This Easter Sunday we will be pressing together into the reality of the resurrection. (We are prayerfully batting around the idea of spending more than a Sunday on the resurrection as a precursor to preaching through Proverbs, but for at least one week we are definitely going to the empty tomb.)
Our aim will be to try and recapture the unexpected surprise of the whole thing. See, people got crucified all the time… but nobody came back from the dead. Even first century Jews knew that. (I mean, they anticipated the someday wholesale resurrection of the dead, but not one guy walking out of his grave like this.) We show up on Easter Sunday at church all lackadaisical because we are 2000 years removed… we are expecting someone to talk about Jesus being alive after he died. But those first disciples were messed up by the whole ordeal. Jesus risen? What? Really? Wait. How? Are you sure? Woah. What does this mean? Their two major reactions were I’m scared or I don’t believe it. And yet, to their eventual joy, the tomb really was empty, Jesus was alive, the kingdom had come (although in an unexpected way) and they could live in the light and life of the gospel.
Easter is usually not a big attendance Sunday for us (with some many of you heading home to be with family), but if you’ve got someone you are in relationship with who is pretty sure that resurrection is a nice, neat, convenient fairy tale legend, this’d be a good Sunday to introduce them to the way the Scriptures actually present the story.
