There are places in our world where seasons are shadows of what we
experience here in these mountains. Mountain seasons are intense and they are
rapid and sudden. In these mountains, I regularly hear people say: “This is the
Rockies, you can experience three seasons in one day.” Something about
the altitude and our proximity to the heavens makes seasons sudden, intense,
and beautiful. The mountain spring comes with a rush but is also sometimes
chased away by powerful blasts from winter that reluctantly let go. But spring
does arrive. Powerful colors emerge alerting us to new life from which so
assuredly seemed like death.
Paul writing to the church in Corinth about the
resurrection of the body would remind the church that death is not
ultimately victorious. Winter is not victorious; it gives way to spring. That
which seemed like death gives way to life, and despair gives way to hope.
Philosopher Bernard Williams wrote, “The day the Lord created hope was probably
the same day he created spring.”
The Easter biblical narrative is about the sudden, intense, and
beautiful manifestation of hope. Because of Easter, death is not victorious;
death has, in Paul’s words, ‘lost its sting.’
As religious people, Easter defines us. Easter, at least the hope and
new life, behind Easter, is, according to theologian Luke Timothy Johnson, the
“engine that drove Christianity” in the first century. Easter is about hope;
and for those first disciples experiencing the empty tomb, it was sudden,
intense, and once they figured it out, beautiful. Easter defines us as
religious people. In that defining, Easter gives each of us, young, old,
powerful, weak, poor, or rich, a tremendous life force. That life force emerges
from hope. From that hope, this life force is capable of transforming all of us
without regard to who we are. William Bridges writes, “When you see a blade of
grass cracking its way up through a sidewalk, you know there’s a tremendous
life force in even very small life forms.”
New life is being experienced at Hilltop. In some cases it might be
gradually in breaking, but in others it seems sudden, intense and beautiful.
There may be some who will attempt to introduce winter into the conversation,
but Easter defines us! This new life is truly like blades of grass pushing
their way up in unexpected and different places. In Mark 16 the women go to the
tomb wondering who will roll away the stone, and the answer is sudden, intense,
and, after they figure it out, beautiful. The same force that gave and gives us
life rolled that stone away. Now go and project that life force so that the new
life we are experiencing at Hilltop is shared by others.
Death is not
ultimately victorious, death has ‘lost its sting.’ He is risen, he is
risen indeed!
Selah, Pastor Dennis
