The words “to be or not to be” are arguably the most famous words in the English language. They come from the lips of Shakespeare’s nihilistic protagonist, Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, whose father has been murdered by his mother’s lover. His soul, his very being is traumatized, so much so that reality, his humanity slips away from him. His quest, the heart of the drama, is that he must reclaim his humanity. It is in many respects a revisiting of Aeschylus’ Orestean tragedy. What was true in ancient Greece is true for the modern world. Both Hamlet and The Orestes explore the human capacity for compassion and justice and sacrifice, and the cost that comes with choosing the hard road of honesty and necessity. To be or not to be is the choice we humans must make every day of our lives. Augustine called it “free will” and argued that it was free will that caused humankind’s fall from grace. For Shakespeare, as well as for Aeschylus, it is a gift that brings redemption and transformation. It evokes our higher nature. It is the gift of choice that makes us fully human, that enables us to live into our God-likeness.
We are in the great fifty days of Easter in the church, the season of resurrection. For me resurrection is much more than the supernatural reveries in the gospels. It is at the heart of nature; certainly not a once upon a time thing. It is a gift, a way of life, a choice. Resurrection is the innate impulse to hope; the innate impulse to love. It is characterized by courage, the courage to be, as Tillich puts it. And it is also the impulse to “act as if,” to act for the vision of the good. It is the impulse within the community of faith that compels us to stand at the grave and praise God for the beauty that enfolds our lives despite the rigor of the journey, despite the suffering we must bear.
It is resurrection life that empowers us to be… that is, to thrive joyfully amid uncertainty and ambiguity, to thrive joyfully amid the pangs of transformation, what we dub as suffering. Suffering and death are not the end, they never were. The created order knows no ends, only transformation and rebirth, only the rejuvenation of a quickening spirit. It is a process of the improvisation of the beautiful and the good. To be human is to live into such an audacious reality…. and that is a conscious choice… a choice to acknowledge and receive the gift…. and a choice to live it for the world’s sake.
The role of the community of faith, the church, is to enable and inspire each other to live into such a choice reasonably, and with integrity, to engender courage, to bear witness to the sacred hope that this vision and profound mystery of the good is indeed true. There is no greater choice to be made: to be or not to be…. that is the question.
