This year the whole of May falls within the great 50-day Easter season. The revival of that whole period between Easter and Pentecost as a celebration of Christ’s resurrection is one of the best features of the modern church calendars. It is not just on Easter Day that we can shout, “He is risen indeed. Hallelujah!”
Of course every Sunday is (and should be) Resurrection Day. Jesus’ rising from the dead is why we worship together on Sunday. It is the first day of the week, the Day of Resurrection. Every Sunday. But we forget, and we let other things crowd out the empty tomb, the risen body, the promise of new life for us all.
I suspect that if we lived out our faith in the context of persecution, if we regularly saw or heard of our fellow believers taken away to torture or death, we might focus more naturally on the resurrection as the key to everything, we might know the reason for meeting together on Sundays. But we have become soft, we have become used to relatively comfortable long life. We have forgotten that this life is short and very precarious, we have lost sight of the priority of being ready each day for death. We have lost sight for the need to live each day in the knowledge of Christ’s resurrection, and the anticipation of our own.
During this long and glorious Easter season, may we all re-focus on the reality of Jesus Christ’s bodily resurrection as a historical fact; and may we remind ourselves and one another of our new life in Christ, which has already begun, and which will be completed and perfected at the glorious final resurrection. Living each day in the light of that should change our priorities, our focus, everything. May we be resurrection people, Easter people: not just in this Easter season, but right through the year.
He is risen indeed. Hallelujah!
+Donald