Resurrection

Many of you will celebrate this Easter with me as a breath of fresh air. We observed Jesus on the cruel cross at Calvary and we could not wait til this day. Many who do not know, or do not know yet, may be asking the question, “why do you celebrate the cruel cross?” The answer is resurrection.

Although Jesus Christ walked the cold dark steps to the place of the skull, the story did not end with a man suffering on a cross, and being laid in a tomb. That is the story that many of us know. Death, which brings despair, confusion, and leaves us longing for something…anything.

So we find many things to occupy our time until death. There is school, work, marriage, kids, birthdays, 401 Ks, retirement, shuffleboard, and grandkids. There is much pleasantness infused with much heartache, but you find that the heartaches can often be overcome, and you continue on. It’s all heading somewhere though; the time when we breathe our last breath…death. This is what “life” is to many of us.

Sometimes we struggle to live it well. Sometimes we content ourselves with fleeting desires. It all means something and it all means nothing at the exact same time.

However, the story of the cross does not end with the man being laid in the tomb. Really, in a weird way that is where the story begins. Nobody was expecting this though. Even Jesus’ closest friends missed all the tell-tell signs, but that means very little really, we all would have missed it because to us death is the end…there is nothing in this life after that.

On the third day a victory was completed by death being defeated. In the middle of human history, what seemed to be the end of the story became a brand new beginning.

Jesus Himself remained on this earth for 40 more days, where He then fled on a cloud to assume His role next to His Father. His story continued through His friends who He had to prove His renewed life to. Once they saw Him and understood, there was nothing that could keep them from telling everyone about Jesus and His victory over death.

Jesus’ story continues today through His people who continue to believe that death is no longer the end through Jesus.

Where that seems to merely give great hope at what would have been the end, the people who really grab a hold of resurrection find that it transforms life and how they live it. No longer are they among those who were born-to-die. Instead of thinking that death is something that happens at the end, they see it as something that had happened before. They gravitate to this reality that they were born dead.

Now, through Jesus, the people who carry on His story find that it is carried on through everything. Everything is in the place of being reborn, or redeemed, or resurrected. There is no place of death where life cannot infiltrate because Jesus rose on the third day.

This is why a cross of death can be celebrated as something that brings life. Jesus is alive.