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.”
In an article for The Washington Post, Emma Pattee writes about how the COVID-19 pandemic has brought us face-to-face with the reality of our mortality:
You probably remember where you were that day in March when you first realized that the novel coronavirus was something …
I remember where I was: driving to the gym for a Mommy & Me boot camp.
I pulled up to a red light and locked eyes with my 6-month-old baby in the rearview mirror. I felt unsettled and scared. I had an inexplicable urge to go home, and also to call everyone I knew and check on them. Yet nothing had happened. I was safe, healthy and employed. At that point, in mid-March, I was more likely to die of a car accident than of contracting covid-19 …
That eerie uncomfortable feeling has been described as grief. As fear. Or anxiety. But Sheldon Solomon, a social psychologist and professor at Skidmore College, has a more robust explanation: It is the existential anxiety caused by reminders of our own mortality.
Simply put, to function as a conscious being, it’s imperative that you be in denial about your impending death. How else would you go about the mundane aspects of your daily life – cleaning the gutters, paying the bills, sitting in traffic – if you were constantly aware of the inevitability of your own death?
Ms. Pattee goes on to cite studies that have found that we seem to be hardwired to fear death and to avoid thinking about it:
A neurological study was published in 2019 about a mechanism in the brain that avoids awareness of a person’s own mortality and that categorizes death as something unfortunate that happens to other people. …
An Israeli study showed some participants a flier about death anxiety and others one about back pain. When subjects were then offered an alcoholic beverage, one-third of the death flier group bought alcohol vs. one-tenth of the back-pain group.
We don’t like death. And the day we celebrated yesterday – Easter – gives us an answer as to why.
Scripture’s story is that we were created not to die, but to live. But when our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell into sin, they reaped the wage of sin, which is death (Romans 6:23). But this wage disordered the way creation was designed to be. It was designed to be filled with life – not marred by death.
Our dislike and fear of death, then, can be rightly said to be a yearning for the way we know things “should be.” We should not have to mourn the loss of our loved ones. We should not have to struggle and suffer through a pandemic. We should not have to endure horrific acts of violence that lead to death like wars and mass shootings. We should not have to deal with death. We can sense that dealing with death is, in some way, profoundly unnatural.
This is why we need Easter. Easter is the beginning of a return to the way they were always supposed to be. As Timothy Keller puts it in his book Hope in Times of Fear:
The resurrection was indeed a miraculous display of God’s power, but we should not see it as a suspension of the natural order of the world. Rather it was the beginning of the restoration of the natural order of the world, the world as God intended it to be.
In other words, death is wrong. Resurrection is right. Life is what the world was designed for, which is why it’s what we yearn for. And our yearnings will be fulfilled.
Christ’s resurrection is not only a feat against death, but a forecast that death will not have the last word. Christ’s resurrection, the apostle Paul says, is a “firstfruits” of our own resurrections (1 Corinthians 15:20). As Christ is risen, we will rise. And death will die. This is the message and the promise of Easter.
I hope you celebrated Easter well yesterday. And I hope you’ll hold on to all that Easter is today – and every day.
Christ is risen! These words are needed now more than ever in our world. As the death toll continues to climb from COVID-19 and the virus continues to spread, although thankfully at a slower pace than it has, we need to be reminded that no affliction or adversity, no trial or torture can put Christ back in the grave. The grave is empty and, because it is, our hope is secure.
In one of the most famous chapters in the Bible, the apostle Paul speaks about the hope we have because of Easter:
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. (1 Corinthians 15:17-20)
Paul refers to Christ’s resurrection as “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” In other words, those who have died or will die in Christ have the assurance that they too will one day be raised to live with Christ forever. Christ’s resurrection on Easter is a preview of our easters when He returns.
Martin Luther, in a series of seventeen sermons he preached in 1533 on 1 Corinthians 15, offers these comments on Paul’s words:
Because Christ is risen and gives us His resurrection against our sin, death, and hell, we must advance to where we also learn to say: “O death, where is thy sting?” [1 Corinthians 15:55] although we at present see only the reverse, namely, that we have nothing but the perishable hanging about our neck, that we lead a wretched filthy life, that we are subject to all sorts of distress and danger, and that nothing but death awaits us in the end.
But the faith that clings to Christ is able to engender far different thoughts. It can envisage a new existence. It can form an image and gain sight of a condition where this perishable, wretched form is erased entirely and replaced by a pure and celestial essence. For since faith is certain of this doctrine that Christ’s resurrection is our resurrection, it must follow that this resurrection is just as effective in us as it was for Him – except that He is a different person, namely, true God. And faith must bring it about that this body’s frail and mortal being is discarded and removed and a different, immortal being is put on, with a body that can no longer be touched by filth, sickness, mishap, misery, or death but is perfectly pure, healthy, strong, and beautiful …
God did not create man that he should sin and die, but that he should live. But the devil inflicted so much shameful filth and so many blemishes on nature that man must bear so much sickness, stench, and misfortune about his neck because he sinned. But now that sin is removed through Christ, we shall be rid of all of that too. All will be pure, and nothing that is evil or loathsome will be felt any longer on earth. (AE 28 202-203)
Luther’s final words beautifully summarize the hope of Easter: “All will be pure, and nothing that is evil or loathsome will be felt any longer on the earth.” As we continue to struggle through these evil and loathsome days of pandemic, I’m looking forward to that day!
