The entire Christian enterprise, all two thousand years of it, stands or falls on the confession of the Gospels that Jesus Christ “…is indeed risen from the dead.” It is the absolute center of the Christian message that this impossible proclamation is reality and truth. However, even with eye-witnesses at great risk making clear and emphatic testimony in the early hours of the Easter Age, what had happened in the Easter event has been lost on many.
For some the Easter Gospel may be an offense, or nonsense; for others an ancient idea too remote to be considered credible. Yet, the Christ that these two thousand Easters has been celebrating has made all the difference wherever people have turned to Jesus as the risen Lord.
Our age tends to accommodate the most astonishing events and reduce them to a few sound-bytes in a news program, or a few lines of print, and occasional photo or film-clip. Mars landings, fiber-optic cables crisscrossing the globe, medical marvels vie with many other technological miracles for headlines, but usually hold center stage for only short periods of time. The public has a very short attention span unless the news impacts their personal lives.
Easter does just that. Easter is a cosmic event that impacts the entire roster of the population of earth, from the very first human being to the very last, forever. However, since it speaks in terms that woo rather than mandate, that offer rather than demand, the engines of persuasion many are expecting do not overwhelm those around whom the Easter celebration happens. Some hear the message as too extreme, or the response called for too drastic.
Yet the Church rises in awe and wonder at the Easter message every year. The message of Jesus, that “because he lives, we shall live also” has been the word that has turned our lives around to look forward with hope rather than backward with regret and frustration and impotence. Easter is God’s down payment on a “future and a hope,” of which Jeremiah could only dream.
If we do not welcome the Easter Gospel as it comes to us in the sweet cadences of the Easter festival, we may well find ourselves desperately searching for it in the midst of grief and loss. The resurrection of Jesus Christ may for the moment be not much more than a festive occasion. In time it will prove to be the ultimate rescue from our most profound calamity.
Go with God,
Pastor Jansen
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