It is always hard to see the reality that is right in front of us. How many times do we fume over a speeding ticket but are ever so reluctant to take ownership that ‘we cut corners when we drive.” Everywhere in the world there are strong population shifts. There are different people who are now becoming citizens in my country! But how many people lament that ‘life is not the same,’ which means, there not are enough of my own kind living in this country? How many countries are putting up walls around their borders to try to prevent the change in population?
Our Christian faith is all about how God is breaking in (one God’s terms) and giving us a new reality. One of the downsides growing up Christian is to think that how we grasp our religion today is all there is!
The Resurrection of Jesus always upsets everything! No one expected this! If the resurrection is true, it is really unbelievable. As the women and men who first followed Jesus began to experience him their world changed radically. This was not just the great healer and teacher returned to life (he eats breakfast with them), but this is the outpouring of God. God has broken into our human reality. All that Jesus said and did is the revelation of God. To get to know the risen Jesus is to encounter God.
Our salvation is in the mystery of the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Both events belong together. Over the past centuries almost all our attention was devoted to only the first part of the mystery, the death and suffering of Jesus. For many Christians they had a spirituality of the cross with the resurrection being accidental to their faith experience. This was very incomplete. In this century we want to be reclaim the mystery of salvation and celebrate with equal energy the death and resurrection of Jesus.
We need to be reclaimed by the resurrection of Jesus. It must become in our lives a faith-explosion of God pouring out the very life of the Son into our bones and our thoughts. The resurrection is always the giving of the very life of the divine Jesus into our lives. It broke open the lives and the hearts of the first disciples. The resurrection now breaks open our lives.
This is not just something that we must preach with enthusiasm in our church buildings but it must take root and blossom in our daily lives. Each person who has been joined to Jesus in Baptism shares in the very life and resurrection of Jesus. Each person must become the living continuation of the great mystery of the resurrected Christ.
Be the life of the risen Jesus in your daily speech when we seek to speak the good things about other people and are able to walk with them through their struggles, whether it be in their relationships, or their unemployment or simply having a good word to say about everyone.
Live the resurrected Jesus by your willingness to listen to the struggles of your twenty-two year ole nephew who does not know which way his life should go. He struggles with a group of friends whom he knows are not good for him. Be the listening heart and be ready to be the firm voice when he needs some clear direction.
Easter was never meant to be a quiet, sunny day. This is all about God erupting in our lives. This is God extending the mystery of salvation in and through the person of Jesus, Son of God. Now, his very life is given to us. We are meant to be the living continuation of the life and mission of Jesus.
May this Easter be explosive in your life.
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