resurrection

What Is Easter About?

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Easter is more than a 4 day long weekend and an opportunity for a short holiday, special as that is.

It is more than chocolate eggs and bunnies, and I enjoy chocolate as much as anybody.

Easter is about the ultimate revelation of what life is about. So of course our culture reacts to that by focusing on the chocolate.

To understand why this is important, we need to travel back in time to a couple of thousand years ago and to the city of Jerusalem. On the eve of the annual Passover festival, a religious teacher called Jesus was put to death on a cross. Three years of public teaching about God had got him into trouble with the authorities, so they did what dictators always do, they had him killed. Problem solved.

That was the Friday, but by Sunday an incredible thing had happened. Jesus’s followers were claiming that Jesus was alive. Even back then, people understood that dead people do not normally come back to life.

Looking back at the reports of the events of that weekend, there are 4 alternatives;

1. Jesus was not really dead. Some people think that in the cool of the cave Jesus somehow revived. The Roman army was the most ruthless and efficient killing organisation of its time. When they killed you, you stayed dead. They did not make mistakes.

2. The disciples stole the body and perpetrated a huge hoax on humanity. The Twelve apostles, (minus Judas who suicided) suffered horrendous torture and death. Would you die for a lie?

3. The authorities stole the body. They had no interest in promoting christianity and could have squashed the movement by simply producing the body.

4. Jesus really is alive. This fits what we know about the early church. Hundreds of followers of Jesus were galvanised by their own meetings with the risen Christ or by reports of people they knew. Their lives were changed for the better, their communities were changed, and in a couple of generations, the whole Roman Empire was changed.

Jesus promised that those who believe in Him, who give Him their loyalty and obedience, they will not die but live for ever. We don’t know exactly what that looks like, but we do know that for followers of Jesus, the next life will be even better than this life. There will be no sadness, fighting, disease or death.

Easter is a time of celebration and joy for christians around the world. Give is a go. Every church in town will be pleased to welcome you.

I Buried My Grandson Today

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baby-feet

I buried my grandson today.

We huddled as an extended family on a cold winter’s day and prayed then placed the body of Aaron Emmanuel Tolson in the ground. I looked around at my daughter and son-in-law again burying a baby who seemed to have been stolen from them; at my wife and my daughter’s in-laws and our “adopted family” members. We will all process this tragedy in different ways, but all in the light of our faith in a good God.

When we had said all that needed to be said, and cried and hugged and wordlessly expressed powerful love for one another, we left and came home to our church. We ate morning tea and talked and chatted about nothing much; we just hung out together because we are family.

I buried my grandson today.

I remember when Susannah first came and told us she was pregnant again. We were so excited. After the loss of her first child, Henry, who was still-born, surely now we could look forward to a happy, healthy, lively addition to our family.

We were under strict instructions to keep it quiet as she had only just taken over the ballet school. She was afraid parents might pull their girls out, thinking they would be left high and dry by a pregnant dance teacher who was not up to the job. But after a few weeks, everyone knew anyway, as they do in a  small town.

In April it was discovered that there may be a development problem with the baby. The news was devastating, and at first it seemed like there was only a small chance of the baby surviving. Then people started to pray, big miracle faith-full prayers, and a neo-natal surgeon said there was a good chance. There would be inconvenience, maybe a month of living away from home to be near the hospital before the birth, and an unknown future after that.

I buried my grandson today.

But then, seven weeks too early, Susannah started labour. They gave her drugs to stop it, and they seemed to work. An air ambulance was flown up from Sydney and she was flown to Newcastle. It was a rush to get her there in time because the drugs had stopped working and she was in full-on labour all the way.

As soon as Aaron was born he was rushed to NICU, the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit. Machines and monitors and tubes and wires were hooked up to every part of his body.

His little lungs were too under-developed to get enough oxygen into his body. No matter what they did, he just couldn’t get that oxygen into his blood stream.

We arrived in the evening, not knowing what to expect. Susannah had just been told that he wasn’t going to make it. They took us all up to the NICU and proceeded to move all the tubes and wires so she could hold the baby.

For the next few hours she held that baby and stroked him and told him that he was loved and sang to him. As she did that, the numbers on the monitors seemed to take a turn for the better. Susannah and James poured love into that little baby in the best way they could.

I watched and saw two people who love one another grow strong in caring for this tiny life. I saw a miracle in that room, although not the one we so desperately wanted.

A photographer came and took some really nice photos. At one stage she asked Susannah to life Aaron’s leg. As if he had trained all his life for this moment, he pointed his toes- a true dancer.

We prayed and handed him over to the Lord. A little while later the nurse put a stethoscope to his chest and said in the tiniest voice, “There’s no heartbeat.” The nurse practitioner and the nurses grabbed a tissue each.

I buried my grandson today.

It must have cost tens of thousands of dollars to give Aaron a chance at life. I thought about that in the shower this morning as I tried to come to terms with what would happen in a couple of hours. The cost of bringing a specialist plane from Sydney to Narrabri, then down to Newcastle. The ambulances. The millions of dollars of equipment in NICU and the staff who were dedicated to his care.

Then I thought of how politicians in Queensland are contemplating abortion without restriction in a state that is literally a two hour drive from my home. It is so contradictory that we can at the same time spend huge amounts of money to save a baby’s life but also hold on to the myth that another baby who might be inconvenient can be disposed of without consequence. I know that it is tough for a mother to go through grief with all the support in the world, but how tough would it be if there was no support, no value on your baby’s life?

