All of the Christian churches are faced with a challenge in their life and the manner they believe in Jesus Christ. This is an opportunity to get the balance straight in how we live with Christ.
For the past thousand years almost all the attention was given to the suffering and death of Jesus. Look at all our images of the event of salvation: it has been the exclusive use of the cross with the dying Christ. If you asked the average Christian in the pew what our salvation consists of they would probably only outline the cross.
List all the pictures and drawings that you have seen of the salvation story and you will see the preponderance of the cross and suffering Christ.
This does not match up with the teachings of St. Paul in the New Testament. We are redeemed, brought to God, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection is as much a part of our salvation as the death of Jesus.
The resurrection is not just Jesus come back to life but by the power of the Holy Spirit this is the sharing of the risen Christ with us, the believers, in the here and now. Resurrection is not only an event that happened on a particular night in history, but the resurrection must now happen in each believer. Jesus Christ must be risen in us.
This awareness is rather weak in the lives of our Christian people (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox). All three branches of Christianity are at this creative moment: will we work to give as much attention to the resurrection and to living the resurrection as we have given to the death and cross of Jesus? In order to work toward restoring the balance we need to see that the fifty days of Easter in the liturgical cycle get as much attention and energy as the forty days of Lent.
When we consider the resurrection of Jesus we must be in touch with the dynamic power of this event. The Holy Spirit is giving us the risen Christ in order that our lives be empowered by the life-force of the son of God. Now, what happened in and through Jesus must now happen through the lives of the believers.
The risen Jesus is given to us to bring us to live and share in the very relationship of the Trinity: our lives are to be animated by the love and outpouring of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We give our lives to God as the three persons pour out their lives, their personhood, to the other. Whenever we pray, we are always praying with and in the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
When we give of ourselves to care for the poor, the poor with their many faces, we are sharing in the compassion and healing power of Jesus Christ. The life of the risen Jesus is being lived through our hands and the sharing of our hearts.
The next time you enter in a worship space look for depictions, drawings of the risen Christ. In our hymns and prayers, count the number of times we focus in on the risen Christ.
We are at this wonderful moment. Will we become a faith community created and energized by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Will we reclaim the balance?
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