Easter…. I know this is late but still

Easter is one of the cornerstone holiday’s of my faith. I have followed in the way of this faith for years and in thus celebrated numerous Easters, yet this year Easter looked very different for me.

Easter usually is a time when I reflect on the death of Christ, his selfless act of receiving the punishment of my sin, but mainly his death. As if the movie “the Passion” was the main focus and meaning of Easter, focusing more on the death and murder and not as much the coming back to life part.

With focusing mainly on how and why Jesus died Easter seemed to always be “stained or overshadowed” with a sense of shame and punishment. As if the holiday was designed to remind me of my sin, my shame, my unworthiness, etc. Basically a way to remember yearly how I’m viewed as “totally deprived.”

But this year Easter looked very different in my eyes.

I had the honor of teaching twice this Easter, once for a way-to-early, yet very cool sunrise service and the other being our young adult discussion gathering we do at LCBC.

A friend, Jason, passed a book to me to think through as I was gathering my thoughts. The book is called “Following Jesus” by N.T. Wright. Wright in his final chapter looks at the resurrection of Christ and brings to light what the Jewish understanding of this word was in the day of Jesus.

In a nutshell the word “resurrection” carried the weight of renewal, of making things “good or right” as they where originally in the Garden.

For example, the Jews believed that God would bring “resurrection” to Israel, making them a great nation and through them restore the world back to a “good and right” way of living. They understood Resurrection, or this renewal, to be a three part act. First the renewal of the nation, then the renewal of the world, and finally a renewal of the righteous dead.

So here’s how Easter changed for me.

The ragtag group of Jewish followers, who grew up entrenched in a Jewish culture, a Jewish teaching, a Jewish life begin to follow this Rabbi named Jesus, they listen to his teaching, his way of explaining Scriptures, his way of saying to do life.

They learn from him.

They commit their every waking moment to being in his footsteps, of knowing his ways.

They believe in him.

They fall in love with him.

He is murdered…He is gone.

For them it’s over

it’s done

they are left to pick of the pieces of life and try and move on.

But one day a friend runs into the house, saying Jesus is alive.

ALIVE!

They question, they doubt, they confirm, then they declare…

This is how Easter changed for me.

They not only declared that Jesus was alive, they declared, get this,

that he had resurrected.

The resurrection!

The resurrection had begin!

The great renewal that all Jewish boys and girls learned of and dreamed of had begin.

It was really happening.

God was in the process of now making things right, of restoring life back to what is was originally meant to be, of once again being able to declare “it is good”.

These followers lived to bring the resurrection to the world around them, of showing how because of Jesus things can be made right again, be put back to the way he designed them to be, to find renewal.

So Easter this year was not yet other reminder of how pathetic of a person I am, or yet other preachers chance to declare how I’ve messed up in life, to point out my sin, of how far I am from God.

But a reminder that God is making things right, He started this great renewal and in small ways it’s still continuing today!

That you and I have been invited into bringing “resurrection” to the communities and lives around us, that we, through what Jesus did on the cross, can help renew this world, to help make it right, cause guess what, the kingdom of God, the ultimate renewal, the ultimate resurrection is not going to take place in some distant universe, but here.

The great “all ready not yet”

The Kingdome is already here, just not yet in it’s fullness

So, may we be a people who pull the kingdom closer, that bring resurrection to the lives of those of around us, that resistant belittling those around us by declaring yet again their sin, but helping them discover resurrection for themselves.