I buried my grandson today.

I know in my heart that one day I will see him again, not in a body that is too weak to cope, but in a new body, a resurrected body.

 

 

 

Where Was Jesus on Saturday?

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tomb_stone

It’s Easter Saturday (more accurately Holy Saturday), the space between the sorrow of Good Friday and the joy of Easter.

What was Jesus doing on Saturday?

Maybe we should start with the why of Easter Saturday. In theory Jesus could have resurrected any time after His heart stopped beating. “It is finished!” could have been followed with “Surprise!” as He got down from the cross in His new body.

In Jewish tradition, it was not possible to say that a person’s spirit had truly left their body until the third day after their death. Remember that they counted the day that something happened as the first day. So Jesus rose on the Sunday, the third day after His death.

The delay was for our benefit, so that we would know for sure that He had died on the cross, not merely stunned as some people try to make out. Jesus’ death was truly beyond doubt. Not too many people survived a crucifixion, which in Jesus’ case included a spear thrust through His side.

So the delay was for our benefit, that we would know that the death was real and the resurrection was real.

Jesus’ body remained in the tomb, as far as we know. The opening was sealed and guarded by soldiers in case someone stole the body. They remained there until the events of the resurrection on Sunday morning (see Matthew 28:1-6).

Jesus’ spirit presumably returned to the Father for some high fives and celebration at the completion of the great rescue plan.

In 1 Peter 3:19 we are told that after His death “He went and preached to the spirits in prison.” It is not clear who these spirits are or what He preached to them about or why this happened. But we do know that this particular event happened outside of the constraints of physical time.

Regardless, we do know that Jesus died on Good Friday at the hands of well trained and experienced executioners. We know that He was, by any measure, dead. When He died He took the sins of the world and put them to death also, lifting from us the burden of guilt.

He invites us all to live in resurrection life, being a part of His Kingdom for ever.

 

 

Muslim Woman Rises from the Dead After 2 Days in Morgue

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From Christian Today

Muslim Woman Rises from the Dead After 2 Days in Morgue, Tells Family Jesus Brought Her Back to Life

Pixabay

 

This Muslim woman was pronounced dead and lying cold in a morgue in Moscow, Russia for two days already.

Suddenly, she returned to life and stepped out of the hospital gurney!

Based on her testimony, the woman, named Sabina, says while she was lying at the morgue surrounded by corpses, she had a vision of a tree growing at the top of the well, according to Assist News.

From its trunk, a branch moved toward her. The branch then changed into flesh as Sabina heard the words, “If you grab onto my hand, I will bring you back to life.”

Sabina did as instructed. She then woke up and heard the voices of doctors searching for a missing cadaver—hers.

“I’m alive. Don’t worry,” she shouted at the frightened doctors.

The medical staff offered her water, food and clothes, and arranged for her transport to a university research hospital in Moscow, where she had traveled from Central Asia to visit her imprisoned son.

Mystified hospital personnel could not explain how Sabina returned to life after spending two days in a coma and then two more days in the morgue.

When she returned to her home somewhere in Central Asia, Sabina had another big surprise for her family. “There’s somewhere I have to go,” she told her daughters.

She headed for a Pentecostal church and promptly professed her faith in Jesus Christ, leaving behind her Muslim faith.

The hand that lifted her from the gurney at the morgue, returning her to life, unmistakeably belongs to Jesus. That’s why she readily embraced Him upon returning home in gratitude for His saving grace.

After she told her six daughters and a son about how she came back to life, they all converted to Christianity.

Last year, Sabina, who is now 63 years old, saw her 92-year-old mother and a niece also embracing Jesus.

More recently, Sabina’s oldest daughter—who just this summer was highly critical of Christianity—also turned to Jesus.

Celebrate Life

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risen5815The heart of Christianity is the celebration of Jesus’ death and resurrection in the season called Easter.

On Good Friday we remember that Jesus died on the cross and that His death purchased the redemption of everyone who puts their faith in Him.

On Easter Sunday we celebrate the most amazing fact of history- Jesus is no longer dead, but He is alive. Not alive in a diminished “living dead” kind of way but in a new enhanced kind of way.

The Christian conviction is that followers of Jesus will also be raised to eternal life, to a new life with Christ.

From the earliest days of the church Christians have celebrated this reality. The period from the evening of Holy Thursday through to Easter Sunday was called the “Great Three Days.” New converts were baptised on Easter morning to enter their new life on the very day that Christ was raised to life. In time the Easter season was stretched to cover the full 50 days to Pentecost- after all this is a big fact worth celebrating to the max!

Some people don’t like the celebration of Easter because of its similarities to pagan myths. For example, there is a belief that the Old Testament person Nimrod became a false god and was worshipped in the Ancient Near East because after his death some people claimed he had come back to life in the form of his illegitimate son. They also say that Christmas is pagan becasue it is the celebration of Nimrod’s birth not Jesus’.

The existence of false celebrations does not make the real thing false. In science it is said that “correlation does not imply causation”- in other words, the fact that two different things seem related it doesn’t necessarily mean that one causes the other.

Let me ask you this. Does the existence of fake $20 notes mean that you should reject real $20 notes?

The presence of false resurrection myths should not stop us celebrating the real thing.

I will kick up my heels and sing praises to God and proclaim the ancient truth:

Christ has died

Christ is risen

Christ will come again

Hallelujah!