I hope you are able to read this before Holy Week is over. I love the services of Holy Week but over the years I have been challenged to think a little differently, or should I say more broadly, about what this week means. In typical Western (and American) thinking, I have often made the death and resurrection of Jesus about “me” – the forgiveness of “my” sins, “my” eternal life, how much God loves “me”.
And all those things are true. But I think we underestimate the scope of what God is doing through the events of this week when we make it only about personal salvation. I believe the death and resurrection of Jesus have far more cosmic and universal consequences than we tend to recognize.
The story of Holy Week is about so much more than Jesus breaking the chains of sin and death so that people could live forever in heaven. Theologian Marcus Borg wrote, “…the resurrection is God’s yes to Jesus and no to the powers (of this world).” Through Jesus, God was saying “NO’ to the norms of this world: A world that responds to violence with violence; A world that seeks power through the oppression of the weak; A world that scapegoats those different from us for things not being the way we want them to be.
Author NT Wright puts it this way in his book Surprised by Hope, “Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project, not to snatch people away from earth to heaven, but to colonize earth with the life of heaven.” Wright adds, “That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.” I had never made that connection before. When we pray the Lord’s prayer, we are asking God to finish what was started at Easter. And in praying that prayer, we are accepting God’s invitation to be a part of God’s new world unveiled in Jesus – a world that is radically different because of Easter! As Jesus said in John’s vision, “Behold! I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:7)
The Good News of Easter IS a time for celebrating the new life we have in Jesus,
but it is also a call to join in the “new thing” God is doing here and now. Easter gives us an opportunity to say “yes” to God’s yes. It is a time to give our AMEN to, and our participation in, what God is doing. This Easter, let’s give some thought to how can we continue what God started with that first Easter. How can I say “Yes” in a world where the powerful wage war at the expense of the innocent? How can I join in what God is doing instead of joining in the blaming of “others” for our troubles? Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, indeed! May God help us all live into that truth.
Pastor Wilson