Easter Sunday - A Lent Devotion

Happy Easter. Christ is Risen!

Over Holy Week, we saw Jesus riding into Jerusalem. We see Him flip tables and challenge the authority. We see Jesus show his love for his disciples on Maundy Thursday and we see how they betray him. On Good Friday we witness Jesus’s suffering and crucifixion. We left off, on Saturday. Jesus is still in the tomb. He’s dead and sealed away.

There seems to be this drawn-out journey to the cross. Time slows down holy week as if Jesus is trying to take advantage of the time He has left with these people. Trying to get one last lesson in, one last miracle in. And on His last day, we can account for just about every hour. The gospels slow down as Jesus utters words of mercy and forgiveness from the cross. The journey to the cross is slow. And it seems to slow exponentially until there’s time stands still. The tomb is sealed. The disciples are hiding in fear. And Jesus is dead.

Then the Gospels say this. “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb" (John 20:1). Jesus wastes no time sealing the promise for us. As long as it took to get to the cross, as Jesus waited years of his life and years of his ministry to get to the cross. He didn’t waste a second rising out of that tomb. “While it was still dark.” As the first photon of light breaks the horizon, Jesus is breaking out of that tomb. The grave cannot hold him back any longer.

And to that, we say Hallelujah! Christ is risen! Christ rose again and forever secured our place in Heaven.

But I hear people ask sometimes, why didn’t it just end there? If Jesus didn’t wait to come out of the tomb, why are we waiting for Jesus to come back now? Because that’s where we fit in to the Biblical story. This book doesn’t end. This didn’t take place in some made up world. This story is our history. We’re a part of this wonderful story, but our place in it is waiting on God to come back. We have to wait and endure. And I hear youth and adults ask, "why do we have to wait?" Can’t He come back now and end our suffering? If Jesus didn’t wait to secure our promise, why are we waiting for Jesus now?

The Bible tells you. “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Peter 3:9)

If God’s story ended as soon as Easter came. You know who wouldn’t be alive yet to come to know Christ? Us. Our friends, our families. Jesus didn’t wait to secure the promised salvation, but he’s patient with us now. Why? So that all might come to know him. He giving us time. He’s giving us time to receive him as our savior. But he also gives us a charge.

The last words Jesus says before he ascends into heaven.

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:19).

Jesus tells us to use the time that we have. Not to live our lives to the fullest or to fulfill our personal desires. But to go and spread the good news. The news that Christ is risen. The news that we’ve been set free.