He was always hard to get a hold of-Jesus. I wonder if he tried to climb out of the manger. It probably shouldn't have surprised us that the grave couldn't hold him either. Even death couldn't keep that good man down.

We don't know much about his childhood, but even when Jesus was 12 and visited the temple in Jerusalem with his parents, he slipped through their fingers and they had to go search for him. And, then, when you expected him to be in the temple, he might just as surely be out in the desert praying or on a hillside teaching or hanging out with prostitutes, tax collectors, and other sinners on the wrong side of town. It was always hard to figure where he might turn up next.

All Easter does is make it that way for all eternity. Christ is on the loose now. There is no pinning him down, no getting a handle on him, no holding him back. He's like a firefly on a warm summer night. Lightning bugs, we used to call them growing up in New York. They're harmless little things that sort of blink in the black night air-a mating ritual really. But what did you do? You tried to catch them, didn't you? You couldn't just let them be, could you? Couldn't just watch for where they would light up next and enjoy them. You had to grab them, didn't you? Had to imprison them in a glass jar with a tin top with holes punched into it. Mason jars worked best, of course. (I always liked that.) But what did you gain by capturing a firefly? In no time, it would die in captivity. It couldn't do you any good as long as you tried to control it and hold onto it.

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