Easter Sunday: Living Resurrection

Jonas Jonassen tells the story of a typesetter setting the text of chapter upon chapter of the Bible reprinting it after there was a misprint in a huge batch of them. When he came to the very last chapter – the Book of Revelation – he just lost it. He’d had a bad experience of life and the Church. How could Jesus ever want to come back to Earth? Here where Evil had once and for all conquered Good, so what was the point of anything? And the Bible… It was just a joke! 

So it came about that the typesetter made a little addition to the very last verse in the very last chapter in the bible that was just about to be printed. Thus the bible’s last two verses plus the typesetter’s extra verse were printed as: 
“He who testifies to these things says, Surely I am coming quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus ! The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. And they all lived happily ever after.”

 

For many people Easter is a happily after ever tale. It’s fluffy bunnies and spring sunshine and chocolate and froth. Do we all live happily ever after? The world is no different today is was yesterday - there’s still death and war and injustice about. But maybe as I said a moment ago - we have been changed. Maybe we’ve had our eyes opened. Maybe an angel sits on our tomb and says “ do not be afraid.” Maybe our guards and those who want to control us or destroy us won’t have the last word. 

Maybe we are told what the message of the Church is post Easter. Maybe we cling to Jesus feet and hear him tell us “ do not be afraid” and maybe people we meet need to hear that through us, because so many people this very day are living in fear that paralyses them. Easter encounter is the start of a deep relationship Jesus offers to everyone. Life may still be hard and rubbish things may still happen to us but hear this - nothing can separate us from the love of God - nothing. The power of death hasn’t the power we thought it had. The Church is commissioned today anew to preach and share new life even where people struggle. Jesus doesn’t take the pain away, he walks with us in the pain. Friends, look out for resurrection hope around you. It can come suddenly. Don’t miss it. On Friday night I went to bed and I woke up in the morning suddenly. I usually have Velvet my black cat jump on me about 7.30 demanding breakfast. I woke about 9 in a mad panic. I thought yesterday was Easter Sunday and I’d missed the dawn service at Dallowgill I was meant to be leading three hours earlier! It was a huge relief my brain worked out it was Saturday!  

What strikes me about Matthew’s account of the resurrection is the use of a simple two letter word. Go.  Matthew uses it three times: The Angel tells the Marys to go quickly and the women hurried  away from the tomb,  afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell the disciples – definitely not what would be expected of Jewish women.

 

Matthew tells us Jesus is ahead of us. Maybe there’s a lesson for us. Maybe the Church has to run to catch up with what Jesus in his risen power is up to. Maybe he is working his purpose out not where we expect him to be. Maybe what matters to us today won’t matter tomorrow. Maybe ahead of us are new ideas, plans and possibilities. Maybe Jesus is calling to us – come on, I’m over here, come and see me. 

 

We have a task to live Easter. We need to let Jesus Easter in us. At Trevor’s funeral as I sat in the choir stalls, a man behind me asked me how I knew Trevor. “I used to be the minister of the chapel in the village before Sarah came” I said. “What are you doing now?” he asked, “have you retired?” Well I guess I’ll sit down in about 11 years time I think but we never retire as Christians! All of you today are entrusted with the good news of Jesus Christ, to share it and live it and build your church because of it. Just see where Jesus is calling you to be. Live Easter and we will ooze with vitality and excitement and joy. 

The stone has been rolled away from the tomb. The day dawns with a new light. The earth quakes in celebration and joy. Christ is risen and in him so have you and I.

Today reminds us that the light of resurrection always prevails. Darkness cannot overcome the light. Regardless of who you are, the light prevails. Regardless of what you have done or left undone, the light prevails. Regardless of your doubts or beliefs, the light prevails. Regardless of your life’s circumstances, the light prevails. I can’t tell you how it happens but I know it does. The light of resurrection always wins. Everything about today says we can trust that.

That changes everything about how we live. We now live everyday as Easter. Christ’s resurrection is not a one day celebration. It is a way of life. It means every cross flowers with new life, every tomb becomes a womb of new birth, and every darkness has been overcome by light.

I made a commitment to write a blog every day from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day. This is the last blog. I’ve done it! I hope you’ve found my daily thoughts helpful. I can do no better than end with Nadia Bolz-Weber and part of a sermon called Resurrection is messy. 

“Being an Easter people — a people of resurrection — is not to be cleansed from all harm, and it is not to have all the bad things that we have done or that have happened to us erased. Resurrection is not about rewriting our past or forgetting what happened. I wish that’s how it worked but it just isn’t. Because (as many preachers before me have said) resurrection is not reversal.

The things that happened to Jesus’ body — the state sanctioned violence, the flogging, the crucifixion — remained even after he defeated death and rose from the grave. He still bore the marks of that pain, but the pain was not what defined him.

And if you think about it, his resurrection tracks with the messiness of the rest of the ministry.  Jesus  went about the countryside turning water to wine, eating with all the wrong people, casting out demons, angering the religious establishment. He touched the unclean and used spit and dirt to heal the blind and said crazy things like “the first shall be last and the last shall be first”, and “sell all you have and give it to the poor and pray for those who persecute you”. (Or as we like to say here, pray for those who prosecute you).

And the thing that really cooked people’s noodles wasn’t the question “is Jesus like God” it was “what if God is like Jesus”.  What if God is not who we thought?  What if the most reliable way to know God is not through religion, not through a reward and punishment program, but through a person. What if the most reliable way to know God is to look at how God chose to reveal God’s self in Jesus, even in Jesus’ wounds.  

Because that changes everything.  If what we see in Jesus is God’s own self revealed, then what we are dealing with here is a God who is very different than how I would be if I were God. In Jesus we see a God who would rather die than be in the sin accounting business anymore.  A God who does not lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him, but went to the depths of Hell rather than be separated even from his betrayers. A God unafraid to get his hands dirty for the ones he loves. This is the God who raised Jesus from the grave — still wounded and who chose a woman with a past to tell everyone else about it.

I guess what I am saying is don’t believe the paintings of the resurrection — where Jesus is all cleaned up and shiny, like nothing bad really happened.

If you think that’s what resurrection looks like, if you think it looks like perfection and therefore it is out of reach, if you think the only sign of God bringing new life is the absence of pain or failure and therefore you haven’t experienced it, you might be wrong. 

That’s the point.

Our scars and our sorrow will always be part of our story but they will never be the conclusion of our story. Which means that even when you feel trapped in your pain, trapped in your past, trapped in your own story like it is itself a tomb, know this — that there is no stone that God cannot roll away.”