Lent: At the Crux

Belgium is a country that’s a lot like Canada.  Unless you live there no one pays it much attention.  This week that changed. Terrorist bombs ripped through the airport and train station.  The early word is that the attacks came in response to the recent arrest of a suspect related to the Paris attacks last year.

There’s no question: these are dark days. I don’t mean to be a doomsayer but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion.  Some suggest that this is a new era of depravity, but I’m of the mind that nothing new is under the sun.  The truth is, this has always been the way of things. I don’t believe that life in the days of Ganghis Kahn or Alexander the Great or... was any less worse than today. And I don’t pine for the more gentile days when the Black Plague was ravaging Europe; wiping out 60% of the population. If there’s a difference it’s that we’re constantly aware of what’s happening in every corner of the globe at every second. When you put it all together, it ends up like a tidal wave of bad news. 

How Do We Respond?  

Whatever the case we’re still left wondering how we are to respond to the problem of evil. I think the scripture reading this week gives the answer. In Acts 10 Peter is at the house of a man named Corneilus.  As he speaks with the gathered crowd he recounts again the events he had recently witnessed: 

You know what has happened... how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power... We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen.

The story of Jesus could have been like so many others.  A corrupt system conspiring to work it’s evil. Innocent people cut down in the prime of their life.  The story of Jesus could have been like every other story, were it not for the unexpected tag at the end of Peter’s account:

...but God raised him from the dead on the third day.

Now that’s a twist.  No one was expecting that.  “They killed him.” Yes. “Hanging him on a cross”. Dime a dozen. “But God raised him from the dead”  Whatchu talkin’ bout Willis?

The truth is, people don’t rise from the dead.  When Rome says you’re dead, you’re dead. But Peter, who says he was was a witness to these things, was telling this crew that on this day and in this person the normal course of events were altered.  God, it seems, raised this Jesus from the dead.

And this is the crux of the matter. Was Peter right? If he wasn’t, Paul would later say that those who believe he was should be pitied above all men. Fools, the whole lot.  But if he was, well then what? What could the resurrection of a Galilean man be saying?  In half a page, I’ll not scratch even the surface, but I do have two thoughts to offer, both of which relate back to where we began.

Let's Talk about Life

First, the resurrection tells us God’s intention for evil. In the Jewish and Roman leaders evil was at work.  The whole story is one of humanity at its worst.  A petrie dish teeming with darkness and corruption. And the outcome of it all was death.  From the scriptures perspective, that’s always the outcome of evil. We see it in Brussels and we see it in our relationships. When sin and darkness is at work, death is sure to follow. But when Jesus rose from the dead, it was like a door was opening to a new way.  In the face of death, Jesus was announcing life.  It was God declaration to a sin sick world: “I’ve come to bring life and life to the full”.  The resurrection then is what God says to evil.  And what he began to say on that first resurrection day he promises to bring to fulfillment at histories culmination. One day, evil will be fully overcome.  If it’s not, we who believe it will should be pitied among all men.  Fools for clinging to such a wistful hope. 

A Marching Order

But that’s not all the resurrection says. For most the resurrection is usually just a past event which points to a future reality.  But that’s only partly true.  The fuller truth is that the resurrection is also a road map for the present. Which brings us to the second thing: the resurrection of Jesus is also trying to tell us the way we are to live today. In a world marked with sin and death, followers of the Resurrected One, are to be about resurrection life.  Simply put: Where there is death (in all it’s gnarly forms) we seek to bring life.  In the face of a world filled with refugees and Brussels, wacko politicians and corrupt corporations our mandate is clear: be a people of light, love and life. 

At the Crux

This weekend, we arrive again at the crux of that matter.   Which then makes this next sentence eminently logical.  If you are looking for one word to describe the whole of your Christian life this is it: resurrection.  In Jesus you follow a resurrected saviour who speaks resurrection hope in the face of death, who provides you with resurrection life and who calls you to the resurrection way. 

Maybe I am a fool, but in the face of evil I can’t think of a better way.

He is risen.