easter, a living Hope

It has been a while since I have felt like writing. I’ve chalked it up to writers block, the launch of my R+F business, and being too busy establishing a new rhythm for our life back in Nashville. So I’ve neglected this space—this journal— but today I’m feeling the words and they’re pouring out. 

As a child, Easter was about whether my brother or I had the more abundant Easter basket (#priorities). It was about sitting through a Catholic mass, staring at the ornate stained glass windows, laden with characters and settings of a story that I was yet to realize. When I became a Christian, my perspective on Easter shifted. The scales fell. I began to see Easter for what it historically and actually represents— a resurrected Christ. Because if Jesus didn’t rise, all that I believe is futile and foolish. 

My intention here is not to try to manipulate you or convince you into believing that Jesus really did rise from the dead. My intention is not to scrutinize your theological beliefs if you do not claim Christianity as true. My intention is, however, to share with you some of my Easter thoughts, specifically as they relate to the resurrection, with the hope that you might think a new thought or consider something in a new light or ask some questions. Or, for you, dear believer, I hope that these words remind you of the living Hope you have in the person of the resurrected King.

N.T. Wright is a prolific New Testament scholar, Christian apologist, and retired Anglican bishop. His book “After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters” was one of my required readings for the Fellow’s program. It’s not about the resurrection, but if offers a rich Christian perspective on the age old question, “what is our purpose”. I highly recommend it. 

I want to share with you two fantastic quotes that N.T. Wright says about the Resurrection of Jesus. 

“Resurrection, we must never cease to remind ourselves, did not mean going to heaven or escaping death or having a glorious and noble postmortem existence but rather coming to bodily life again after bodily death.” 

He also says,

“You see, the bodily resurrection of Jesus isn't a take-it-or-leave-it thing, as though some Christians are welcome to believe it and others are welcome not to believe it. Take it away, and the whole picture is totally different. Take it away, and Karl Marx was probably right to accuse Christianity of ignoring the problems of the material world. Take it away, and Sigmund Freud was probably right to say that Christianity is a wish-fulfillment religion. Take it away, and Friedrich Nietzsche was probably right to say that Christianity was a religion for wimps. Put it back, and you have a faith that can take on the postmodern world that looks to Marx, Freud and Nietzsche as its prophets, and you can beat them at their own game with the Easter news that the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

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The resurrection of Jesus, His coming to bodily life again, is arguably one of the most audacious claims of Christianity. It is not, however, a “take-it-or-leave-it thing”. You can’t be a Christian and kinda-sorta believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ. It is either completely true or completely untrue, that the God of the universe rose from the dead to triumph over evil and consummate His kingdom. I've spent a lot of my life learning to see the color grey instead of only black and white. But the Resurrection of Christ is not grey- it is absolutely black or white (so hip, hip hooray for my black and white thinking serving me... for once). 

There are several aspects of the Resurrection I could write about, including how much our bodies DO matter (so we should love them and take care of them), the depth of Christ’s love for you and me, the triumph over death, or the consummation of a Kingdom that is our everlasting Home. But I want to share some thoughts about Hope, as our pastor Stacey Croft shared with us this Easter morning.

I’ll propose the same question that Stacey proposed to us this morning. What do you hope for? Or rather, what is it that you long for or thirst after?

Maybe it’s health, both physical and mental, and longevity. Maybe it’s the job or the car or the house. Maybe it’s the companion or the spouse. Maybe it’s happiness and contentment and adventure. Maybe it’s freedom from the soundtrack of self-contempt and self-loathing. I don’t know what it is for you (for me, its most all of those things), but what I do know is this. Today Jesus offers himself to us as our Living hope— a hope that is alive, eternal— a hope that cannot die, is not earned, and cannot be snatched away from us, His children. 

Stacey offered us a beautiful analogy today, a visual of what it’s like for us humans to have and loose hope in a world of disappointment and frustration and not-enough. He said that disappointment, not getting what you’ve hoped for, ungrips or unclenches our fingers— one by one— until hope has been entirely spilled out onto the ground beneath us. Perhaps it’s not a tangible disappointment that defiles your hope, like loss or grief, but maybe it’s the soundtrack of lies or the wretched self-critic, who, it seems, will go to the ends of the earth to spoil your identity, to capture your sense of belovedness. I know that sound-track, the one that tells me I have to be perfect to be loved. But today I have Easter to remind me that the hope I hunger for is alive and present with me. His name is Jesus. 

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Here is the message of Easter.

Jesus is our living hope who came into our defilement and our mess and took it on because of love. It is not that we hope to overcome the parts of us we hate or the parts of us that could be better. It is that Christ suffered on our behalf and was raised to glory so that our hope would be secured. So that we wouldn’t be separated from Him. Or He from us. And my belief, like Peter’s, is not what makes my hope steady. Peter was Jesus’s friend and though he vowed never to disbelieve Jesus, he denied him 3 times before he was crucified. Peter saw Jesus, like with his own eyes in real time, and he still denied him. Peter knew— just like I think we all know in the depths of our souls— that no other hope would have cut it. 

Christ, our living hope, makes my hope steady. For as 1 Peter 1:3-5 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."

Happy Easter, friends. He has Risen, indeed.