I waited on purpose to post an Easter blog until after the Day. It’s such a busy time of church programs and family gatherings, and good messages coming from everywhere. But if you’re like me, you might need a little something after the celebration dies down and you’re coming off the high. When we’re exhausted from all the busyness, that’s when we need to be reminded it’s not just a feel-good story, but a miraculous, impossibly true event, worth staking our lives on.
On Easter our pastor was talking about what we need to do to keep on walking in our Christian faith, even after the first glow is over. We read from Luke 24: the women went with more spices for Jesus’ body and discovered He wasn’t there! Angels told them Jesus had risen from the dead, just as He had predicted. So they ran to tell the disciples:
“When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others…But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense” (Luke 24:9, 11).
There were two who decided to go and see. “Peter…got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened” (Luke 24:1-11). John, however, “who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed” (John 20:8).
To imagine that anyone could live again—after such brutal torture, suffering death on a cross, wrapped in 75-100 pounds of spices, locked in a tomb sealed by a heavy stone, with guards posted outside for three days—takes a lot of faith. It seems like nonsense—too good to be true.
That’s what the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 11:1-2: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” The “ancients” he refers to are the prophets, who never got to see the fulfillment of everything they preached. Yet they held firm that what God said was true. So much so, that they were willing to die for those beliefs.
That’s exactly what the disciples ended up doing, because they saw Jesus in person. Not just once or twice, but numerous times over a period of 40 days of fellowship and instruction, before He returned to heaven. However, since Jesus knew only first century Christians would have the luxury of seeing Him in person, He prayed for us ahead of time:
“My prayer is not for [the disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message” (John 17:20, emphasis added). “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).
What about you? Do you struggle to accept what you’ve heard from others who’ve experienced the love and power of the risen Christ personally? Does the resurrection sound like nonsense, like wishful thinking and fairytales? Even Jesus’ disciples thought so at first, until they saw the evidence. Their Friday turned to Sunday and they spent the rest of their lives declaring this truth to everyone they met. They turned the world upside down with the miraculous news that Jesus is God. He died for our sins; He rose again; and He is reigning at the right hand of the Father until the time is right for Him to take His people home.
I think my favorite Easter song this year has been “Sunday is Coming” by Phil Wickham. For every one of our “Black Fridays” of life, we have hope, because Jesus rose from the dead on Easter morning!
Ohhh yeah. Devil your done you better start running!
That’s right! He’s a defeated foe!