Resurrection Trouble

April 18, 2022 at 5:15 am 1 comment

Easter is hopeful and scandalous all at the same time. It is scandalous because its message insists that what we think we know about death – that it is inescapable – has been escaped by Jesus. It is hopeful because there is something about death’s demise that strikes in us a chord of longing.

Sadly, the message of Easter – that Christ has risen in space and in time and in His body – has often been reduced to little more than a message about general hope for tomorrow and a slightly more spiritual-sounding non-descript existence after death. But it was not this way in the beginning. As N.T. Wright explains:

Death is the last weapon of the tyrant, and the point of the resurrection, despite much misunderstanding, is that death has been defeated. Resurrection is not the redescription of death; it is its overthrow and, with that, the overthrow of those whose power depends on it. Despite the sneers and slurs of some contemporary scholars, it was those who believed in the bodily resurrection who were burned at the stake and thrown to the lions. Resurrection was never a way of settling down and becoming respectable.

The resurrection caused trouble in that world – and it can still cause trouble in this world.

To the tyrant who murders to secure your power – the resurrection will destroy you.

To the disease that saps and sucks the life out of bodies – the resurrection will undo you.

To the hopelessness and helplessness and grief that can set in when a loved one dies – the resurrection will conquer you.

To the devil himself – the resurrection has already defeated you.

This is what we mean when we declare, “Christ is risen.”

And He has, indeed. Alleluia.