Jesus was dead. His followers were afraid and were mourning his death. Blood and water had flowed from his body. Joseph took his body and put him in a temporary tomb. The soldiers guarded the tomb because they understood that Jesus said he would rise again. So, they thought that Jesus’s disciples would come and steal his body to prove that Jesus rose from the dead. Little did the religious leaders know, the disciples didn’t understand that Jesus’s words were literal. They thought that he was being metaphorical. Before we berate the disciples for their unbelief, we may need to recognize our own flaws of not emphasizing the life of Jesus with his resurrection.
It's easy to comprehend the events in the Bible that make sense. We understand the marriages and births. We understand how Joseph was faithful to God and his character when he was enslaved in Egypt. We even understand the miracles. We struggle to understand how Jesus being dead can be alive again. You know how I know this? It’s simple. We continue to equate the deity of Jesus with the traits of being a human. Jesus walked on this earth as a full human, but he was also fully God. As Christians, we must worship Jesus, the living God.
All other religions have a Friday. Their god has died. Christianity is the only religion that has a Sunday in which our God has risen from the dead, but if you listen to our speech when we are in despair, you will wonder if we serve a risen Savior or if we just like to sing that line in an old hymn that we cherish. The risen Jesus is more than our traditions, type of worship music, or set of guidelines for which we should live our lives.
With a risen savior, we no longer need to blame him for the actions of human beings. Jesus is superior to any human being living or has ever lived. Once you realize that and really worship that Jesus, then you become less judgmental to your fellow human beings. Here’s why. When I realized that Jesus was greater than humans, I had to work on my own flaws and not be concerned with the flaws of others within the church. I was grateful to the risen Jesus and not just the human who walked on earth. I no longer live to impress humans. I live for Jesus.
Instead of demanding that everyone behaves within my moral ground and believes just like me, my superior savior has taught me that He can breathe into existence the love I must have for those people. Then, as I love them, they will recognize the Jesus who not only died for them, but also came back to life.
We must be grateful for the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, but we also must be grateful that he is living. He is not dead. He physically rose from the dead. That’s what this Sunday is all about. It’s not about the clothes, a bunny, candy, or even church attendance. It is about worshipping and serving a living Savior who is superior to all other gods because he is living.
Christianity would not exist without the resurrection of Christ. The resurrection is what separates Christianity from all other religions. We do not worship a dead god. Our God is alive. Our God conquered death, a feat that no one else in history has done. It then makes Christ more than a good teacher or a good man who was kind to the poor and women. It changes everything for every human.
Jesus has power. He is not a political leader because his power is greater than that. We must stop reducing the power of Christ to a political agenda. The Pharisees struggled with that. They wanted their Messiah to rescue them from the political powers that oppressed their people. Jesus didn’t do that, and he’s not going to do that today. His rescuing is from the sin in our lives. We don’t want that because then we must face the sin in our lives. Once we face the sin in our lives, we must get rid of it, which is not easy and sometimes we struggle not to desire that sin.
If you face the sin in your own life and recognize the resurrected Christ, your faith will grow beyond following rituals and following rules. If our faith grows in Christ, we follow him doing what he has asked of us. We don’t need to hover over everyone and continue to expound our greatness of our following rules that we never intended to break. We repent of the sins that we have committed and have broken us.
Our all-superior Christ does not have sin in his life. Humans have sin. Humans hurt us. Jesus does not. If we believe that because Christians have hurt us than Jesus has hurt us, then Jesus is not a resurrected all-powerful God. He’s nothing more than a mere human. If we confess that Jesus is greater than all other gods, then we understand that mere humans sin and hurt. Jesus is sinless and because he is sinless, he heals. We can put our faith in Jesus who heals.
This Sunday, let us worship the resurrected Christ. Let us worship the one who is greater, the one who is perfect. Forget about the people around you. Stand with Jesus. See him as omnipotent. The one who conquered death. Instead of focusing on Friday, let us see this Sunday as the greatest moment in history. Once we see the resurrected Christ, we cannot keep it a secret. We must share it with others. That is why our churches will be full. People come with the curiosity of this risen Savior. Let us embrace them and love them with the genuine love of Jesus so they too can worship the living Savior.
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