Pastor Hugh's Monthly Meditation
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EASTER IS MORE THAN A DAY,
IT’S A WAY OF LIFE!
Each Easter morning, during worship, Christians around the world exchange that familiar greeting, “The Lord is risen!” “He is risen indeed! Alleluia!” This was the way the early Christians greeted one another. That which gave them hope, that shaped their lives, was their trust in the promise that the Lord is risen—a continuously present-tense reality
Click on image to see a larger view of Rubens’ “The Resurrection of Christ”, in a separate window.
It seem to me that, for many of us, this ancient greeting has lost its ability to surprise—its shock value. Certainly when it was first heard it challenged the very notion that Jesus’ disciples had of life and death. The concrete reality of death—that is the death of their Master—was shattered by a reality that knew no limit—his resurrection.
The picture here, entitled “The Resurrection of Christ,” is by Pieter Pauwel Rubens (born 1577, died 1640). Rubens painted this as a part of a triptych, a three paneled work, in 1611. (Interestingly, this is the same year that the King James Bible was first printed.) Displayed here is the center panel.
When I first saw this painting I was struck by the contrast between the powerfully radiant risen Lord emerging from his tomb and the cowering soldiers who had been given the task of guarding the tomb. Jesus is glowing with a supernatural light while the soldiers are in relative darkness. How true.
When we hear those words, “The Lord is risen,” do still challenge our reality of life and death? Are we set aglow by what they promise? Do they shape who we are and how we live our lives? You see, Easter is more than one Sunday a year where we finally get to sing joyful songs and wear spring like outfits. Easter is a way of life. The resurrection is not some historic oddity locked away in an impenetrable past. It is an eternal present—both time-wise and gift-wise. And we can respond to its reality by recoiling from it, by being indifferent to it, or by whole-heartedly embracing it. It is in the embrace that we are changed.
Two years ago the name, Ashley Smith, was familiar to most of us. To refresh our memory, she is the woman who was taken hostage by Brian Nichols early in the morning on March 12, 2005. Nichols was wanted by the police for a shooting spree in an Atlanta courthouse that had left four dead.
Prior to meeting Nichols, Ashley Smith had known hard times and personal tragedy, including holding her husband in her arms as he bled to death from knife wounds. But she had also known the Risen Lord. And it was her new-found faith that quite literally saved her. It gave her the strength and vision to see Nichols not as a God-forsaken animal, someone who was already dead, but to see him as a brother in Christ, loved by God, who still had a purpose to his life. She saw what he couldn’t. Wow!
I imagine Ashley, upon hearing those words, “The Lord is risen,” saying, “I know! He’s risen, in me!” Ashley, too, was glowing. Alleluia.
Hugh R. B. Haffenreffer
Pastor
April 2007
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