Against Death Itself
By Cameron D. Kirk-GianniniThe Body of Christ is at war. We are at war. Easter is war.
In the winter, when ice descends on Harvard and the birds fall silent, we are quick to forget the promise of new life. We succumb to the slow relentless friction of our academic existence, propelled dumbly forward by fear of failure and appetite for success, heedless of both cross and empty tomb. Purpose is pressed from us by the weight of repetitious days, and a vacant resolve to keep trudging forever forward creeps in to take its place. Spurred by remembrances of authentic living, we look occasionally to God for fulfillment — we go to church, perhaps we read a chapter of the Bible — but we soon turn away again to consider papers and problem sets. Our lives begin to mirror in deadness the anemic grass and skeleton trees. We become lost in our busyness, sprinting Alice-like only to find when we collapse with exhaustion that we have gotten nowhere. In the winter, death comes easily.
I was dead once. The sickness of it sits in you like a stone.
As we Christians live in this little world where everyone is clawing for success, and as we grow in understanding of the culture of spiritual sterility that surrounds us, how can we help but see increasingly clearly the power of the Gospel that has been entrusted to us? This news we bear is the single most powerful cure for all the existential cancers that surround us. Even in the dark heart of winter at Harvard, we are filled with the promise and burgeoning reality of eternal abundant life in Jesus Christ our Lord! The surpassing brightness of this fact — that we have been created to know and love God and each other forever — is the light shining in our eyes when the world squats in six months of night.
But it is easy to forget. If we are not wary, the outer darkness will rapidly quench the inner light. A certain militant vigilance is required. We must strive always to live God’s radical lifestyle in defiance of the things around us. We must struggle with soldiers’ dedication to bring life to those who remain dead in sin. From our several small lights, we must build up a bonfire and cast the darkness away. The Resurrection inspires us to live lives of outrageous, countercultural purpose and immoderate love. Real living is infectious; we are Christ’s redeemed vectors in an epidemic of hope.
We are the soldiers of Easter. We sink our trenches against death itself. May the explosion of blossoms and leaves that surrounds us each spring be a symbol of our coming victory. May the darkness that inevitably follows the light remind us of the many battles still unfought. Above all, may our entire focus both now and forever be the One who leads us in our struggle to nourish the seeds of His kingdom in this inhospitable Cambridge soil. Let us go — much is yet to be done.
Cameron D. Kirk-Giannini ‘11, an Organismic and Evolutionary Biology concentrator living in Dunster House, is the Managing Editor of The Ichthus.
