As I walked with our faith community through the days of Lent with an eye on Easter, our journey’s climax, the idea of being an Easter People or People of the Resurrection confronted me and became even more confronting as I began to read Tomas Halik’s “The Afternoon of Christianity” and the Scripture Readings for Easter Day, with the latter suggesting three things that need to happen in our lives if we wish to participate more deeply in the new life of the risen Christ.
The first was raised in 1 Corinthians 5, a simple question, what in our lives is the old and expired yeast that needs to be cleared out? Only by doing this are we able to become changed, transformed into Christ.
Secondly, the Gospel of John offers a further thought for consideration – all that remained in the tomb after Jesus’ resurrection, as discovered by Mary of Magdala, Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, was the burial clothes! So, what in our lives represents burial clothes? Are we willing to shed these so we can rise from the dead and become one with the living,
“wonder-full” Christ? In other words, to “put on Christ.”
Finally, just singing “alleluia” seems to be insufficient, since in Acts of the Apostles we are reminded to embrace and live out Christ’s mission of preaching, teaching, healing, and setting free all who are oppressed.
Rachel Held Evans, in her book Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church offers the following words which seem to resonate with the thoughts articulated by Tomas Halik in his opening chapter:
“Lately I’ve been wondering if a little death and resurrection might be just what church needs right now, if maybe all this talk of waning numbers and shrinking influence means our empire-building days are over, and if maybe that’s a good thing.
Death is something empires worry about, not something gardeners worry about. It’s certainly not something resurrection people worry about.
G. K Chesterton put it this way: “Christendom has had a series of revolutions, and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” I don’t know exactly what this new revolution will look like, but as the centre of Christianity shifts from the global West to the global South and East, and as Christians in the United States are forced to gauge the success of the church by something other than money and power, I hope it looks like altars transforming into tables, gates transforming into open doors, and cure-alls transforming into healing oils. I hope it looks like a kingdom that belongs not to the rich, but to the poor, not to the triumphant but to the meek, not to the culture warriors but to the peacemakers. If Christianity must die, may it die to the old way of dominance and control and be resurrected to the Way of Jesus, the Way of the cross (225-226) …
As the shape of Christianity changes and our churches adapt to a new world, we have a choice: we can drive our hearses around bemoaning every augur of death, or we can trust that the same God who raised Jesus from the dead is busy making something new. As long as Christians are breaking the bread and pouring the wine, as long as we are healing the sick and baptizing sinners, as long as we are preaching the Word and paying attention, the church lives, and Jesus said even the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. We might as well trust him since he knows a thing or two about the way out of the grave.
“New life starts in the dark,” writes Barbara Brown Taylor. “Whether it is a seed in the
ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.” (229)
An Easter People, a “resurrection people”! Are we?

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