The good news is when it’s true
There was no journalist on hand, but there was news that first Easter morning. Astonishing news. Mary Magdalene was there and reported it to the apostles, “I have seen the Lord” — words that will resound the world over as they are proclaimed by Christians at worship tomorrow morning.
The Christian faith insists that Mary Magdalene’s report is, in fact, news. Indeed, everything depends upon it. St. Paul would make the point in his customarily bold fashion: “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.”
Is the resurrection news? Certainly it would be new. There may be nothing new under the sun, but a man risen from the dead would qualify as novel. The real question is whether it is true.
The past year has brought to the forefront the issue of “fake news,” news that is not true. Our public life has been preoccupied with the phenomenon and its effect. Can we deliberate upon our public life together if we do not share a common starting point about what is true? Can we even speak to each other if we cannot recognize what is true and what is false?
Fake news is of two kinds. The first kind does not intend to be true, but serves the purpose of satire, or comedy, and sometimes of malice. The latter is a serious matter, as the multiple prohibitions on fraud, slander and other forms of deceit testify.
The second kind of fake news presents itself as really true, but is — or at least is claimed to be by others — false. This latter is corrosive of common life, for such cannot be built on a foundation that is suspected to be fraudulent.
The news of that first Easter morning was too astonishing to be greeted initially as true. The apostles did not believe it. Was this fake news of an early sort? Mary Magdalene was a witness offering her own experience — this was no satire, and there was no malice. Was it a delusion? Was it a determination to see things hoped for, but not real? Yet could it be true? Jesus had already said and done extraordinary, unbelievable things beyond number. If this was true, it was the most important news of all time.
Christians profess that on the evening of that same Easter day Jesus would present himself on the road to Emmaus, and in the Upper Room in Jerusalem. He was real. The news was real. The great certainty — that all newsworthy personages and their stories end in death — had been superseded by another reality, of life returned from death, a life stronger than death, a life beyond death.
There was a fear of fake news even then. Matthew’s gospel tells us of those who went to Pontius Pilate, asking for a guard to be posted at the tomb, lest there be fake news of a resurrection: “We remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, ‘ After three days I will rise again.’ Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, ‘ He is risen from the dead’: so the last error shall be worse than the first.”
The guard was posted. Yet the stone was rolled away. And the angel wrote the greatest headline in history: “He is not here. He is risen.”
For us who chronicle the news of our day, we know that so little of it will count in history. Today’s chatter is little remembered a fortnight hence, to say nothing of the months and years. Thus it ever was, with the relentless passing away of all things prompting the preacher of Ecclesiastes to lament that all is vain, vanity of vanities.
So it remarkable t hat the Christian faith would anchor itself in that same eroding history, often said to be just one damn thing after another. The Christian conviction is that we are indeed damned if history is just one thing after another. Our hope lies in the reality of something new — not outside of history, but within it — introducing a new possibility. That novelty is the empty tomb of the resurrection.
Christianity is thus relentlessly historical. It insists that it matters a great deal whether Mary Magdalene was telling the truth. History matters. News matters. That provides a certain comfort to us in the news business, and we presume to the readers of newspapers.
There’s an old expression that nothing is more useless than yesterday’s newspaper. That’s not quite right. Truth endures. Which is why Christians keep watch by the tomb this Saturday, and await to find it empty at first light on Sunday.
To all our r eaders, a Happy Easter!
THE NEWS OF THAT FIRST EASTER MORNING WAS TOO ASTONISHING TO BE GREETED INITIALLY AS TRUE.