Dearest Friends in Christ,
Christ is risen! He is truly risen! Alleluia!
Christians, rejoice! Today, in our Easter joy, we proclaim our faith in our Risen Lord. We profess not only that we believe in ‘One God’, but we make explicit our belief in ’Jesus Christ, who suffered death and was buried, ROSE ON THE THIRD DAY!’ This is no small thing. The bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the linchpin to our entire faith. “If Christ has not been risen, then your faith is in vain.” (I Cor 15:17) One cannot be a Christian, a follower of Jesus, and not believe in His resurrection. Yet, can we explain how this happened? No. Can we explain why this happened? Most definitely, YES!
The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is nothing less than the story of God’s love for us. God created us out of love to be the recipients of His love. Yet, humanity rejected that love. We still reject God’s love every time we sin. That rejection has real consequences – alienation, loneliness, isolation, despair, hatred, and death; the ultimate separation. Unable and incapable of remedying this situation, human beings were indeed lost. God, in His infinite love for His most cherished and most loved creation, sent His Only Begotten Son on a rescue mission to save us, redeem us and to give us a new life so that we might again experience that love and that union with Him. God did not sit behind a big desk in the C-Suite of heaven, snap his fingers and execute a divine mandate relabeling and rebranding the humans from the lost column to the saved column.
No, change was necessary. “For God so loved the world that He sent His only Son” (Jn 3:16) taking on our human condition. God ‘tabernacled’, He pitched His tent among us to live, laugh, suffer and die. This is what we mean by the ‘incarnation’. The one who is divine, eternal and perfect enters creation, time and space and all the limitations we face. Jesus, God’s anointed one (christos – messiah) assumes our limitations, not merely to restore us but to truly free us, save us from all that could separate us from God and one another, including death. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection inaugurates a new creation, a new world, a new kingdom, a new way of living and being. By his death and resurrection from the dead, Jesus opens for us life eternal. This new life is not limited and restricted by bodily death and the alienation it brings. The death and resurrection of Jesus is the turning point of all time. It is our liberation from the power of sin and death. The death and resurrection of Jesus is the reconciliation of humanity with God. Where Jesus has gone, we are now able to follow. Jesus died because we die. Jesus is raised from the dead so that we may one day also rise! “If we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all.” (Rm 6:8-10).
This great day of resurrection is so great that we must celebrate with the greatest joy!