Easter: "Show Me Your Resurrection.”

[humor]

I heard a kid say, "What I like best about Easter time is the candy and Jesus not being' dead anymore!"

In his book “Living Buddha, Living Christ,” Thich Nhat Hanh remarks to a visiting Christian: “You say you are people of the Resurrection. Show me your resurrection.”1

Father Scott Kopp said he would reply, “follow me and see all of my little resurrections as “a participation in the knowledge… and faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” 2

But Father Scott noted that some moments are bigger than others. Like at the Catholic high school Kairos retreat where the highlight is a Witness Talk on the Resurrection, to share about a time when you came back to life.

One returning alumnus said, I was at your elite prep school when I was disciplined for breaking the school’s code of conduct. The shock of my suspension dominated my thoughts, sucking the air out of everything else in my life. I felt like I was in a hole covered by one of those 500 lbs. stones they used to cover Christ’s grave--they are chiseled to fit like stoppers. Although I was angry at being suspended, it was a blessing in disguise because it forced me to realize my brokenness stemming from what I thought was a near perfect childhood.

My resurrection came from what amounted to as a Third Step: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

I stopped all denial, and I really wanted God to care for my life. I surrendered and was willing to walk away from it all—not return to the prep school which I loved and sacrificed a lot in order to enroll. Being important or having influence no longer seemed appealing to me. In fact, it felt like the option of moving to another school or even quitting and just working would save me from much stress and pressure. It was during this time that I started to volunteer with group of 50 other people just to get out of myself. It turns out that, in their annual election, my fellow volunteers voted for me to represent them to the parent organization. I did not try to win, I just knew that I needed to relate and talk to people to get better and begin to heal, and they responded to me. That election as the volunteer liaison was a resurrection experience for me. It was something that God did at crucial time in my life.

I found myself raised up. It turned out that I did return to the prep school and graduated without incidence. But it felt like I was living the lyrics to TobyMac's song after his son died, which says: “It's been a long year, it almost took me down…. But when my world broke into pieces, you were there faithfully…I may never be the same man, but I'm a man who still believes.”

The share ended with, “I see that experience now by Easter, interpreting my story in the light of God’s triumph by raising Jesus from the grave in his Resurrection!”

That is a good point.

Jesus “was raised” from the dead is the passive verb tense. Jesus could not raise himself from the dead.

God raised Jesus from the dead, Acts 2:24 says, and many other verses state. So, in all resurrection stories, God does for us what we could not do for ourselves.

As that witness talk shared, when the world around us falls apart and the world markets fluctuate, God will see us through faithfully. William Barclay says, “From now on the Christian will see everything in the light and against the background of eternity. He will no longer live as if this world was all that mattered; he will see this world against the background of the larger world of eternity.”

However, this morning you may feel like the Greek messenger who ran the first marathon without stopping. Upon reaching Athens, he burst into the assembly and said, “Joy to you, we have won!”—then he died from exhaustion on the spot.

In fact, Easter hope is barely alive in some people or they are too compromised to sense it. To illustrate:

The Reverend Will Willimon from Duke Divinity School said, “last week, I had a conversation with a troubled soul in my congregation, when asked, “Preacher, do you really think that I can get a grip on my addiction to heroine?” I almost responded, “No. Almost no one ever gets that monkey off his back. I really don’t think you’ll get better.” But then I remembered that we are in Easter…when the church insists that we tell the story of the resurrection of Christ as our story, as a truthful account of what God is really up to in the world. So, I responded, “You know, if this were about you or even the two of us working together, the answer is ‘No, you can’t get better.’ Fortunately, [with] Easter, this is about God, about God’s determination to get what God wants.”3