Living as Resurrection People
Often as Christians, we refer to ourselves as a resurrection people. Sometimes, we interpret that to mean that we can bypass Good Friday and Holy Saturday. But the reality is that both in terms of the calendar and in terms of just how life works, we can’t skip the pain and grief of those days and just go to the resurrection.
But what it means to be a resurrection people is that even in the midst of lamentation and suffering, we hold onto the hope of new life. It means that even in the pit of despair, we nurture the little seedlings of hope that appear. It means that even when all is dark, we remain open to God’s mysterious workings.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, had witnessed God's presence in her life and in the life of Jesus. I wonder if, even in the midst of Jesus’ death, she had a hope stirring in her heart that somehow, someway God would make it right. I wonder if even in the midst of her pain and grief, a small part of her thought that somehow God would bring new life?
This is another one of those things that is left up to our imagination: we don’t know how Jesus’ mother felt after the resurrection, but of course, we can imagine because how many of us have played in our head a video of how we would react if a dead loved one suddenly came back into our lives. The disbelief, the joy, the hope.
But even after Jesus is resurrected, things do not return to what it was before. He is no longer dead, but he would no longer be physically present in the same way he was before. The resurrection brings newness of life and renewed hope, but it also solidifies that everything has changed. There is no going back to the before times.
As resurrection people, we trust and believe that God acts in our world. But being a resurrection people means doing both a lot of waiting and acting: because while we affirm the resurrection of Jesus, we are still waiting for God to resurrect and heal our broken and violent world. And yet we know God calls us to act as if the empire and death has already been defeated, because in the resurrection, they have been.
As resurrection people, we believe that Jesus’ resurrection is another manifestation of God’s acting in our world but it was not the end of God’s involvement in our world. So even as we grieve, as we scream out to God in anger and in pain at all the injustices in our world, we hold within our hearts a small hope of God’s continuing action.
Holding onto the resurrection means living into the truth that Jesus’ defeat of death changes everything: it means rejecting violence and oppression. It means rejecting the values of the empire and embracing the kingdom of God: which is built on equality and justice.
As resurrection people, we, like Mary, allow ourselves to experience the grief and sorrow of Good Friday and Holy Saturday, but we do so while holding onto hope in a God who is constantly bringing new life.
Image: of a tomb, a very bright light bursting forth. Text: What does it mean to live as Resurrection People?