Christ is Risen!
Christ is Risen Indeed!
I wish I could have met the person who first tied the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus to the spring equinox. I would have thanked them. All around us new life is coming forth. Sap rising in the trees. Flowers blooming.
In fact, it gets down right out of control. So much of spring yard work is actually trying to tame all the wild flora and fauna. I spent five minutes recently trying to shoo a bee back out the kitchen door without getting stung. He wanted to just buzz his new spring energy right up into our space (or maybe we came along and built houses right in his space). I went out a couple weeks ago to do the first mowing of the season and I told my wife, “OK, I’m going out to mow the weeds.” New life is a force to be reckoned with.
So it’s altogether fitting that the resurrection of Jesus is tied to this time of year. Here you have a Savior in Jesus who has spent his whole life always on the move, impossible to pin down. Twelve years old and he slipped out of his parents’ grasp when they visited the temple. Later you might be just as likely to find him preaching on a hillside or walking from town to town with no place to lay his head. Or you might check the local tax collector’s house. Jesus just didn’t keep office hours.
Even when the priests and the Roman authorities got a hold of him…they beat him…they literally nailed him down…and then they sealed his tomb with a stone too large for anyone to roll away on their own. Even after all that, he slipped out of their grasp.
Even more importantly, death could not hold him. Father Charles Wesley celebrated it by penning the words: “Death in vain forbids him rise, Christ has opened paradise.” Jesus would not stay dead. And if you can’t count on the dead to stay dead, what can you count on? Everything has changed. The old equations and reasons won’t work anymore. The resurrection is running loose!
May you and yours enjoy this Day of Resurrection! Thanks be to God for the life of the Risen Savior Jesus Christ!