Just a reminder, especially for all the self-inflicting faithful who suffered through forty days of Lenten fasts: it’s still Easter.
I know, it’s Thursday. But really. (Of course, in terms of cosmic reality, it really is always Easter and Lent is a sort of game we play to keep us from taking it for granted. But that’s another rant for another day.)
Easter lasts seven weeks in the liturgical year, so don’t leave behind the resurrection yet.
Resurrection means that God is invested in the world God created–not to rescue us out of it, but to transform it for us to inhabit forever.
Image: zirconicusso / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
New Creation is a transformation of the old, not creation out of nothing. Sort of like we, as new creatures in Christ, are transformations of the old, not creation out of nothing.
Of course, the two are related. It’s the God who calls into being the things that are not who is also the God who raises the dead (Rom 4). It’s that kind of power that God has at work in us through God’s Spirit. It is the power to create. It is the power to bring new life.
If there is a Church of God; if there is a people who are in Christ–it is Easter.
Of course, the trick in all this is that Easter comes by way of Good Friday. So our Easter triumph is the paradoxical triumphal-procession of the way of the cross. Ours is a resurrection through crucifixion.
But that’s just why we need the resurrection and its power. This is not a mere slavish existence to get to the end of our dreaded, drudging task.
Our participation in God’s commitment to transform the world is suffused with hope. We pour ourselves out in Christ-like, God-reflecting love. And we can only hope and trust as “I die daily,” the “life of Christ will be at work” in every corner of this world to which we give ourselves.
It’s Easter. We celebrate. We celebrate not the absence of scars, but their transformation and glorification. We celebrate. We celebrate new life from the old, new creation from the old.
And we make that new real in the present because the future has already begun.
So very good … Really appreciated (among several other excellent thoughts) this “the trick in all this is that Easter comes by way of Good Friday. So our Easter triumph is the paradoxical triumphal-procession of the way of the cross. Ours is a resurrection through crucifixion.”
Reminds me of Paul saying that “God always leads us in triumph in Christ … a sweet aroma” (2 Cor. 2:14). The Roman Triumph led a procession of slaves to death. We are being led (if followers of Christ) every day to crucifixion, a sacrifice that creates a sweet aroma (cf. Phil. 4:18). But that humiliation results in the true Triumph of resurrection.
Thanks.
Christ is risen!
I love your site, and the ideas you bring.
I am passionate about Easter being 50 days.
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Also see http://liturgy.co.nz/easter-is-fifty-days/9321
Easter Season blessings
Bosco