We've had a pretty eventful and powerful Lent this year, one in which we have been given an insightful and haunting look at Holy Week in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," and which has also brought us back as a worshiping and serving community to our parishes. Some of us have had the blessing of washing one another's feet; we have wept at the foot of the cross, and have embraced and sung joyously the Easter Alleluias.

Do we now return to business as usual? Or can we try to remain awake to the very real truth that the Resurrection ushered in a new time in human history, a time we are living in right now? How do we actively participate in this time?

Some theologians refer to the interval of time between the Resurrection and the Last Days as the "time of the Church." Jesus' willing death on the cross as a final act of the most selfless love, and his resurrection as God's life-giving embrace and sending forth of the Spirit, means, we are all in this now. We have been brought into the very life of God.

We could understand the relationship of the Old Testament community with God as one of covenant --- "I will be your God and you will be my people." In Jesus Christ it isn't so much that the covenant is rewritten, it is completely thrown out! Humanity offers Christ nothing, gives him nothing, and commits the ultimate act of faithlessness --- symbolized most vividly in Peter's denial.

This is no longer a relationship which has any equanimity; the people of God --- all of us --- turn away from the gift of God, his Son. We do the unspeakable, and that unspeakable blasts both heaven and earth open. The explosion creates an opening and what was once a relationship of transactions now becomes a full life of unconditional love.

As Jesus' life unfolds among us, our "No" to God's love is so intense that God's "Yes" to us has to overcome it. The awesome intensity of that Yes is the Resurrection. As theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar expressed it, "At the end of absolute futility comes forgiveness."

Can we see what this means? It is a complete turning upside down of the world's expectations and priorities.

Wouldn't a more expected response be, "At the end of absolute futility comes giving up"? Perhaps --- but it doesn't describe the God that Jesus came to tell us about. The refusal to the love God offers brings about love more insistently offered. The act of Christ giving himself obliterates forever any "give-and-take" we could have imagined before. There is nothing --- ever --- that we could give to sufficiently thank Jesus for his love. We are left with a gift so boundless that it sweeps us right up into eternity.

What does this mean in the very practical Time of the Church we are living right now? As Jesuit Father Thomas Rausch articulates it in his book, "Who is Jesus?", "In refusing to meet evil with evil, [Jesus] reveals the non-dominative, life-giving power of God, the God whose love is stronger than death, the God whose power is revealed in weakness."

After the Resurrection we are called to live, to embody, to be walking paradoxes. The parables show us this all the time: the Father who welcomes his wayward son and gives a party, the despised Samaritan who exemplifies compassion, the widow who gives her last coin, the master who pays all the workers equal wages, even those who barely began to work.

By the world's standards, God makes no sense, the Cross makes no sense. We are called to throw out the world's standards and start anew; Jesus does make everything new. From past futility we are called to forgiveness; in the face of rejection we are called to intensify love; in response to exclusion and possessiveness we are to go out and invite everyone to the banquet.

God responds to our unspeakable refusal to love by surrendering everything, so God can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us and show us that there is another way. As we head into the Easter season, it is in the Spirit of re-writing, re-thinking, re-doing, re-inventing and re-claiming that we are called to live.

Cecilia González-Andrieu writes from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley.