THEME: Resurrected Life – come Jesus, Easter in us!!
Christ is Risen. He is Risen indeed! Alleluia.
The Christian celebration of Easter invites us into the heart of the mystery of love. L-O-V-E love that’s why.
We call it the paschal mystery of our faith – the dying and rising of Christ, showing us a God who always brings life from death, in tender love.
Think of the pattern of our lives – life, death, resurrection. It is hard to come at, painful, and beyond any rational understanding.
The resurrection of Jesus invites us to share the joy of the risen Christ with others, it asks us to acknowledge and cherish the gifts that God has given us.
The gift of life helps us reach our goal and that is, ‘to want and to choose what better leads to God deepening God’s life in us’.
How often do we really open our eyes to see the Risen Christ in our midst? How many worship leaders live with that expectation? Maybe this Easter will be an opportunity to establish the belief in our congregations that the resurrected Christ is in our midst—this week and every week! Sometimes we may not even be looking, or we miss the clues.
BOOK: IN THE GARDEN – parts of it
Mary and the disciples saw only signs that Jesus had been taken away; they were not expecting to encounter a living saviour, and so they missed the clues.
Look what Easter Day has enabled in the disciples and also can in us – the day of transformation. The disciples a cowering bunch of only half-understanding fishermen from Galilee, who had, in the last few days, watched in confusion as their leader is taken away, tried and crucified.
All his words and teaching of the previous year’s made null and void – nailed with sorrow and sadness.
These few became the originators of a movement which swept the world, has carried through the centuries and of which we are a part of this day! All because of Easter morn! The journey begins now!
These early followers of Jesus found hope, inspiration and courage. Their faith was alive!
Into their worst moment God breathed ‘peace’ in the resurrected Christ and the confidence that they could now be the bearers of good news for the world. They knew there was a new day to be lived, and on resurrection morning they stepped into it.
Where can you step into life? What do you need to do it?
How many people come to church expecting to encounter a living saviour?
Bishop Jeremy shared this with us: “Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east…”
Gerard Manly-Hopkins, “The Wreck of the Deutschland”
I love that poem by Gerard Manly-Hopkins and especially his use of “Easter” as a verb, “Let him Easter in us.” It’s a prayer that God may be a kind of daybreak in our darkened lives, that God may be a “crimson-cresseted east,” a brazier that burns crimson-hot amidst our cold.
“Easter” as a verb is a wonderful way of thinking about resurrection: a truth that must be lived as much as it is believed.
As you journey through the next few day towards the celebration of the mysteries of the resurrection, I pray that Christ may indeed “Easter in you” and that you will know resurrection life in all its fulness.
Let us pray:
Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
Yours are the only hands with which he can do his work, yours are the only feet with which he can go about the world, yours are the only eyes through which his compassion can shine forth upon a troubled world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
Amen.