The resurrection of Christ doesn’t have just one thing to teach us – it is rich with many layers of meaning. It served to validate for the earliest Jesus followers that the God who had been so clearly at work in Jesus’ life did not abandon him at the crucifixion and entombment. This turned the ragtag Jesus followers from momentary cowardice to courage literally overnight. And, of course, seeing a guy who was dead-now-resurrected can certainly give someone hope in the life to come, which it certainly did and still does. There is a movie that just came out this week called Heaven is for Real – a story about a little boy who had a profound experience of life after death and lived to tell about it. The kind of hopeful conversation it has generated tells us that people long to have confidence that there is life after life. The resurrection certainly provides that. Aside: I will be teaching a series beginning April 27 called Heaven is for Real? We’ll cover all sorts of stuff, including how the concept of heaven developed, hell, metaphors of heaven, what others say, etc.
I have no doubt that the earliest followers of Jesus experienced his resurrection. While there is mystery about exactly what happened, what did take place made such a difference that we are still talking about Jesus even though countless other “messiah” type communities from the first century died out quickly. The biblical account of Jesus’ resurrection is robust. Take a look for yourself at these encounters people had with Jesus after he was no longer in the tomb:
- Jesus appears on numerous occasions to a range of people. (Mark 16:9-20)
- Jesus’ mother, Mary, Mary Magdalene, and another woman, Salome encounter the risen Jesus. (Matthew 28:8-10; John 20:1-18)
- Two disciples meet Jesus on their way to the village of Emmaus. (Luke 24:13-35)
- Jesus appears to the disciples, where he ate with them. (Luke 24:36-49; John 20:19-23)
- The disciple, Thomas, doubts the resurrection until he touches Jesus for himself (John 20:24-29)
- The disciples see Jesus on a mountaintop in Galilee and were commissioned by him to spread the Good News. (Matthew 28-16-20)
- The disciples, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. (John 21:1-25)
- 500+ people see Jesus weeks after Easter (1 Corinthians 15:1-11)
- Jesus appears to the disciples for forty days, and then ascends into heaven. (Acts 1:1-11)
- Jesus appears to Saul (who changed his name to Paul) as a blinding light (Acts 9:19)
- Jesus appears to John while exiled on the island of Patmos (Revelation 1:1-20)
Paul’s life wasn’t radically changed because he had an intellectual appreciation for the historical reality of the resurrection of Christ. His life was completely transformed because he experienced the resurrected Christ along with all of his education on theological stuff.
In the book of acts, he regularly speaks about God leading him to do this or that. A dynamic relationship of God is what made life fundamentally better and richer. His obsession was to help people discover the same thing he had. He couldn’t help himself. This new way of being was a learned process that helped him be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it id with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength (Philippians 4:11-13, NLT). Paul speaks here of an active experience – THROUGH Christ who GIVES him strength. Resurrected Christ realized in his everyday experience.
Broaden this out a step, and what we’re really talking about is an active relationship with God. What Christ does for us is put a face on it, a voice to it, teachings that help us get it, an example to follow.
The way to experience the reality of the resurrection of Christ is to learn to be present to God at all times, in all circumstances. This way of being is very natural, but doesn’t come naturally because we have been conditioned by the world we live in to adopt a different way which competes all the time for our allegiance. This is a human condition issue that deafens our ears, blinds our eyes, hardens our hearts, clouds our minds, and incapacitates our hands and feet to be fully open to the abundant, overwhelming presence of God that we miss most of the time.
Getting back to the very natural-yet-feels-unnatural way of being that Jesus taught and embodied is not a quick process. There are new behaviors to learn. Old habits to break. New muscles to train and develop. Noise that takes time to silence. And, while it is not easy, the beautiful truth is that we can invest our lifetime growing in it, loving it, and still have room for more discovery and depth.
For now, I have just a few simply concepts that I want to invite you to embrace. I offer no money back guarantee, but I do believe these will help you realize the resurrection of Christ in your life instead of just holding it as an interesting intellectual pursuit.
I choose to walk with God today. Jesus’ brother, James, told his audience, “Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world” (James 4:8, NLT). Centuries ago, James knew that life is lived in a tension between being conformed to this world’s pattern or that of God. Start your day by simply saying “I choose to walk with God today.” Write it out and put it on your bathroom mirror, your car’s dashboard, your cell phone case, your popcorn popper. The point is to keep this at the forefront of your attention, because if you don’t, you won’t. You will begin to experience Christ resurrected more and more if you first choose to live in the reality of God’s active presence around you all the time.
Pray for your “Dozen”. At any given time, you likely interact with somewhere between 8-15 people on a very regular basis. For a season, those “dozen” share your breathing space. Some are family members, some are coworkers, some are store clerks you’ve gotten to know, some are friends, some are fellow parents you know through your kids’ activities. I am asking you to literally write down their names and pray for them every day, asking God to bless them with God’s love, and for the awareness to see an opportunity to love or serve them somehow. That’s it. No agenda to come to church or sign on the dotted line for Jesus for their afterlife insurance. Just pray for them to be blessed by God, and to give you the awareness to love or serve them should the opportunity arise. James said, “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results” (James 5:16, NLT). When you pray for them, it is impossible to know how the Spirit of God responds to it – but it is undoubtedly good. And what it will do to you is incredible. As the legendary pastor Oswald Chambers wrote, “It is not so true that "prayer changes things" as that prayer changes me and I change things. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of Redemption alters the way in which a man looks at things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man’s disposition.” Prayer will have an impact on your dozen, but the biggest impact will show up in you – openness to love and serve, empathy toward those around you, and an increasing capacity to hear God speak to you. You will have an increased experience of Christ alive as you feel led to conversations, to serve, to help, to love, to forgive, to be thankful, to sow joy – the list is endless and endlessly beautiful.
Don’t be stupid. In a recent book by Stanley Bing, the pen name of an executive with CBS on learning the essentials of an MBA without the classroom experience or tuition, he noted the importance of not being stupid. Or at least not appearing to be stupid. “Stupid people may in fact become successful, but people who appear stupid generally do not.” He was then asked if he had ever done something really stupid. He then recounted a time early in his career when his boss would occasionally have a cocktail party with his staff. Bing learned that there was such a thing as “free scotch” at such events, and helped himself a little too much on one occasion. Pretty well impaired, he went up to the boss, gave him a hug, and said, “This is a f#$%ing great party!” At which his gracious boos simply said, it’s time for you to go home…. Bing spent an entire chapter just talking about not being stupid, which means we must have a tendency toward being somewhat stupid without being checked! If you do not spend any time learning more about the way of Jesus, there is a good chance you are going to do something stupid while thinking you may be perfectly Christian about it. There is no shortage of people who identify themselves as Christians who spend little or no time learning what that means who do lots of stupid things that don’t match up with Jesus at all. Their language is totally unclassy. Some are so greedy that they manage to consume almost all of their personal resources, leaving barely a scrap for the most desperate people in the world. The danger of not continuing to learn about the depth of God – which is found in the Way of Jesus – is that we will simply become only slightly improved versions of ourselves instead of the transformed version God has in mind, where we become more and more our True Selves as Paul did, who put away childish things and opted instead for love.
All of this is related to realizing the resurrected Christ in a daily way. Think of it like building a house with your life. In one version, where you don’t really allow much room for God to inform you, you end up with a shack, more or less. But in the other, you end up with a masterpiece. Paul says is this way to the Corinthian church: Anyone who builds on that foundation [of Christ] may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames (1 Corinthians 3:12-15, NLT). Go for the gold, silver and jewels! Why wouldn’t you?
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