Why Do You Look for the Living Among the Dead? Recognizing Resurrection

I’ve been working in my garden the last couple of weeks.  Mostly I’ve been noticing how much I didn’t do last fall. There is a lot of dead in my yard. Leaves that never got raked, garden beds that were never cleared of summer grasses, and other random detritus. The bulbs I planted almost two years ago are just beginning to bloom. But the new growth is easy to miss when I become overwhelmed by the old that is left behind.

When Jesus rose it changed everything. It brought about a new religious order, it changed the power structure, it challenged the culture. Even his own disciples could not believe the resurrection was possible. Why? Hadn’t he told them it would happen? But they couldn’t understand, or maybe they didn’t want to understand.

Even though he told them about the coming resurrection.

They were so afraid of what might come next, that they didn’t recognize the risen Christ. They were looking for him in the tomb, instead of alive in the world.

When we return again to lifestyles, habits and behaviors that we know don’t work, we continue to look for life in the grave.

We throw all our effort into trying to craft a life that we know will lead to grief, because for some reason we keep going back to the tomb.

We’ve forgotten that he’s risen, and afraid of the fundamental change that will mean. We’d rather make that tomb as attractive and livable as possible so maybe we’ll forget that we’re mortal and that this world was never meant to be our home.

When we think we can build a life of faith without also embracing a love of service and sacrifice, we are looking for the living among the dead.

Our old lives are gone, behold all things are made new. We need to stop trying to rejuvenate what is buried and gone, and look up into the sunrise of the resurrection. Casting off all we have been saved from and embracing all we have been saved for.

New life doesn’t always look pretty, and sometimes it’s painful. I look back at the birth of my children. It was a bloody business and there were definitely moments when the lines between life and death felt blurred. But after the crisis was over, and I was home holding my new child, I didn’t dig through the bloody afterbirth, grieving the end of my pregnancy. I had new life in my hands, loud and demanding though it may have been.

Embrace the new life. Look for for resurrection.  Seek the risen Christ. He is among the living, not the dead, and he is resurrecting us as well.