Tag: resurrection

Claiming the Resurrection

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The resurrection of Jesus Christ lies at the heart of Christian faith. According to the Apostle Paul, it was through God’s act of raising Jesus from the dead that God definitively identified Jesus as God’s Son and thus conferred the ultimate stamp of divine approval on Christ’s ministry and message. As Jesus’ followers, we share in the promise of the resurrection and eternal life. The blessings of resurrection are not restricted to the existence after death. God raised Christ from the dead so that our present lives might also be transformed and renewed. To embrace resurrection is to live a life of faith, open to new challenges of discipleship which God places before us.

resurrection of christ by raphael

Resurrection of Christ (Raphael)

As a community of faith, it is important that we are accountable both to and for each other. Writing to the congregation in Thessaloniki, Greece, the Apostle Paul advises believers: “Therefore, encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing. … admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit.” (Thess. 5:11, 14-19) This Spring at East Hills Moravian Church, we will be looking for ways to put the Apostle’s timeless advice into practice as we seek to grow into the promise of vibrant new life heralded by the resurrection of Jesus Christ on that first Easter morning.

“The Lord is risen.” “The Lord is risen indeed.”

Raised With Christ

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This year April begins on Easter, the holiest day of the Christian year. Again we will gather as a family of faith to recall the miracle of God bringing new life out of death and declaring Christ “to be Son of God with power…by resurrection from the dead.” (Romans 1:4) Yet Easter does not stand alone.

Death precedes resurrection.

resurrection of jesus

Resurrection of Jesus by Hans Rottenhammer

 

As followers of Christ, our lives are to follow the pattern of life-death-rebirth which our Lord
established. In the early church, it was understood that baptism, the sacrament by which believers entered the community of faith, was symbolic of death. A liturgy from the Apostolic Constitutions (late 4th century A.D.) is explicit: “Sanctify this water so that those who are baptized may be crucified with Christ, die with him, be buried with him, and rise again for adoption.” Even today the Moravian Church baptizes persons “into the death of Jesus.” “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6:5) Eternal life is assured. So certain is apostle Paul of God’s promise that he writes of our resurrection in the past tense! For Paul, sincere gratitude blossoms into righteous action.

“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3: 1-2)

The Resurrection of the Dead

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Resurrection Of Christ

Carl Heinrich Bloch – The Resurrection Of Christ

Do you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? … If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Romans 6: 3, 5)

On a day we now call “Easter” Christians gather to celebrate God’s resurrection of Jesus Christ. This holy day lies at the very heart of Christian faith – especially in its Moravian expression. Moravians have been called “The Easter People.” Yet amid the glories of sunrise worship, the fellowship of an early morning breakfast together, and cherished, if painful memories of those who “have entered into the joy of their Lord” since last Easter Day, how many find time to reflect on the full implications of belief in the resurrection of the dead?

Resurrection is not a description of an afterlife; resurrection is the reversal of death itself. It is the triumph of God over grave. To believe in the resurrection of the dead is to hope for something more than continued personal existence as an immortal soul after one’s body has perished. It is to share the faith of the Old Testament’s Job who said: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God.” (Job 19: 25, 26)

According to ancient Hebrew belief, soul and body were aspects of a differentiated, but unified person rather than independent components existing in their own right. Not until they were influenced by the thought of the Greek philosopher Plato did Jewish writers begin to speculate about the continuation of the soul apart from the body. The earliest expressions of Christian faith accord with their ancient Jewish antecedents.

In the Resurrection, God gives life not to some disembodied spiritual aspect of Jesus, but to an Incarnation – a person of flesh and blood. On this St. Paul and all the Gospels agree. Following his resurrection, Jesus eats with his disciples, teaches them, and has them touch him. “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” (Luke 24:39) The Gospel of John portrays Christ inviting Thomas to touch the nail-wounds in his Savior’s hands. (John 20:27)

Belief shapes our approach to the world and to life. If we believe only in the immortality of the soul we may be tempted to turn our backs on the world’s problems, live as best and as happily as we can and take comfort in the thought that we are only passing through. If we believe that at the last Christ will stand on the earth and that we, in our flesh shall see God, we do not have the luxury of such individualistic detachment and complacency.

God’s resurrection of Jesus is the opening act of a new work of redemption and renewal touching all aspects of creation, both physical and spiritual, so that the Creator’s will might be done on earth as it is in heaven. If we have been baptized into the death of Jesus, if we hope for and anticipate a resurrection like his, it follows that we must begin living into that reality today.

  • Pastor Derek French