He is Risen… He is Risen Indeed!
To ruin Charles Dicken’s quote from A Tale of Two Cities… Easter “is the best of times and the best of times”.
It is a season of full throttle joy and celebration; for the Lord Jesus Christ is risen fully, bodily, marvellously and miraculously from the grave.
Let me mention a few brief things before I get to the two main parts of this letter.
I trust that even in these last few days before Easter you will personally walk through Maundy Thursday and be fully embraced by the trauma, grief and desolation of our Lord on Good Friday. I trust that if you are leading or influencing a church that this will be your collective experience as well.
I have the most profound memories of family time with my wife, Kerry and our children, Jessica and Andrew, in marking Maundy Thursday celebrations, led by numerous folk at Kitsilano Christian Community Church . As a family we are also collectively thankful for the joy of celebrating open air worship and communion at the beach on Easter morning.
There are two significant things to say at Easter; the first is to declare the real, literal, bodily and miraculous resurrection of Jesus from the dead; no apology, no reservations, no qualms. To paraphrase John Updike; anything else is a mockery of reality.
The second is equally important. It is prompted by a letter I got from the National Prayer Breakfast movement this week essentially encouraging me to become a Christian. I thought it a bit odd at first – but then I saw its’ wonderful invitation to Easter that is for me and every Christian. Easter is a time, when faced with the awesome resurrection of Jesus, we bow in reverence before him to re-commit, to re-covenant, to remember our conversion story and baptismal commitment. We re-breathe the joy of the resurrection and our own re-birth. We engage in a form of zero based spirituality; clear the deck and thank the Lord for a new beginning in Him.
So may we re-set our clocks as it were; the real ones, not the tired old clock of Chronos but the endless time rediscovered each Easter in the eternity born out of the resurrection of Jesus.
Warmly
In Christ,
Jeremy