Easter always gets second billing. When people think of Christianity they think CROSS…not empty tomb.
Which is just wrong-headed for anyone who is mortal.
I guess it makes a certain twisted sense. Paul said that the cross would be the issue. It was in 60 A.D. and it is today. A “stumbler” or “nonsense”. Yet the same God Who chose women to be the first eyewitnesses to resurrection (not men who were the only ones counted as valid) decided to be very clear on the centrality of the cross.
Deal.
I do not know how it plays out for you…but my guess is it either stumbles you or doesn’t quite make sense. (The whole “cross” thing).
I find it interesting that people wear elaborate crosses around their necks (I do) and are drawn to it. No ones wears an empty seplechre. That’s the story we now have to deal with.
All our arguments that want to predate the cross or stick on it miss the historical fact. He Rose.
He isn’t dead.
In thiose moments when you cried out to Him to be alive you were not wrong. He is with you…NOW.
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March 28, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Mark Studer
We have 40 days of lent, 1 day of easter, the way we live it in the church. It seems to me that we spend a lot more time reflecting on the crucifed Jesus than tha Risen Jesus. Maybe it is because as NT wright puts it, we misunderstand the meaning of the Easter stories, actually oversimplify them. The point is not Jesus rose so one day you will rise also (True as that is). But He is risen, a new world has opened up, we now have to live in it. It is a call to living in a new way in this life, not simply the next, a call to action. “As the Father has sent me, now I send you” (Or in the original greek: get off your ass and get to work) You are to be a living bit of new creation. A new humanity.