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Opening Prayer
God, I admit this day challenges my thinking. After all, I have not seen anyone walking around whom we put in a grave. I believe that you honor the struggles with belief and the affirmations beyond what I have come to understand. So, this Easter I enter joyfully the enigmas of Easter. This Easter I turn away from arguments about Easter to live Easter, and the entire Easter Season. I rejoice that Christ lives. I do not understand Christ, but I feel Christ. I cannot explain the resurrection, but I celebrate it. Being with this Friend and celebrating His love for me, that is enough for me, enough for me to rejoice in Jesus, my Beloved. Amen.
Scripture: Mark 16.1-8 (NAB)
1 When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint him. 2 Very early when the sun had risen, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb. 3 They were saying to one another, "Who will roll back the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?" 4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back; it was very large. 5 On entering the tomb they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a white robe, and they were utterly amazed. 6 He said to them, "Do not be amazed! You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Behold the place where they laid him. 7But go and tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.'" 8 Then they went out and fled from the tomb, seized with trembling and bewilderment. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Devotional Comments
Possibly, the greatest enigma of the Resurrection of Christ appears in Romans 8.11. The Romans passage reads, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (ESV). God watching God being crucified, God letting God die, God buried in a tomb without God intervening, God resurrecting God. Mystery! This mystery, however, is pure nonsense to the unspiritual mind. One could inquire, “How could God resurrect God?”
This is where the Trinity teaching answers an enigma. Within God, God being infinite, encompassing all, God encompasses life and death, death and life. These are not dualities in God; rather, God simplifies opposites into a singularity of union. God can die, yet be living. God can live, yet be dying. To say one, is to say the other; to say both, is to say each one.
The Resurrection challenges our perceptions of reality. Tied in with the enigma of union in God is a practical implication. God enters into our life and death, also, at once, for “he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” When does this occur? This occurs now, and each succeeding now, as we perceive time.
Spirit is transforming flesh into a receptacle of life and through simple openness to the Spirit. The beginning of Resurrection is happening now, for those aligned with the Spirit. Flesh is being translated into a more subtle manifestation of inspirited matter.
Therefore, even in us, in you and me, death and life coexists, for the transformation is a process, not an event. God enters into the coinherence of death and life that exists in a unity within our bodies. The mystery of the Resurrection of Jesus is being reenacted in the life of the person joyfully living in Love toward God and neighbor. Amen! Hallelujah!
Suggested Psalm Reading: Psalm 121
Spiritual Exercise
Enjoy Easter!
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