Go and do likewise.

Easter

“He is risen!!!  Got it?  Ok.”

There is a two year old boy in our congregation that enjoys being a colleague of the pastors.  Once, after Sunday services, this boy went home and played church.  He made breadsticks out of play dough and used a blue pail as a chalice.

As he presided over his own Table in his own home, he held the pail on top of his head, just like Pastor Ryan.  From his angle in the pews, it must look that way...as I hold the chalice up for all to see, it must appear as though I am holding it on top of my head.

He mutters, stumbling over the words, trying to remember the whole thing, “This cup...take this cup...my blood...GIVEN FOR YOU!”

He repeats this a couple of times and then says:

“For you!

Got it?

Ok.”

And he quickly turns back to the table to prepare for distribution.

This is the perfect Easter message.

He is risen!

For you.

Got it?

Ok.

Because it was for you.  All of God’s love, whether you think you deserve it or not, is for you.  And Jesus’ life...the life that cannot be overcome by death...is also for you.

The trick is to “get it.”

Not to acquire it.

Not just to receive it.

But to GET IT.

To understand it, to feel it--to understand it in such a way that your whole life and being becomes new.

Easter is nothing unless you, that single individual, my reader, hears the story with the significance of appropriation.✝

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[✝ appropriation: def. “the action of taking something for one’s own use.”  The story must become significant not in itself but because it becomes relevant to you.  Good Friday and Easter must become a life and death (or a death and life) matter for you, must function in your life such that it creates hope and love--such that it changes you.  If your life does not become Jesus’ resurrected life, then the story is dead and vain.  We tell it over and over again because it is appropriate to our situation, even today.  Only the single individual can apply it to his or her own life...which is why it is so important to tell the story so all can hear, which is why it is so important to hear the story and to study and to live it.  Witnesses can help, but the task is yours.]

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Because if Christ lives today, it is in you.

The story does not end with Easter, but begins.

Where the four Gospels end, you life is to begin.

Because God is the author of your life...

And so when you bear your cross, God writes your ending.

And when you die, God writes your resurrection.

Holy Week for the church has ended.

But the story has just begun.

Your Holy Week is yet to happen.

You are holy now.  You are Jesus Christ for others.

Your life is the next Gospel account of Jesus’ presence in the world.

Because Jesus didn’t die, he wasn’t raised, for his own sake.

It wasn’t for God that Jesus was crucified and raised up.

He did it FOR YOU.

Got it?

Ok.

Amen.