Where are you?

 

Where are you in your relationship with Christ this Resurrection Sunday?   Are you dining at the Passover supper with Jesus- blissfully unaware of what you’ll soon be called to do?  Do you know that something is coming, but you’re focused more on who is sitting where?  Are you looking for someone to overturn the oppressive government or do you search for a servant king? Maybe you’re in the garden, fighting to stay awake.  You know what you’ve been told to do and yet you struggle to obey.  Maybe you’ve seen the innocent mistreated and you react in anger and violence rather than allowing God to bring justice. Perhaps you’ve just experienced the death of your Rabbi, teacher and friend.  You don’t know what to do and so you hide from this world and wait until things are clearer.  You protect yourself by denying your relationship.   Maybe you’ve seen the risen Messiah.  You have touched his hands and feet.  Now he is telling you that you will suffer the same.  Will you accept the call?  Do you still sometimes wonder- but what about him?  Why am I called to this and he is not? In the span of just days, the disciples’ lives were transformed.  They had responded to Jesus when he first called them, but now it was real.  This was more than just following and watching miracles.  They were now commanded to go and do.  They’d had three years to prepare for this day, and yet it still caught them by surprise.  This wasn’t the Messiah they’d expected.  Though scripture had prophesied everything, they had still looked for different clues.   Are we looking for a religion that will serve us or are we looking for a Messiah that we will serve?  I think often, just as the disciples were, we are caught by surprise.  Everything is there in scripture, laid out for us, and yet… we just don’t see it.  We want the miracles, we want the healings… but we don’t want the cross.  It’s just too hard.  It’s too heavy a burden to bear.   What happens when you seek a Christ without the cross?

Do you find yourself like the disciples did discussing who finds favor with God.  Are you wanting an all powerful king so desperately that you turn away when the cross gets heavy, not waiting for the relief of the weight that God will provide you?  Do you find yourself looking only for miracles and healings- a Messiah that restores, but doesn’t redeem?   The cross is critical if we are going to follow Christ.  In his brutal, agonizing, crucifixion we are redeemed and restored; it is our sin that is washed away.  We cannot accept Christ without the cross.  This is the dividing line between followers of Christ and those of other religions.  There are not many faiths that deny the existence of Jesus.  Most will also confirm the miracles and healings he carried out.  The differences then lay in whether or not you accept Jesus as part of the trinity and God’s only begotten son and whether or not you believe that it was this Son of God and Son of Man who died on the cross and rose from the grave.  Was it someone else up there on the cross?  Does God love us enough to sacrifice a part of himself?   The disciples saw their Rabbi on the cross and in the tomb- there was no doubt in their minds that he was dead.  Saturday they found themselves grief stricken and confused.  Was this all there was to the Messiah?  They were taken by surprise when the women returned from the tomb early on Sunday claiming it was empty and Christ was risen.  Thomas gets a bad rap, but really, they all had doubts until they saw him themselves.  This resurrected Savior did not leave them believing that Jesus was simply near death on the cross.  He bore the scars and yet his body was restored and radiant.  The sight of their resurrected Lord gave them the courage to spread the Gospel even at the risk of their lives.  Just a day before this would not have been the case.  They saw him on the cross.  But that was not the end they feared.   Do you believe the tomb is empty?  If we believe these things then we must also believe the words he commanded.  We must also carry our crosses and follow him.   I pray that you will follow the risen Messiah; the Christ who bore the weight of our sins on the cross.  By his wounds we are healed, but what a mighty God we serve- he did not stay wounded.  He is risen!!