Christ is risen! Nothing can change that and no pandemic can outlast that.
A northwest Oregon resident has tested positive for coronavirus with no known history of travel to countries severely affected by the outbreak and no known contact with infected individuals, state health officials said Friday.
The case, in Washington County, marks the third case of unknown origin in the United States and indicates that the virus is spreading. It is also the first coronavirus case in Oregon …
Earlier Friday, health officials in Santa Clara County, Calif., said a 65-year-old resident also had a case of coronavirus with unknown origin – becoming the second U.S. case of community transmission. The nation’s first community-transmission patient was a woman in Solano County, about 90 miles away.
The World Health Organization on Friday raised its risk assessment of the coronavirus to “very high,” citing the risk of spread and impact. WHO officials said their assessment – the highest level short of declaring a global pandemic – doesn’t change the approach countries should take to combat the virus but should serve as a “wake up” and “reality check” for countries to hurry their preparations.
The U.S. stock market fell for the seventh straight day amid fears of global economic damage from the escalating outbreak, and the Federal Reserve took the unusual step of issuing a statement to reassure Americans.
“The fundamentals of the U.S. economy remain strong. However, the coronavirus poses evolving risks to economic activity,” Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell said. “The Fed is closely monitoring developments and their implications for the economic outlook. We will use our tools and act as appropriate to support the economy.”
It is sobering to realize that despite all our modern medical advances and all our yeoman’s efforts at containment, the world still stands relatively defenseless against a virus that carries with it a startling mortality rate of, at present, 2.3% – a rate that far outpaces the mortality rate of the seasonal flu, which sits at around .1%.
This past Wednesday, the Christian Church began its observance of the liturgical season of Lent, which kicked off with Ash Wednesday. In churches across the world, the words God once spoke to Adam after he fell into sin were repeated to the faithful: “Dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19). These grim words are meant to call us to reflect on our own mortality. Death is inescapable. The mortality rate associated with the coronavirus may be at 2.3%. The mortality rate of humanity itself sits at 100%. As President Kennedy said in a famous speech at American University in 1963, “We are all mortal.” Our problem, it turns out, is bigger than any virus. Our problem is our very selves.
I am deeply grateful that scientists and medical professionals across the world are working tirelessly to quickly identify, contain, and develop a vaccine against the deadly coronavirus. I am thankful that governments are taking the needed – and often ambitious – steps to combat the virus’s spread. But the coronavirus epidemic should serve as yet another reminder of just how fragile life really is. The culmination of Lent into Easter, however, is a promise of just how powerful Jesus’ life really was. A deadly disease is just no match for an empty tomb. And in a world where the headlines smack of death, that’s the kind of life we need.
There is this telling line that describes the way in which the apostle Paul conducted his ministry: “Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks” (Acts 18:4). Paul, when it came to sharing the gospel, sought to persuade. And, by all accounts, he was quite successful. What began a small group of hundreds of Christians in the first century now numbers 2.18 billion.
The Christian faith has always had an affinity for persuasion. There is a whole subset of Christian teaching categorized as “apologetics,” which is meant to defend the faith against those who would attack its integrity and persuade those who question its credibility. Indeed, persuasion is critical to the Christian mission. Christians are called to make winsome, reasoned, intelligible arguments as to why Jesus is the Messiah in the confidence that God’s Spirit will bring people to faith in Jesus as the Messiah.
Not everyone, however, operates in this way of persuasion.
Tragically, these kinds of attacks have become unsurprising. In 2017, 18,814 people were killed in terrorist attacks worldwide. This represents a whopping 27% decline in deaths from the year before. Many, many people have lost their lives in these acts of evil.
Behind terrorism lies an ideology that those who disagree with you, whether their disagreement be theological, philosophical, ideological, or political, cannot and are not to be persuaded. Instead, they are to be defeated and destroyed. This way of thinking is as horrifying as it is frightening. But it is also, ultimately, unsuccessful.
At the dawn of the third century, when Christians were being severely persecuted by the Romans, a church historian named Tertullian famously wrote to the Church’s persecutors:
Your cruelty, however exquisite, does not avail you; it is rather a temptation to us. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.
And seed it was. When Tertullian wrote these words, there were around 19,000 Christians in Rome, about 4% of the city’s population. 50 years later, that number had grown to 78,000, around 17% of the city’s population. By the year 300, there were nearly 300,000 Christians in Rome, which constituted over 66% of the city’s population. Christians were killed. But the Christian Church could not be stopped. The persecutors’ terrorizing overtures were unsuccessful.
As it was in Tertullian’s day, so it is in our day. The threats of those who despise Christians are simply no match for the persuasive and attractive truth of Christianity. Those who lost their lives in Sri Lanka while worshipping the risen Savior on Easter are not extinguished. They are simply now waiting – waiting for the One who, on the Last Day, will call forth their bodies from their graves. To quote Tertullian once more:
The resurrection of the dead is the Christian’s trust … Life is the great antagonist of death, and will in the struggle swallow up for salvation what death, in its struggle, had swallowed up for destruction.
A terrorist may be able to take a life with a bomb, but he cannot extinguish that life for eternity. Just like some soldiers, a long time ago, were able to take a life with a cross, but they could not extinguish that life for longer than three days. Of this we are called to persuade people. Of this I am fully persuaded.
Christ is risen. And because He has risen, Sri Lankan Christians will rise. And so will we.
