Easter is coming...

Easter is coming two weeks from today.

Are you scared?

That's a silly question, isn't it? Easter doesn’t seem very dangerous. Fluffy bunnies and baskets of chocolate for kids. Pretty colored eggs. Not the sorts of things that would scare you, are they? But to me, Easter is the most dangerous of all “Holy Days”. It’s dangerous because if you believe in Easter it will reorder everything about your life. It’s not something that you can say that you believe and then just ignore. Either Jesus rose from the dead or He didn’t. He either was who He said He was or He wasn’t. There really isn’t much middle ground between the two. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead He is way easier to trivialize and ignore. His teachings can be admired, but no one really expects you to follow them. But if He did rise…well that would change everything. Maybe Philip Yancey said it best,

"In many respects I find an unresurrected Jesus easier to accept. Easter makes him dangerous. Because of Easter, I have to listen to his extravagant claims and can no longer pick and choose from his sayings. Moreover, Easter means he must be loose out there somewhere."

But in the danger also lies hope. A God who can rise from the dead is never faced with a situation that He cannot “resurrect”. Some of the places we find ourselves in life are for all intents and purposes, “dead”. But that doesn’t limit a Jesus who beat death. In the book 444 Surprising Quotes about Jesus, Scottish Theologian John Macquarrie says,

"The resurrection means that he can bring forth the new. His working never comes to an end, for he can always open up a new possibility ... The cross speaks of God standing with his creatures in the flux of events, the resurrection speaks of his always being ahead of events. Both symbols seem essential to the idea of God."

So my hope for you as you go through your Sunday and begin working your way toward Easter is that you see both the danger and the hope that come from an empty tomb. The danger is that it will shake every foundation on which you build your life. The hope is that what He allows you to rebuild will finally be solid. May God fill you today with the dangerous hope of the resurrection. He is “out there somewhere…”