East of Easter: Part 1 

The Message of Hope and Grace

What happens when the sun goes down after Easter Sunday?

How do we live life in the light of Easter?

What difference does the resurrection make to how we live life?

Like Mary, on that first Easter Sunday morning we don’t stand in the moment dumbfounded. The moment with Jesus in the dawn of the new creation moves us. It propels us into action. There is work to be done. There is a message to be announced. There is good news to proclaim. The one who was dead is alive.

How do we apply one particular chapter (1 Corinthians 15) to our lives?

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas (Peter), and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed. 1 Cor 15:1-11(TNIV)


What is the gospel?

A gospel is a declaration of the good news of a new reality. At the time Paul was writing to the church in Corinth, the world was ruled by the Roman Emperor, probably Nero at this time.

In the context of the world of Paul and the church in Corinth, Caesar’s gospel was, “Rome is here! Caesar is now your king! Now you can be under the rule of the greatest government, military, and economy in the world! Does anyone have a problem with that, because if you do we have weapons of mass destruction and crucifixion to make you comply.

One popular statement of C. Augustus was this, there is no other name under heaven by which you can be saved than that of Caesar.

The disciples went around saying “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved than that of Jesus." See Acts 4:8-12

The good news that Jesus proclaimed, was centered in Jewish expectations of return from exile. When Jesus came proclaiming the good news he said:

"The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" Mark 1:15

For Jesus, the good news was a proclamation of an inbreaking reality (the kingdom of God is near) and a summons for people to revise how they were living their lives by placing their confidence in Jesus and his way (repent and believe).

For the apostle Paul, he would claim: “God is king! Jesus is the Messiah hoped for by Israel and therefore, the Lord of the whole world! Now you can be citizens of a kingdom that will outlast even Rome!”

Essentially both Jesus and Paul were saying, “look there is hope for the situation you find yourself, there is a solution to the oppression and evil that you face, there is a freedom to the slavery you are experiencing”.

If we view our hope as christians as “going to heaven” or as “salvation” from this world and new life away from this world then any sort of hope we have for the existing world will be unrelated and minimised. If we see ourselves as people who are going to check out one day from this disappointing and grimy motel of a world and check into the luxury mansion hotel we call heaven. Then our attitude towards the world around us and the people who share this space and time with us will be tinged with a sense of despair and sadness, and life in the words of one biblical writer will be meaningless. (Ecclesiates 1:2)

The good news of the Kingdom of God is the solid ground on which we stand and base our lives on. And this is what Paul wants to remind the church in Corinth. This is the gospel by which they were saved, but saved from what?

Salvation starts as we live in present. The point of the cross isn’t forgiveness. The point of the cross, the victory of Jesus death on the cross is more than forgiveness. It’s restoration and it’s reconciliation. Salvation comes for a reason. Being saved from our sin is just the start. It’s about God restoring us. Making us into the humans he originally had in mind when he first made us. Salvation starts at the cross but it leads us to become more and more the people God wants us to be. More loving, more generous, more compassionate, more merciful, more human.

For Paul, he understood that death was not the end. The central element of Jesus message is that death is not the end. This life is not all there is.


What is the resurrection?

For Paul and his listeners the word resurrection, never meant simply, “life after death”. It wasn’t used to describe ideas about what happened to people after they die. It was a specific term which described how people who were already dead would be given new bodies, and would them have a new embodied life similar to what they had had before.

What Paul is describing is the life we will have after the new state of existence we find ourselves in after death. He is describing a life after life after death. In this resurrected life people will be given new bodies, empowered by God’s spirit and would have a new life with a new body, yet similar body, to live in God’s new heaven and earth. (more on this later)

As Tom Wright puts it: “If Jesus has been raised, that means that God’s new world, God’s kingdom, has indeed arrived; and that means we have a job to do. The world must hear what the God of Israel, the creator God, has achieved through his Messiah.” (Simply Christian, 2006, p98)


What is our response?

For Paul, the death and resurrection of Jesus changed his whole life. Hi response was to spend his whole life on living and communicating the beauty, hope, grace and love of the Kingdom. He too became an announcer of the message, convinced that Jesus was alive. The grace of God compelled him to rethink his life and share the message of the good news of the kingdom.

The grace of God is never to be earnt, we cannot earn it, but because of the grace given to us, there is effort on our part. Remember that quote from Tom Wright: “…We have a job to do. The world must hear.”

