By Rev. Johnson M John
It’s been said that this world is a tough place to live. The disasters happening around the world ask us to believe so. And parts of it certainly are. People have become tough and unpredictable day after day. Things have become complex and uncertain as days pass by. But it’s just not extreme places that are hard to live in. The regular parts of the world are tough too. We learn this as children. We start learn to walk and right way what happens? We trip and fall down on the sidewalk and skin our knees and bump our heads on rocks! We bang up against things and it hurts! Ouch!
Yet, God created this world and God said it was good when He created the oceans and the land, and all the rocks and creatures in it and God hopes we’ll love it, care for it, and think it’s good too!
But what God didn’t create and what God doesn’t love is the ways that we tend to run our societies. God doesn’t love it that we’ve created a world where we live by the law of the jungle, where “might makes right,” where we compete and hoard, where powers and domination systems place the overwhelming majority of humanity into abject poverty and misery.
The first major, massive scale, instance of this kind of human created system of power and might was the world’s first territorial empire, the Roman Empire. Rome conquered many nations through the means of military, political, economic, and ideological exploitation and domination.
It’s with this empire that Jesus struggled. He was at war against all powers of destruction and injustice. He didn’t use the world’s ways against the world. He simply said that the worldly powers are impotent – they have no power that the real power is with God and in the Kingdom of God!
Jesus demonstrated that power by reaching out to the people who society had rejected; and He invited people to repent and to change their way of thinking and living so that they could break free from ways which collaborated with the Empire so that they could start living freely and abundantly in deep community and communion with one another – sharing all that they have and turning away from the domination system which sought to oppress them!
Resurrection of Jesus could be said as an act of Civil Dis-obedience against the dominant powers. Against the powers of death and violence. God was breaking Roman law! And Jewish Hypocrisy.
Today we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ amidst of these powers of death and violence. This has permeated everywhere in the society; even within the churches. We celebrate Easter in our struggles.
Jesus puts forward two icons of Easter to fortify our own struggles
- The angel sitting on the rock.The angels in Matthew’s gospel are to deliver the Good News. The Good News is only ever preceded by one short, preliminary sentence: “Don’t be afraid.””Don’t be afraid, Zechariah, your wife Elizabeth will bear a son and you will name him John.””Don’t be afraid, Mary.”
“Don’t be afraid, shepherds. I bring you good news of great joy that shall be to all people.”
“Don’t be afraid, Joseph, take Mary as your wife. Her baby is conceived by the Holy Spirit. Name him Jesus; he’s going to save all people from their sins.”
“Don’t be afraid,” the angels say. And then they deliver the good news for us.
Answer the door. It’s an angel at your door with a delivery.
“Don’t be afraid. He has been raised from the dead and is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him. This is my message for you.” Sign here.
The angel’s work is done. And now ours begins. Will we sign for the good news, unwrap it, and live by it?
Will we sign for the good news that your future is a series of situations, whether garden bowers or graveyards, where Christ awaits you to meet defeat with victory, to meet disappointment with hope, to meet death with life?
He is not here. He has been raised. Come and see the places where he lay.
Today an angel, yes the same one who delivered the tidings of Easter asks us not to be afraid. Let us proclaim this message to the world. As God unfolds his plan for the history let us abide in God’s providence and rely upon God’s love for the world.
- The rolled back stone at the entrance of the tomb. The stone symbolized not only the power of the empire, but also the suspicion that the Jewish leaders had.It’s a suspicion from the unbelieving heart. They were worried about the blasphemy that could happen. It was all about the forces which propagate the message of death and violence. In these times of complex life realities we tend to be pessimistic. Our hopes are gone. We rely more on our logics and resources than on the might of God which failed Roman Empire and Jewish conspiracy. God is at work in history. He makes alive history for the people in exile. So it is for us to be at his command to work with God in history. The rolled back stone, encourages us to engage with the powers against our God’s Kingdom.
Today, the living resurrected Christ stands before us with these icons. He knows us and He knows our fears. We’re afraid of economic hardship, we’re afraid of debt, we’re afraid of diminishing resources and environmental destruction. We’re afraid of caste tensions and the growing chasm between the rich and the poor. We’re afraid of the hurt between men and women, between people of different nations, and we’re afraid of a Church that’s become co-opted and corrupted by the ways of Empire. We fear for ourselves and our loved ones.
Like those first disciples, we’re afraid of the power of the systems of the world with their armies, their courts, their prisons, their threats. Like them, we fear our own powerlessness, weakness, and sense of inadequacy. We’re insecure, frightened by our emotions, and wary of trusting one another. We feel both the guilt of our sin and the vulnerability of our broken places. Above all, we fear pain, suffering and death.
We too are hiding behind locked doors and are afraid to come out. Jesus knows our fear and wants us to know His resurrection. He says, “Go, tell my disciples that I have risen and that I’m going before them!” Whether we view that resurrection as a physical one or as a spiritual one, the risen Christ tells us not to doubt but to believe!
Like those first disciples, we need to come out of hiding and see the risen Lord. Seeing is believing, and believing is knowing that we must turn and follow Jesus – not “believe the right things about him” – but follow him.
Yes Christ is risen Indeed… Alleluiah