Reflection

So, at Easter we also celebrate that when we ourselves experience the church truly being the church, when we feel the nearness of the guidance, counsel, and inspiration of God, and when we feel ourselves led into truth, then perhaps we too have been found by the quake (or whisper?) of the Spirit at work in the resurrection of Christ.

When we have such experiences, we sense that we have been encountered and helped by something from beyond our individual or even our collective capabilities. Something, someone outside of us reaching in. The believer, and the believing community, are part of the resurrection reality through the power of the Holy Spirit.

I shouldn’t finish without returning to the earlier image of the resurrection as the culmination but not the end of the drama. One of the regular mistakes we make is to view the resurrection as a closed event. It has happened; it happened to Jesus; and it is over. But this is to neglect one of the core aspects of the early Christian teaching about the resurrection.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is not the happy ending to an otherwise sad story. The early church believed his resurrection to be the start of God’s new creation. The New Testament uses various images to express this truth. Primary among them is the belief that the risen Christ is ‘the first fruits of those who have died’ (1 Cor 15:20) and ‘the firstborn from among the dead’ (Col 1:18). The resurrection is an open event; it is an ongoing process.

Here is hope and promise for us all. Death is shown not to be the power we thought it to be. Reality has been changed. The resurrection is the beginning of the new creation when God will be all in all (1 Cor 15:28). We are all being included in whatever was the astonishing event, which we now apprehend only in part, that happened in that tomb outside Jerusalem. Along with those who have already passed into the rich life of God, the words of the Psalmist will be fulfilled for us:

Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure.

For you do not give me up to the depths, or let your faithful one see the pit. You show me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy, in your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16: 9-11)

REV. DR PETER WALKER