EASTER AND RESURRECTION

On September 7, 1952 my beloved grandmother died aged 59. It was totally unexpected. She had a heart attack and in those days there was little the local physician could do to deal with her blood clot. They gave her brandy to ease her discomfort. Having had two heart attacks and the insertion of stents and quadruple heart bypass surgery I can imagine the progress medical science has had since then. Her death caused me at age 11 to ask many questions. I could not understand how a person so vibrant and alive one moment could be gone the next.

What was the meaning of life and death? What happened to us when we died? What was life all about? It did not seem to me logical that life ended and there was nothing more. Where did we go? Were we just a body or were we something more than a body? We could lose portions of our body and still live so was there something more to us than the physical?

These questions circulated in my mind without any resolution. Nobody was able to answer these questions in my family. I attended church services and Sunday School but I didn’t or couldn’t hear any answers. Three years later I heard these words from a visiting preacher: Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25)

Jesus died and three days later rose from the dead. He defeated death and promised eternal life to all who believed in him and followed him. When I did that I discovered the truth of what St. Paul wrote: “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” (1 Cor,15:42-44)

Easter Sunday is Resurrection Sunday. The first Christians decided to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus by moving their day of worship from the Sabbath to the first day of the week. Every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday. Christ has died, Christ has Risen, Christ will come again. At death Christ comes for us to take us to be with himself. Death is falling asleep in Jesus. We awake after death to life everlasting. This is no material reincarnation but life in a new heaven and a new earth. We will be given new bodies which are recognizable but different just as Jesus after his resurrection was recognizable but different. “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” (1 Cor.29-10)

We are created and recreated by the Spirit of God to live to the praise of his glory. Let us enter into that purpose for our lives today. Alleluia.