: easter isn't tame

Easter isn’t tame.

At the very least, it should be unsettling to think a man who was crucified 2,000 years ago rose from the dead and still lives today. This is what the church professes to believe, isn’t it—that Jesus Christ isn’t buried in some 1^st century tomb, but is alive and with us to the end of the age?

I wonder if we consume ourselves with egg hunts, bunny costumes, and children’s productions at church because we’re afraid to sit in the reality of the resurrection. Are we trying to manage the terrifying truth of a living, breathing, skin-and-bones Jesus by boxing him into pastel-colored packages that are more comfortable to us? This is a dangerous place to be, not because God wants to drain the joy from our Easter weekends but because he wants to give us the ultimate joy of knowing how his death and resurrection matter. 

If an endlessly glorious King really bound his fullness into an eight-pound baby, it matters.

If the perfect Lamb of God really became accursed so you and I could stand holy before a righteous Judge, it matters.

If the Father really offered up His own Son—offered up himself—to prove how unwavering and tangible his love is for the world, it matters.

If the source of Life really gave himself up to death, it matters.

The implications of these truths ring from the heights of the cosmos to the depths of your heart. It means that God is everything he says he is, and he will finish what he started. In some sense, it is already finished because Jesus defeated death by his resurrection. In another sense, though, we anticipate his return—the culmination of all things—when death and sin and shame will be made extinct by the power of Christ. The earth will be made new, judgment will come, the faithful will be raised incorruptible, and he will reign forever.

Everything hinges on the certainty of a risen Christ, a living God.

He has proven with a radical death and resurrection that he will not be tamed. He will not be reduced to cute traditions and games. He will make his glory known, sending witnesses to the ends of the earth, proclaiming, He is alive! 

This message matters. This God matters. Do not miss it.