He who hung the earth is hanging.
He who fixed the heavens in place has been fixed in place.
He who laid the foundations of the universe has been laid on a tree.
The master has been profaned.
God has been murdered…

But He rose up from the dead
and mounted up to the heights of heaven.
When the Lord hath clothed Himself with humanity,
and had suffered for the sake of the sufferer,
and had been bound for the sake of the imprisoned,
and had been judged for the sake of the condemned,
and had been buried for the sake of the one who had been buried,
He rose up from the dead,
and cried with a loud voice,
“Who is it that contends with me?
Let him stand in opposition to me.
I set the condemned man free;
I gave the dead man life;
I raised up one who had been entombed.
Who is my opponent?
I am the Christ
I am the one who destroyed death,
and triumphed over the enemy,
and trampled Hades underfoot,
and bound the strong one,
and carried off humanity
to the heights of heaven.”
“It is I,” says the Christ.

This Easter finds me at the happy convergence of three memorable texts (my life’s story could pretty much be told in terms of what I read). The first is this one, Melito of Sardis’ (ca. A.D. 195) remarkable Easter sermon (I’ve extracted lines from near the end of the sermon) — a text that Bob Webber often extolled for its so-called “Christus Victor” theme.

God is crucified so that humanity can rise, Melito practically sings. This death of God and resurrection of man is the means by which “the One who sits on the throne’ says, ‘I make all things new’” (Revelation 21:5). This “all things” is, well, “all things.” Praise be. Art is new. Science is new. As are gardening, cooking, playing, singing.

It was with Melito’s sermon dancing around in my brain that I serendipitously came upon this thought from sociologist Werner Stark:

The truths of religion can be much more easily and much less inadequately expressed in artistic than in linguistic terms — or better, in the language of art than in the language of science. St. Thomas Aquinas’s hymns are much more convincing, so far as live faith is concerned, than even his best arguments. … Max Weber coined a more remarkable phrase than he knew when he called himself on one occasion “religiously deaf.” But those who can hear will find, for instance, in Anton Bruckner’s Te Deum a statement of faith, which is not only supremely moving but also experientially satisfying and convincing. The rationalistic demotion of art to something ‘merely sentimental’ is not the least disservice which the discursive intellect has done to religion, and, indeed, to all humanity. The fact is and remains that the rationalist as such has no ear for the divine call (Werner Stark, Sociology of Religion, Vol IV [ Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969], p. 72).

The third text is complement to the second: R.R. Reno’s commendation in First Things (Mar. 27, 2009) of David Hart’s new book Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale, 2009) — a book that is an attempt to get the “religiously deaf” to listen to their own folly. From Reno’s remarks I extract but this thought:

“The revolutions that genuinely alter human reality at the deepest levels,” Hart writes, “are those that first convert the minds and wills, that reshape the imagination and reorient desire, that overthrow tyrannies within the soul.” Christianity caused such a revolution, and it did so, Hart claims, with its fundamental claim about Christ: In him each one of us can join our humble humanity to the glory and holiness of God.

Honor, laud, and glory to our crucified and risen Christus Victor.

And fivefold thanks.

Thanks, first, for the utter graciousness by which Jesus came.

Thanks, second, for the loving faithfulness that brought Jesus back from death to life.

Thanks, third, for the Spirit’s kiss by which I find myself astonishingly not “religiously deaf.”

Thanks, fourth, for the host of gifted saints and fellow-travelers (from all times and all places) who have given us such stunning musical and artistic expressions of the glory of Holy Week’s story.

Thanks, fifth, for the fact that ours is a faith that satisfies the itch to compose hymns and that prompts us to make our best arguments as well.