Easter - Looking for Life in All the Right Places.lwp - Page 3 of 3
And that means, then, that they have to look for Jesus - Jesus who lives - somewhere else, as
the angels’ messages tells them: “He is not here; he is risen.” And, if you are not looking for a living
Jesus, that could very well scare you to death.
Where, then, would Jesus be found? Where are the right places to look for life with him? The
scriptures tell us lots of places.
Peter found out. We heard some of his words in the reading from Acts: “I truly understand that
God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable
to him”
Can you imagine what it took for Peter to go from being the scared disciple who denied Jesus,
to the disciple who saw the empty tomb but went home amazed at what happened but still not sure and
finally to powerful apostle who was the first to bring this message beyond the Jewish community to a
Roman military man and his household? It certainly wasn’t business as usual - perhaps business
transformed is a better way to say it.
The good news is this: Jesus was not in the tomb. Jesus is risen. He is out there in all the right
places - among those who grieve, among his disciples, later that day in a village outside of Jerusalem,
and still later in the household of a Gentile centurion and a Philippian jailer.
Jesus is alive. He is not in the tomb. Resurrection is real - and that, Joan Chittister says, and I
know I couldn’t say better, is the “old news about Easter. The new news may be that it is not so much
about the resurrection of Jesus as it is about our own. . . The only question now is whether or not we
are willing to abandon our own [tomb], leave the old trappings behind and live in the light of Jesus, the
Christ.”
Are you going to miss Easter this year?
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