Paul’s Message: The Season of Resurrection

Dear Friends,

We are entering the season of resurrection!

The journey of Lent has its challenges. Focusing on our brokenness and our need for God, it can be a little long, and a little dark.

But I would maintain that the season of Easter and resurrection is ever more challenging.

That’s because Lent focuses on where we are and where we have been, but Easter focuses on where God wants to take us.

When Mary Magdalene finally let the gardener go at the empty tomb (the gardener turned out to be the risen Jesus!) she had no idea where life would take her when she started proclaiming “I have seen the Lord!”

The disciples had no idea where God would lead them; they couldn’t imagine what God would accomplish through them (the beginning of the Church with a capital “C”!) after the risen Lord appeared to them behind their fears and locked doors on Easter night.

Given that he had persecuted so many and so passionately the followers of Jesus, the Apostle Paul had no idea of the miles that he would travel around the Roman empire for Jesus the Christ after the living Jesus knocked him off his horse on the road to Damascus.

If Lent is tough because it highlights our limits and failures, Easter can be tougher because it calls us to follow Jesus to vistas unknown.

Where will the risen Jesus lead you?

No matter who you are, no matter how old or young you might be, no matter where you find yourself at this moment, the promise of Easter is that there is more to discover. Even death, proclaims the Gospel, is not an ending. It is a new beginning. Try that on for size.

This month we are invited to step out of our tombs and into the light of day. After our eyes get used to the light, we are invited to recall the rebel Jesus who dared to challenge the powers that be. We are invited to follow him – to embrace like he did, to share like he did, and to risk like he did. Things might look one way (Good Friday despair), but God says go that way (resurrection action).

This Easter gospel is tough. WE might feel the urge to walk back into our tombs (after all, it is the darkness we know…). But Jesus invites us to not only discover but pursue the future unknown. It is challenging, but it is also blessed because it rests in the hands of a living Savior.
Where will the risen Jesus lead you?

Happy Easter everyone. May the season of resurrection lead you to new life.

Peace, Paul.