   | Easter: Resurrection life It is easy to underestimate the impact of that first Easter. After all, we celebrate Easter every year. There is nothing quite like the first time. How can we even imagine the rollercoaster emotions, the confusion and the amazement of those disciples who went out early in the morning to pay their respects to a dead friend? What they found was a complete absence. The tomb was empty and there was not even a body. Only the clothes used for the burial remained. They probably thought that nothing more could surprise them. But their puzzled minds would have still more to fathom. The first appearances of Jesus must have had an air of unreality about them, like wishful thinking or a kind of mirage. It was only when they began to meet together and to share those experiences that the pieces began to fit. That was when they discovered a shared faith and a conviction that the Jesus they had known was not held captive by death. Probably the most convincing witness to the resurrection was the transformative effect of this faith on the lives of those who discovered it. Even though the world was the same as before, they no longer faced it with fear but with hope and joy and a sense of possibility. The point of the resurrection was not simply to show us that a unique human being could be raised from the dead. It was to show how human life could be raised above the confines of this world, how sin and death could be overcome and how the world could be transformed. This work of transformation is inspired by God, but it is through human action that God has chosen to bring the life of heaven to our earth. As we celebrate Easter we can ask ourselves how we can work to enable the ways of Jesus to make a difference to the places where we live. We cannot do this on our own, but only with one another and with God.  |
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