Easter, Isaiah 25:1-10, John 20:1-18
Theme: New Life
The Gospel of John contains an account of an incident which occurred approximately 1985 years ago. Which means the church has featured this celebration at least that many times.
When I mean ‘the church’ I mean all Christian churches all over the world. I mean any group gathering in the name of Jesus to remember Jesus’ Resurrection.
There are many themes which can be extracted from the event itself. Simply telling the miraculous story as accurately as possible as it is told in the Gospels from four different points of view is really enough. It is a beautiful story of amazement and love. The story is at one exciting, loving, strong and frightening.
Old stories are interesting, but what does the event imply for us today? Again, there are several implications one can take from the event. The one I chose to emphasize is this….
Jesus liberates us.
When Jesus was resurrected, I see it as an act of forgiveness. I see Jesus’ new life as a sign, a miraculous sign that God forgives humanity for its rather stupid and arrogant act of violence against not only his only son but also against what Jesus represents. Jesus’ Resurrection is to say, “I [God] forgive you for your sins against me.” It also means, “You can’t kill my love for you.”
The reason this is important is because it sets a precedence for how we should treat others. I believe it is this precedence alone which frees humanity to excel. The ability to ‘move on’ past the idea that we need to abide by the ‘eye for an eye’ principle.
It means there are better ways to get past acts of injustice besides more violence. The principles of forgiveness allow humanity to get past spending limited resources on wars and ‘getting even.’
An important thing humans must learn is that God is not saying “it’s OK to kill Jesus because I can make the wrong go away.” It does say, though, that we can move past the horrible wrongs we humans seem to exact on each other and God. It means that there are other ways to reconcile wrongs beside ‘getting even.’
This is liberation.
Come join us at First Christian Church, Warrensburg, Missouri this Easter Sunday as we celebrate a new life without the constraints of violence.
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