Time rushes by, more so I feel with every year that passes, and it can be easy to move past moments and events quickly, without pausing to ponder and savour them and all they have to teach us.
Special events on the calendar can be like that – so much build up and anticipation before the time, and then, just as quickly, it’s all over and we rush on to the next “big thing” …
We can be that way about the events of the Easter weekend – we make a big deal of those few days (and rightly so!), but then, come Tuesday, and life goes on. In this article, I want us to look back at this “big weekend” in the Christian calendar, but at a distance, on any random Friday afternoon.
So, here it is … My reflection on the Resurrection.
Have you ever been in a situation where other people are celebrating, and you know that you should be too, but you just don’t feel like it?
Easter can be like that. If ever there was a day for wild applause in the church, Easter Sunday is the day!
But if you read the gospel accounts of the whole week leading up to the resurrection, you’ll discover an unusual thing – the number one feeling the disciples and those close to Jesus felt that week wasn’t joy – it was confusion and fear! Even the discovery of an empty tomb on Sunday morning left them disappointed, hesitant and scared.
Many of us here today have been in that place, I think – a place or a season or a situation where nothing makes sense, God doesn’t seem to be hearing our prayers, and the promises of Scripture feel like they fall flat in the face of our trials.
But part of the great astonishment for those first followers was the realisation that God works through suffering and death, and the trial is never the end!
The tragedy is not that Believers face challenges and difficulties and illness and even death – the tragedy is when they choose to stay in that “graveyard” of despair and disappointment.
Easter and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, proclaims that all the doors that shut us in – fear, guilt, anxiety, insecurity, pain, sorrow – they are all overcome and we are free from them and the doors are now opened. Christ opens those doors and gives you your freedom. That’s the grace and the power of God – that we are made into new creations at the moment of our salvation, and in the forgiveness He offers for the sake of His death, we will be raised from the dead to new life in Christ!
In Luke 25 the Angel asks, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? We know the angel was saying that Jesus was no longer dead and the He had risen. But, today, I invite us to look at that question in a different light, about our own lives, in the light of the resurrection.
Because of Christ’s death and resurrection those “graveyard” moments and seasons in our lives are no longer places of death, a one way ticket. Now, our tombs – our failures, our heartaches, our difficulties – can be seen as the doors that we can and must walk through, not to death, but to abundant and eternal life.
This means that we don’t have to run from God anymore. We don’t have to pretend, to God, or to others, or to ourselves. It means that Jesus comes back, not in condemnation, but in grace and peace. The Son of God came back to life to resurrect us so that we who were dead in our trespasses and sins don’t have to live in guilt any more. All of God’s judgment fell on Christ. As the door of rock was rolled away from His tomb, in His resurrection we are justified, declared not guilty before our Heavenly Father.
The One who brings everything back to life again is the One who loves you and gave Himself for you.
That’s the good news from the graveyard this morning: Jesus Christ is risen from the dead so that you and I might live in the assurance that the door of life is opened to us. That is the conquest of the cross, the victory of Easter.
As we take the time to consider Easter two weeks after the day, I encourage us all to remember and thank the Father that Christ not only lives, but He is life-giving, life transforming, life-resurrecting.
Amen
