Easter thoughts

Well Easter has come and gone, and I’m sure like me you found it an unusual one. We still gave our kids Easter eggs, but the hunt wasn’t the same without the cousins and friends. With everyone already at home the days off were less obvious, and we would have video-called the out of town family anyway… But the biggest difference this year for our family was not meeting with our church family to celebrate the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.

And while it’s been an unusual Easter for many of us, it does in many ways bring back into focus what Easter is all about; God’s plan to deal with sin and death and restore the world to a state without sickness, grief or pain – the New Creation.

We modern ‘Westerners’ have been very successful at pushing death further and further from our vision. Sure, we all know that we’ll eventually die, and on personal levels we’ve all experienced sickness and death on one level or another. But for most of us, most of the time, we have been ‘immune’ to having to think about it much. However, COVID-19 has rudely shoved before our consciousness our vulnerability and mortality in life altering ways. We know that many of us could be immanently threatened. That our work in building up our medical knowledge and developing healthcare systems might make our lives a little longer - but it is a precarious delay at threat of being overwhelmed.

We don’t like it, we have tried to push it away, but death is the realest thing there is in this world and the most universal experience of not just humanity but all of creation.

It is against this black background that Easter really shines as wonderful. Despite not meeting in a church building last weekend all around the world people have been reading the historical record of Jesus’ execution – his death as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” - and then in turn on Sunday his resurrection from the Dead. Jesus had promised before his crucifixion “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11)

You see, God has always been about life. In Romans 4 Jesus’ messenger Paul describes God with these words “God who gives life to the dead and calls things into existence that do not exist.” These ideas are a continuum of the same drive within God; Life. Where there had been a void of life he brought into existence… everything. And at the termination of life God has moved – at cost of his Son – to reverse and do away with death. To establish life eternal.

Many people think that Christianity promises some sort of bodiless spiritual existence ‘In Heaven’ after we die. But that is not the promise of Easter. The promise of the empty tomb is that In Christ God will raise into new death-proof bodies all those who trust Jesus. At Christ’s return He has promised to remake this physical world – no longer to be plagued with diseases or abused by greed – a new earth fit for newly resurrected people to enjoy. The guarantee or ‘first fruits’ of that harvest is the raising of Jesus to life again in April about 30 AD.

You might have experienced different responses to the COVID-19 crisis, but regardless this is God’s promise to you in the face of your eventual death. In Jesus he offers you life. Why don’t you read the story of Easter yourself? You can read through the book of Mark in about an hour and it’s easily found online. Churches aren’t getting together but send them an email and I’m sure they help you connect with someone who could answer some questions for you or chat about these things.