Post Easter thoughts

In the Matthew account of the first Easter morning after the women left the tomb Jesus met them and greeted them.  That greeting was a typical greeting.  It was as if He came up to us and said, “Hello”. What is amazing is that it was so casual, so ordinary.  We might expect zing, more wow, and more sha-bam. But Jesus simply walked up and said, “Hello”.  There is something special about that casualness. For the believer this resurrected Christ greets people with a casual hello. He is acting as if the resurrected life is the new normal and it is. While there is a “not yet” aspect of the resurrection life, there are many ways in which the new normal for us is the resurrection.  

It might seem a bit odd that the post-resurrection history is so short.  Matthew spends 140 verses on the Lord’s Supper, the Passion, and the Execution.  Before that he took 228 verses on the last week of public ministry and in Jesus’ teaching the disciples.  But he only spent 20 verses on the post resurrection-40 days and only 20 verses. That is hardly the way we would report an event today.  Perhaps the reason that there is so little information about the post-resurrection life recorded in Matthew is that we are expected to live that life.  Reading about it would be great but living it is better. 

We live in the tension of now and not yet, but I think sometimes we focus too much on the not yet aspect.  For the follower of Christ the resurrection life is now.  As we live this year what will it mean for us to live daily the resurrection?  What will it mean for our holiness, our witness, or our disciple making?  One description of the post-Easter Jesus was that the old rules of normal just didn’t fit any more.  To be honest it was a little weird at times.  Maybe that ought to be our clue.  What the world calls “normal” just doesn’t fit who we are since we live the resurrection life.  There are many implications for that, which we haven’t yet grasped, but all the same, welcome to the new normal!