What difference does the resurrection of Jesus make in our lives?
We know the story. We reviewed it at Easter. But do we know its death-defeating truth it shares? Do we know what life after resurrection looks like . . . for us?
This Sunday marks the fifty days after Easter. It is Pentecost Sunday. It is a good wake-up call to find out if what we celebrated on Easter brought new life the way God intended.
Today, we are still more huddled in our homes than we want, much like the disciples were on that day. We still fear so much. Will vaccines save us? Will masks? Will social distancing stay in our vocabulary and practice while our very souls wither from it?
So what does Pentecost have to say to our isolated, fearful, hope-starved hearts?
Remember how it happened? There was a rushing wind, an unseen presence that was no less real than the hands they clenched in front of them. There was a burning fire, an igniting passion. Who cares whether this was visible or metaphorical? The unexplainable but very present existence of Jesus himself in a force so recognizable that the disciples burst out of their locked room because they found their voice.
Or rather, they tasted resurrection power. This was what Jesus had been preparing them for. This was what his healings pointed to. This was why he didn’t protest against his enemies. This was why he prayed in Gethsemane and could not take another way. This was about the will of God coming to earth. And it became a revolution, a turning around, an upside-down kingdom where the only power that mattered was resurrection power.
We live on the other side of that empowerment. But do we live in it?
We cannot conjure this up with try harder positivism. This is Jesus, himself, coming to us with a rush and passion we can’t will for ourselves. Jesus wakes us up to life after resurrection. We walk out of the closed tombs of I can’t and I fear and I don’t know how. We let the empowering, very present, real spirit of the living Christ do his revolutionary work in us so that we become his force of new life for this very needy time.
Is there life after resurrection? Yes. But it is a different life. Are we living the difference? Can we?
That is the question we must answer this Pentecost. But Jesus has already answered by coming all the way through death to NEW life.
This coming Pentecost Sunday may the prayer of our hearts be,
Even so Lord, come to me
In the fullness of your resurrection power!
Open whatever I think is too hard for me..
May I live the life you came to infuse
With resurrection life
So that I can be your empowered servant
For this present age
The way your first disciples were
For theirs.
Amen!
Pictures: Pixaby,Geralt, Jeff Jacobs