My message to you this morning is short and very sweet: because of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ our lives can have a different storyline, a different trajectory, and our understanding of God can be completely changed.
This day is the most important event in history for a Christian. Christmas was, of course, key. We needed the incarnation to make the whole life of Jesus on earth possible. But on the surface looked like a very normal happening: baby gets born. Even the crucifixion could pass as a tragic but not unfamiliar incident: man gets executed. But Easter is different. Never before have we heard about someone coming back from the dead, without human intervention, and who then goes on to live a life that defies human experience and the laws of nature.
There have been incidents of people being raised from the dead – Jesus performed those miracles himself with Jairus’s daughter and his friend Lazarus. There are other accounts dotted throughout history of other healers raising people from the dead. But there has never been a raising that happened supposedly by itself, or at least without another person ‘making’ it happen, and that resulted in the person being able to walk through walls, appear and disappear at will and then vanish without any plausible explanation known to science. So, what can this day mean to us? Why should we get excited about Easter?
This is the day that tells us that, in Christ, there is always life after death. This is the day that reveals God’s pattern for creation, hidden in the heart of the universe, about what life is really like, that there is life after death. The changing seasons also show us this message, year in and year out, as winter once again gives way to spring. It is right before our eyes. We believe it for the flowers and trees but, until the resurrection, we didn’t know whether it was for us too, but, unlike for Jesus, not in a physical sense.
The resurrection tells us that if we open ourselves to God’s Spirit within us, we will be able to live a new kind of life. St Paul wrote to the Roman believers, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you.” (Romans 8:11) By opening ourselves to God, by saying ‘Yes!’ to God, our lives can be transformed, here on earth and, also eternally, beyond death.
This transformation begins with a step of faith, a willingness to open ourselves to who God is and to what life might be like taking God into account. But the wounds on Jesus’ body that remained even after the resurrection tell us that there is a cost to accepting the path transformation: we must die to our own selfish desires, we must be willing to let go of our bitterness, resentment and hurt. We must be willing to listen to what the Holy Spirit says about us, namely, that we are loved so completely by a God who is Love, that God exploded Jesus out of the tomb because love is stronger than death. Death does not have the last word. Love does. The God who loves us in this way, to this extent, and who is, in essence, the power of Love, is the same God of the wounded, yet gloriously resurrected, Christ. St John writes simply, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” That’s what Jesus came to show us and to do for us: show us who God is and who we can be and what our lives can be like. Easter says: Love Wins!
May you have a joyful, transformative and loving Easter.
The Revd Christina Rees