NORMAL LIFE AND EASTER SUNDAY
Dear Friends,
The grey lockdown began Saturday here in Ontario. Paradoxically, this means that from a social point of view, Good Friday is more like what Easter Sunday is supposed to be, and Easter Sunday will be more like what Good Friday was supposed to be. On Good Friday you could have some people over for a backyard barbecue or go out to a restaurant. On Easter Sunday both of these things will be forbidden. For Christians in Ontario this year, the day you should be quiet and reflective is the day you can socialize and rejoice. The day that you should socialize and rejoice has been made grey and non-social.
But notice a big mistake that I have made. I have compared Friday to Saturday as if Friday is good and Saturday is bad. But to do this is to accept that what we had on Friday was normal and good. It is not. To have no more than 4 at a restaurant table and no more than 30% occupancy in our church building is not good and should not be normal. What should be normal is times where your house is crowded with family, friends and neighbours; a good conversation in a full restaurant; hugging your friend in church and seeing each other without masks; playing pick-up basketball in the park with a large picnic and laughing kids on the side.
That brings me to Easter Sunday - the first one. The death and resurrection of Jesus shows that the world is broken. It seems normal, but it is not really. The world is not as it was originally intended by the Triune God. The world is not what it will finally be. “Finally,” not because of human skill, but by the merciful intervention and re-creation by the Triune God. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Messiah was the beginning of the end of our grey and broken world.
The Triune God, out of the fullness, beauty and glory of His love, made the universe out of nothing. Even more important, He made the earth to be our home, in a homely but glorious universe. He made human beings in His image and after His likeness. Male and female He created us in His image. He blessed us to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, exercising dominion over all things under His all encompassing dominion over us. This was very good.
The Triune God made Adam and Eve to hold fast in love, to tend this Garden earth, and to look forward to walking with God in the cool of the day, day-by-day, while the Holy Spirit moved. Adam and Eve, and the children to be, naked and unashamed, open and unhindered to the Triune God, each other, and all creation. This is what normal was meant to be.
But Adam and Eve wanted to be like god, not under His care. Tragically they thought they could be His equal, even His teacher. In choosing to exalt themselves, a crack, a fissure, a brokenness was formed in them and all of creation was touched by this. As the sole image bearers of the Triune God they occupied a unique place in all creation. As Adam and Eve, their act occupied a unique place in all image bearers. When they bent and broke themselves their fall touched all, just as the fall touched every aspect of who they were. In Adam, all die. This became the new normal, a fallen normal. It was not the normal intended by the Triune God. It is not the normal that the Triune God promised will one day be.
The world now is broken, fallen, but not erased or abandoned. Each of you knows all too well its long history of justice and injustice, beauty and squalor, virtue and evil. You are all too familiar with human beings, including yourself, and the almost equal measure of greatness and monstrousness in us. The Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son of God, is the long promised Saviour. Our true hope was never in our search for god. Our true hope was that He would search for us - but more than us - that He would search for you and me - but more than search - that He would search and save. So on the original Good Friday He died. He died as the promised “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” He died that ordinary, broken, fallen, sinning human beings like you and me might be forgiven. His death accomplished this. It is finished. He turns to the penitent rebel and says, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me, and paradise will be your new end.” You enter into His saving work by humble faith in His grace and mercy. To enter Him, is to have Him enter into you.
In His resurrection, the original normal is surpassed, the current normal is atoned for, and the normal to be inaugurated and guaranteed. So as you live day by day, remember, Christ the hope of glory.
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. Amen.
George+