Those who have not heard about the grace and hope of the message of the kingdom of God need to be told. The grace of God causes us to change how we live our lives and the sort of people we are becoming. The grace of God makes us wake up from our sleep and become people of action. And it is the resurrection of Jesus that lies at the heart of God’s grace and love for humanity.

I wonder what is the message you believe?
I wonder how will you share the message of the good news of God’s kingdom to others? Can you do that this week?
And I wonder: Are you changing on the inside as this message of hope and grace grabs hold of your life?

We've been discussing resurrection and so I thought I might resurrect this blog beginning with some stuff from our Sunday Morning Gatherings.

A tale of four gardens.

Heligan

A couple of years ago I went with my family to The Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. There’s a great story about this amazing place. It started following a devastating hurricane in 1990, when two men exploring the ancestoral home of a country estate in Cornwall called Heligan, found a tiny room under the fallen masonry in a forgotten corner of one of the walled gardens. In this tiny room there was a motto etched into the limestone walls in barely legible pencil which read "Don’t come here to sleep or slumber" underneath were the names of those who worked there with the date - August 1914.

These two men were “fired by a magnificent obsession to bring these once glorious gardens back to life in every sense and to tell, for the first time, not tales of lords and ladies but of those "ordinary" people who had made these gardens great, before departing for the Great War.”

And so on that first Easter Sunday two men came to a little tiny room. After the devasation of the previous 48 hours they look into a dark and empty tomb. These men wake up, they are fired by the magnificent obsession of the Kingdom of God. As they leave, Mary stays, overcome with grief and despair she stays at the empty tomb.

Eden

The relationship between God and humans begins in a garden. The first conversation between God and humans happened in a garden.

God and the first Adam would spend time together in the garden. In the cool of the day God would come, his presence would be there with Adam in the garden.

One day God looks for Adam but Adam is not there. Adam believes a lie and betrays God. The first humans turn away from God in a garden. Instead of the fruitfulness of the garden, the ground now produces thorns and thistles. Death and decay, drought and disease enter the world.


Gethsemane

The betrayal continues into another garden. Whilst the second Adam, as Paul calls Jesus, prays, he is betrayed by one whom he would spend time with together in the cool of the evening.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Judas, a friend of Jesus comes with violent men looking for Jesus in the darkness. Men with weapons come looking for Jesus.

Jesus asks them “who are you looking for?”

And that’s the big question. Who are you looking for?

God came looking for Adam, who hid because he was ashamed.

Men come looking for Jesus, to arrest him and hand him over to be tortured, to have thorns pushed on to his head and to be nailed to a piece of wood and killed.

The Easter Garden

And now in the garden on that first Easter Sunday, a woman comes looking for the dead but finds life.

...She turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
"Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" 
 Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him."
Jesus said to her, "Mary." 
 She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).
Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' "
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!" And she told them that he had said these things to her.  John 20:14-18

This is the first day of the week. There is a man and a woman in a garden.

John (one of the men who first looked into that empty tomb) is telling the story of the new creation. Throughout his book he has given signs pointing to Jesus. Pointing to the man who would bring reconciliation between God and all humanity. He’s saying in the words of Pontius Pilate, “Here’s the man!” This is the one you are looking for.

Mary stands outside the tomb. If you can imagine it: stand there with her. Feel the loss the grief and the hurt. Stand there and think of someone who is hurting and alone, stand with Mary and identify with the bitterness that she feels.

Then step into the silent tomb. Don’t turn away. Step into the cold dark void.

Hear the question: “Why are you crying?” Why are you crying? What have you lost? What’s been taken away from you? Where does it hurt? Face the truth, feel the pain. Think of the answer to that question that might come from people around the world.

They’ve taken away my Lord, my home, my friend, my rights, my dignity, my brother, my sister, my father, my mother, my children, my dignity, my hopes, my dreams, my vision, my life. Where has the darkness seeped into your life? What’s been taken from you?

Now turn and see who walks towards you. Behold the man. Who is he? He’s the gardener he’s the one who removes the weeds and the thorns. He’s the one who digs up the past and brings fruitfulness. He’s the one that brings life and order out of barrenness and chaos.

Listen as he speaks. Listen as he says your name.

Listen as your healing comes. Listen as you see the light dawning. Listen as the mist clears and you see his face. Look and see the face of the one who has defeated death.

Don’t stand there dumbfounded. This moment won’t last forever. This moment propels you into action. There is work to be done. There is a message to be announced. There is good news to proclaim. The one who was dead is alive.

New creation has broken into this world. The old has gone. Today is the beginning of a new week. The beginning of a new life.