Easter Sunday
We have heard these words many times before … “I know you are looking for Jesus the Crucified, but he is not here. He has been raised, exactly as he promised.” How simply put those words are … it is really too simple for a revelation of truth that changed everything that is known about the human experience.
Jesus was put to death; He died and was buried. By all reasonable expectations, by all humans have the ability to understand, that was the end of it. But it wasn’t. Nothing had ended and because it didn’t end, everything changed.
Three days after his death, a few of those who followed Jesus and believed went to the place where He had been buried. They expected to enter the tomb, they expected to find what every tomb must hold … death! The disintegration of human life, the end of human plans and human hopes.
But what they found was something quite different. The tomb had been broken. It was empty, hollow, and it was powerless. They found no death at all; instead, they were greeted by a messenger with a word of life… “He is not here. He has risen!”
Those words ring with truth. Yes, everything that Jesus had said and promised was now seen as true. The life Jesus lived, a faithful, loving life, it had a force so powerful that it could only become fruitful. Love cannot be buried. Faithfulness cannot be sealed inside a tomb.
The worst that life can hold for a human being … weakness, infidelity, betrayal, suffering, even death, all of it has lost its sting.
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:51, 53-55)
The sting of the prince of darkness and death has been removed. Death has lost its ability to terrify us. No tomb will ever be truly sealed again.
In the resurrection of Christ Jesus, everything has been transformed, everything has changed and been made new. This change, this “Newness” is a constant theme for Easter because we have been given something new in the very fact that something was taken away. Sin and death reign no more!
This Easter Sunday, may we embrace this newness as we look into the tomb and hear those words … “He is not here, He has Risen!”
Easter Blessings,
Deacon Jeff Borski
