Easter - First Day of New Creation

Easter celebrates the start of the new creation!

Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright has written extensively on Jesus, the early believers and their church and especially about the amazing resurrection of Jesus, something no one was expecting, and an event that started a movement that set out to change the world.  In his book “Simply Jesus” on page 191:

“When Jesus rose from the dead on Easter morning, he rose as the beginning of the new world that Israel’s God had always intended to make.  That is the first and most important thing to know about Easter.”

“This is the real beginning of the kingdom.  Jesus’ risen person - body, mind, heart and soul - is the prototype of the new creation.  We have already seen him as the Temple in person, as the jubilee in person.  Now we see him as the new creation in person.”

In his book “Surprised by Hope”, Wright has a whole chapter:  “Reshaping the Church for Mission: Living the Future”.  He tries to get us excited about Easter:

“Easter is about the wild delight of God’s creative power . . . It’s about the real Jesus coming out of the real tomb and getting God’s real new creation under way . . . This is our greatest festival . . . This is our greatest day.”

He goes on to say that we each have a role to play in advancing this kingdom in this very real world of space, time and matter, we should not simply give up on this world.  “We must, rather, claim it for the kingdom of God, for the lordship of Jesus, and in the power of the Spirit, so that we can go out and work for that kingdom, announce that lordship and effect change through that power.”

Wright points out that if we are to be the agents of change for God’s kingdom, we must accept “that the whole world is now God’s holy land, we must not rest as long as that land is spoiled and defaced.  This is not extra to the church’s mission.  It is central.”

Working for this kingdom is a huge responsibility, and he adds “when the church is living out the kingdom of God, the word of God will spread powerfully and do its own work.”

He ends the book with one of his Easter sermons, in which he says, “When the final resurrection occurs, as the centerpiece of God’s new creation, we will discover that everything done in the present world in the power of Jesus’ own resurrection will be celebrated and included, appropriately transformed.”

Lots to get excited about, lots to do to work toward the fulfillment of this new creation!

The Day We Call Good Friday

On this day we commemorate the execution of a man who claimed to be the Messiah for the Jews.  For those who believed him and were watching at the time, it looked like just another bitterly disappointing tragedy.  Other would-be messiahs had risen to prominence and had been crushed and executed by the Romans, so the disappointed onlookers had little hope for any other outcome.

But what was unfolding was an event of cosmos shaking significance: evil was being defeated on that Friday and a new kingdom would be launched on Sunday. 

Reflecting on Jesus’ crucifixion, a concise and powerful depiction of the meaning of the cross is found in Brian McLaren’s book “Generous Orthodoxy”, page 105:

“Absorbing the worst that human beings can offer - crooked religiosity, petty political systems, individual betrayal, physical torture with whip and thorn and nail and hammer and spear - Jesus enters into the center of the thunderstorm of human evil and takes its full shock on the cross.  Our evil is brutally, unmistakably exposed, drawn into broad daylight, and judged - named and shown for what it is.  Then, having felt its agony and evil firsthand, in person, Jesus pronounces forgiveness and demonstrates that the grace of God is more powerful and expansive than the evil of humanity.  Justice and mercy kiss; judgment and forgiveness embrace.  From their marriage a new future is conceived.”

Excerpts from today’s meditation by Franciscan friar, Richard Rohr:

“Jesus hung in total solidarity with the pain of the world and the far too many lives on this planet that have been "nasty, lonely, brutish, and short.” After the cross, we know that God is not watching human pain, nor apparently always stopping human pain, as much as God is found hanging with us alongside all human pain. Jesus forever tells us that God is found wherever the pain is, which leaves God on both sides of every war, in sympathy with both the pain of the perpetrator and the pain of the victim, with the excluded, the tortured, the abandoned, and the oppressed since the beginning of time. I wonder if we even like that. There are no games of moral superiority left. Yet this is exactly the kind of Lover and the universal Love that humanity needs.

“What else could possibly give us a cosmic and final hope? This is exactly how Jesus redeemed the world "by the blood of the cross.” It was not some kind of heavenly transaction, or "paying a price" to God, as much as a cosmic communion with all that humanity has ever loved and ever suffered. If he was paying any price it was for the hard and resistant skin around our souls.”

Gives us lots to think about . . .

But, wait a minute, Sunday’s coming!