Easter Sunday: Jesus' Resurrection in Our Upside-Down World
Easter Sunday: First Days of a New World
Matthew 28:1-10
A New World of Life – Breaking Into the Empire of Death
Celebrating Jesus’ resurrection is rejoicing in a challenge that hits us every day and never goes away. We humans everywhere structure life around power over others in all its forms, raw violence, manipulative enticement, structures of control, financial reward.... Even our best intentions and policies must be enforced. Behind all is death’s power.
Jesus’ resurrection is the event in which God reveals that his own world/reality is creating life, not threatening death. He shows our patterns of religion, politics, life struggle, are not his eternal reality. He broke into our human empire of death with his Kingdom of life and challenges each of us to see his reality of Love, Grace, Trust. It’s there in plain sight, if we’re not blinded. But it’s hard. We are blinded by our little reality, by fear!
A Foolish Cross and the Wisdom of God
John 20:19-29
Seeing the Fool ... Not Being a Fool
April 1. When people walked by Jesus being crucified, they saw the perfect fool. He imagined he was king, savior, Messiah. Now look! Crucified. A clear, humiliating refutation. His disciples felt they were fools too. “We had hoped...” (Lk 24:21). But then, the women, that empty tomb!
Resurrection - "Come and See...Go and Tell"
Matthew 28:1-10, 16-20
Can this really be happening?
Jesus' resurrection is not a doctrine; it is an event. Christian life has many teachings but none would be known or noticed without what happened that Spring morning, 1986 years ago. Jesus wasn't like other religious founders who labored years to build a religious community. If Jesus had simply stayed in the tomb, nothing would have happened. A different world.
God’s Gift of Life in Jesus
Romans 5:6-17
Out of Death – Into Life
Today is a focused concentration of all Christian faith. It marks its distinct character. All flows first from events announced as “Good News,” Gospel – actions of God in his world. Thus deeply miraculous! Not in the common idea of a distant god breaking into the orderly laws of nature to do something strange. But the Creator of that wonderful order, who also pervades it, working within it to show a deeper reality than we ordinarily perceive.