“Resurrection …is the End of the World ”

 Cross Seekers, Empty Tomb Finders, Good News Bearers,

These days we celebrate Easter like clockwork.  While the date for Easter is fluid …tied to the moon phases in relationship to when the Passover is—we look forward to it every year.  We count the days of Lent (forty, plus Sundays); we anticipate Holy Week, lost eggs, marshmallow peeps, Reese’s eggs, Cadbury eggs, and an empty tomb—as if all these things are “normal.”  We mark Easter, as if it’s NORMAL! 

As I shared with you last month, Biblical scholar and preaching guru Thomas Long would remind us that Easter changes everything! 

“ …Easter …is instead the end of this word.  Easter destroys the perceived world at hand, and before we sing about the joy of Easter’s new reality, it is crucial to feel the shock and to see the destructive power of the Resurrection on the old reality. ” 

Everything about resurrection is disorienting—or should be!  From the fact that the dead are raised, to Jesus’ walking through walls with real wounds from his crucifixion, to expectations about our own demise and rising.  In our world, the dead are supposed to remain dead—the walking dead, is only a TV show! 

But what are we to do when little seems to really change about our lives?  When the “difference” in resurrection is mostly a story for us about the one who was raised?  When what we hope for, isn’t what is seen?  When Long declares that the world was CHANGED BY GOD who does resurrection, what are we supposed to experience?  What should we be looking for? 

 

Death doesn’t win.  This year marks 4 years of COVID.  So many died.  But death isn’t the last word.  War in Ukraine drags on and on; there’s war in Gaza; there’s violence in Haiti; drought and starvation and gang violence and broken government hold much of Africa’s nations hostage it seems; there’s terrorism; violent rhetoric and dehumanization …yet, death doesn’t win.  Sin, cannot triumph.  The victory—is God’s! 

Honestly …I don’t know “how” this works.  I must believe God’s promises, and what God has done.  God raises Jesus.  God declares, we are raised, too.  None …are lost.  And yet, so many are lost in this life. 

But this allows us to live our life for others.  This allows us to give fully of ourselves as Jesus does.  This allows us love …with reckless abandon.  This allows us to live freely with the Kingdom of God in our heart, in our minds, in our hands.  So, this is not just Jesus’ resurrection …it’s our resurrection.  It’s our laying down the life of the world and taking up the life of the Kingdom of God. 

For Easter, God says: This world is finished; our life together isn’t!  …Goodbye old world.  Easter’s come and gone.  Now it’s time to live like it. 

It is my privilege to remind you that Jesus loves you.  So do I.  God wants the best for us and is inviting us to fulfill our calling.  Jesus dies; but God raised Jesus in the Resurrection, and that changes everything!  Get ready.  The tomb was empty.  Christ is risen!  And so are we!