For Us, Too--April 12, 2024

For Us, Too--April 12, 2024

"Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name." [John 20:30-31]

The story of Easter isn't just good news for Jesus; it's for us, too.

At first blush, of course, we might just think that the story of Sunday's empty tomb is only good news really for Jesus.  He's the one who was raised from the dead, after all.  His tomb has a "Vacancy" sign. His graveclothes are folded and put away.  Jesus is done with dying, but we, on the other hand, we still have to go through the valley of the shadow of death.  

We lose loved ones. We keep vigil at their bedsides and in funeral homes. We make plans for our own deaths.  And we are faced with the power of death every time the news gives us the latest reports of towns reduced to rubble in Gaza or the grinding war in Ukraine.  It just feels like we can't escape death--because we can't.  And so sometimes, hearing that Jesus is risen feels like salt in our wounds, because it sounds like his resurrection is just for him, and we are left still muddling in our mortality.

But John the Gospel writer begs to differ. He hears these resurrection stories of Jesus and doesn't see any of the rest of us as left out--but rather, we are decisively welcomed into them.  We are pulled into Jesus' kind of life, not abandoned to fend for ourselves or left on the outside looking in.  John says that he has given us these stories in the hopes that we'll be drawn to root our faith in this risen Jesus, too, and as a result will be given Jesus' own kind of life.  

The Gospel is a story, in other words, that is meant to do something to us; it will not leave us unchanged.  And in particular, it is a story meant to make us more fully alive because it connects us to Jesus, who is already risen from the dead.  That's the way Jesus' resurrection turns out to be good news for us--we are pulled into his risen life.

In other words, the Easter story is not generic proof that of the existence of an afterlife, or a claim of life after death "in general."  It is a story with a promise--to the extent that we are rooted in Jesus, we are given his risen life, his abundant life, his expansive and authentic life.  And that means, too, that it's not just about quantity of years--it's not just the offer of an infinite number of days we get to live after we die, but about the quality of Jesus' kind of life, too.  Life "in Jesus' name" isn't only about how long it lasts, but about how fully we are alive even now.  We are opened up to Jesus' kind of joy, Jesus' kind of courage, Jesus' kind of compassion, and Jesus' kind of belovedness.  All of these hallmarks of Jesus' own life are given to us as well--these are part of the gift.

The Easter story, then, isn't just a report of Jesus' positive outcome against death, but the offer of life for each of us as well.  We don't just read these words for factual information the way you might read about the Spanish Civil War or Italian High Renaissance in a history book and walk away basically unchanged after you've closed the cover.  We find ourselves pulled into Jesus' own life and our own trust drawn out of us to be placed in him like an anchor that holds us in place through the storm.  We read these stories in order to let them transform us into the embodied presence of Jesus, and so to find that we have become also more fully alive--and more fully ourselves--than ever before.

That's the invitation and the dare (and it is certainly both at once): to let Jesus' take hold of us through our trust and to bring us more completely to life.  This story is for us, too.

Lord Jesus, make us more fully alive.