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!
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