerusalem was thus the focal-point of the nation and the center of God’s creation. Though the history of this special place in the midst of God’s special people was marked by continual conflict and war, corruption and intrigue, political repression by foreign powers, periodic betrayal by Israel’s highest leadership, and a religious tug-of-war between devotion and outright infidelity, Israel nevertheless has every reason now to rejoice. God was about to establish something new.

The rejoicing, however, was not going to come easy. There was still plenty of the old day to be found. Jerusalem, therefore, had major reasons, political and spiritual, for her discontent, reasons that prompted doubts about a “new day.” Actually, the word “discontent” might be an inadequate description. A real serious crisis of confidence had been brewing within Israel. Many wondered out loud whether the people were viable, whether Israel had a future. Those questions prompted doubts about God’s viability. If God could not deliver a future to Israel, then one might question whether the Holy One of Israel was really God, so closely had God bound himself, his identity and his honor, to the fate and destiny of his chosen people. If they could not survive, then their obliteration would prove God more than inept, it would reveal a God whose promise of faithfulness to Israel was a sham, and thus a failed Creator who did not have the power to sustain or redeem what he had wrought. Israel’s failure as a people would disprove God’s claim to be Creator and Lord.

So God speaks. That God speaks is crucial, for God’s saving action is wrapped up in his word, a word that will not fail. The Lord assures Jerusalem that a new day, the new day, is coming. It will be a day like no other, and so cannot be characterized as a day like all the rest only better. It will be an utterly new day, a day that cannot be compared to any other day, a day that not only will be a new day for Jerusalem and thus for all Israel, but also a new day for the creation itself. The Lord’s new day will be an earth-shattering event that will bring with it the Lord’s final victory over Satan: “’The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,’ says the Lord.”

Israel was the recipient of God’s promise of a new day, a promise that would not fail, and yet in her experience she basically went from bad days to worse days. Clearly the promise of a prosperous kingdom at peace with her neighbors near and far appeared to be a false hope. Nothing was working. Israel kept running into roadblocks. So if God were to make good on his promise to Israel, then God’s word would have to create something new. Israel’s salvation could come about only as a resurrection from the dead, for as the matter currently stood, Israel’s hopes seemed destined for the dustbin and grave of history. Israel’s survival and life depended on God, and God’s integrity and honor depended on Israel’s ongoing life. If God were really and truly God, then somehow death itself would have to be overcome, Satan would have to be vanquished, and hell would have to be crushed. Only in that event could the wolf and the lamb feed together, the lion eat straw like the ox, and the serpent be fed on a diet of dust. A new day will dawn when death finally will have been overcome.

That brings us back to our season of discontent. In the midst of our frustration, cynicism, and disbelief, faced with one impossible situation after another, how does one fathom something like a new day? How difficult to take in, how difficult to believe! “Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this [story about the empty tomb] to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

Another hope dashed! The grave, it is the absolute limit and boundary of hope, the greatest obstacle to faith, and the end of love (from the marriage rite: I promise to be faithful to you until death parts us). Our frustrations and our discontentment are but acknowledgments of death’s inexorable power, and of our helplessness in the face of it. More than that, the grave is also the greatest challenge to God’s power, authority, viability and veracity. Either God is the author and giver of life, or he isn’t because of death. Either the God who makes promises is able to keep them, or he can’t because of death. Our frustrations and discontent, therefore, are also—because of death—at their core crises of faith and a lack of confidence in the God who makes promises.

At the center of all of God’s various promises is his promise to Israel that he will always be their God and that they will always be his people—always, forever. The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is God’s final word on the subject, the enactment of his promise to Israel come true, the new day dawning. That God has now triumphed over death and has established his kingdom and brought forth his new creation; opens up the promise of life and blessing to all people, who now together with Israel, will see God’s new day dawn; sin, death and the devil defeated; God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob eternally fulfilled, and God’s reign of love in Christ accomplished and guaranteed. Now our frustration and discontentment can give way to expectation, hope, and wonder. “But Peter got up and ran into the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.”

-Amen-