This Sunday morning we will greet one another with the words “Christ is risen!” and the response will be “He is risen indeed!” We will join together with centuries of Christians who mark this day as the day that changed everything. We will celebrate the amazing truth that although Jesus was dead, He’s now alive forevermore. Christ Jesus rose victorious over death. He is risen!
Yet throughout history, people respond to those words in different ways. When Mary stood outside Jesus’ tomb, she did so crying. It so blurred her mind when she saw the stone rolled away from Jesus’ tomb, that she assumed that someone had stolen His body. Even as Jesus was standing in front of her, she thought He was a gardener.
John had outrun Peter to the tomb, but he stopped at the entrance and just peered in. When Peter arrived, he barged right past John and went inside. He saw the empty grave clothes. He saw that the tomb was empty; yet scripture records (Luke 24:12) that he went away wondering what had happened.
When John finally did go inside, it says that “he saw and believed.” Unlike Peter, who wasn’t sure what had happened, John was sure: he believed. However, that doesn't mean that he understood what had happened. Scripture says, “they still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” Both Peter and John both had a long way to go in their faith.
What I am reminded of as we approach this Easter is that each of us can approach it with different reactions. For some of us, we struggle and we doubt. Could these things possibly be true? For others of us, we hear about the hope of the resurrection, but we wonder. And still for others, we believe.
Wherever you are this week, I pray that you will be strengthened in your faith to believe. The hope of the resurrection is the joyful assurance that because Christ lives, we too will live for all eternity. God’s love has the last word. As a powerful hymn puts it, “No power of hell, no human plan, can ever pluck me from His hand.”
