Easter 365
7:15:00 AM
Brian Tolle
Jesus is risen! Amen!
"Behold, I am making all things new!" - Jesus (Revelation 21:5)
The forty day discipline of Lent is over. Entering into the suffering of Jesus and the practice of self-denial is completed at the end of Holy Week, which climaxes at Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. To wrap it all up there is a brief meditation and reflection on Holy Saturday (a day of darkness and waiting) and then a one-day celebration on Easter Sunday! And to most of us, that's the end of it. Everything culminates on Easter Sunday - and then it's back to "normal life" as a Christian. But what if there was more?
Is it any wonder at all that people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus when our lives don't burst with celebration at the craziness of this event?
What if as followers of Jesus, we celebrated Easter all year 'round? What would that look like? When the author of Hebrews tells us that faith is believing in what we cannot yet see, and if we believe in the resurrection, it must affect the way we live our lives. We should be celebrating Easter in exciting, creative new ways: through music, poetry, artwork, concerts, books, etc. This is the greatest festival in all creation!
"Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters
at the
front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you
don’t
have a New Testament; you don’t have a Christianity;
as Paul says, you
are still in your sins…"
-N.T. Wright, Surprised By Hope
As we learn to give things up during Lent, Easter is the time we take things up. Christianity is not meant to be sad and gloomy; rich with rules and restrictions. What is something you want to take up? What is something fruitful, exhilarating and self-giving that you can introduce into your life? This is what Easter is all about - New hopes. New possibilities. New dreams. Adventures you never dreamed of.
All things are being made new. Right now. New creation is underway. The resurrection of Jesus is evidence of the age that is to come. But we begin living it right now. Jesus literally opened the door of creation to a world that goes beyond death. Jesus is the door. Easter eliminates all fear.
Ever since the story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3 & 4), God has been calling us towards himself. The eternal God of creation is of the future, of new creation, of the new Jerusalem.
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth,
for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he
will speak,
and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
-John 16:13
This means the possibilities of New Creation! Jesus calls us to imagine a world devoid of violence, war, guns, hatred, pain, poverty, greed, lust and to go beyond the ruins of brutal rivalry. He calls us to start moving beyond that right now! Because that is the hope of the world. This is resurrection.
If we buy the lie that the world's way of sustaining itself through war, power, violence, & greed is "just the way it is" - that is the hard proof that we have not seen Jesus as the doorway to new creation. But Jesus is that doorway - right now!
I invite you to consider allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal these things to you. Allow the Spirit of God to work imaginatively in your life to see how things can be. Another world is possible. Move in that direction! The Spirit will guide you towards the things of new creation. To the things of the real future. Let us search and seek by faith to be there right now!
Oh the seas will split
And the ship will hit
And the sands on the shoreline will be shaking
Then the tide will sound
And the wind will pound
And the morning will be breaking
Oh the fishes will laugh
As they swim out of the path
And the seagulls they’ll be smiling
And the rocks on the sand
Will proudly stand
The hour that the ship comes in
Then the sands will roll
Out a carpet of gold
For your weary toes to be a-touchin’
And the ship’s wise men
Will remind you once again
That the whole wide world is watchin’
-Bob Dylan, "When the Ship Comes In"
(The artwork is Healing of a Blind Man, Brian Jekel)
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