I get the honour this year
of offering some thoughts on what almost everyone would agree is the
“highlight” weekend of the church year – Good Friday and Easter. I will be
honest and admit that year after year I struggle with Good Friday and Easter –
not because I don't understand them, but because it's hard to think of anything
new or fresh that one can say about them. A few years ago, I realized that
perhaps I had created my own problem. Maybe there's nothing new that can be
said about Good Friday and Easter. Maybe everything that can be said has been
said. Maybe trying to come up with things that are new and fresh and “exciting”
actually downplay the significance of what actually happened. Maybe we just
need to proclaim it – Jesus died and Jesus rose from death. There you have it.
Good Friday and Easter summed up in a mere seven words!
Oh, I suppose it isn't quite
as simple as that. If it were that simple everyone would believe it, and (sadly
from my perspective at least) not everyone does. And I suspect that there's
nothing I can write in the space of a short column that's going to convince
someone who doesn't believe those seven words to suddenly embrace them. It's
the Holy Spirit's job to do that, not mine. But if I'm not called to convince,
I am called to proclaim and because I'm called to proclaim this, I have to
believe it. I've always been taken with the words Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians:
“if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then our preaching is useless,
and so is your faith.”
The Christian church and the
Christian faith exist today because Jesus died and rose again. If he didn't,
then there's no point. A lot of people over the centuries have tried to make
the church into something that it isn't called to be: an arbiter of ethics, a
keeper of morals, a political power, an oppressive tyrant, a religious social
service organization. I don't know why we feel the need to be constantly trying
to make the church something that it isn't called to be. So, what is the church
called to be? We are a community of people who celebrate the living Jesus! We
are a community of people who gather in his name and try our best to carry on
his ministry to the world around us. We are a community of people who are
overwhelmed with gratitude at the realization that in the cross of Good Friday,
we see an act of divine solidarity, as God (in Jesus) submits to experience
suffering and even death itself, and we are a community of people who are
overwhelmed with joy when we realize that in the Easter event of resurrection,
we see that the bonds of death (which to us seem so final) aren't final to God
– which fills us with the hope that we too (with God's help) will overcome the
bonds of death.
I believe I'm on safe ground
in saying that the very existence of the church testifies more eloquently than
I can to the truth of Jesus' resurrection. Not that the church is perfect. Far
from it. Ever since its beginning the church has made mistakes and sometimes
even engaged in evil. But at its best, the church is a noble and powerful
institution – not financially or politically but in its ability to touch
people's hearts and lift their spirits. But without the resurrection of Jesus,
I doubt that the first believers – as harshly persecuted as they were – could
have, without exception, stood firm in proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus
unless it had really happened. Someone under torture would have cracked and
said “it didn't happen. We made it up.” No one did. You can be sure that if
someone had, it would have been recorded by history.
So, it did happen – just as
we read. Jesus died and Jesus rose from death. Good Friday and Easter. That's
what this weekend is about. That's why the church celebrates its faith
throughout the year – because Jesus lives, even though he died! I hope you,
too, can celebrate that fact! Happy Easter!
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