We Are Risen!

  

Alleluia. Christ is risen! Since we, the baptized and aspiring immortals, died with Christ, then what does it mean for us to be risen?

Christ came back from the dead and ate and drank with people to prove He wasn’t dead. When we were baptized we put on new clothes and received communion (like Christ ate too). He stayed for forty days back in this old time zone, but for me it has been decades.

The SURPRISE moment of showing up again after being taken for dead, was so much fun, but surprises wear off fast and then you’re just at the party. What next for us after the crucifixion/baptism?

Hint please.

Okay John, what did you say in your gospel? “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of will of man but of God.”

I was reborn into this world by the will of God, a new kind of human being, a new creation. Mmmm…what does that mean?

Okay Paul, help me out. “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”Corinthians

Wait, I think it’s becoming clear! Christ stayed in the time zone for 40 more days after shocking the world with His return from the dead. But since I died with him, and you too, then we are as good as Christ having united with Him at the crucifixion/baptism and so from God’s point of view we are Christ’s ambassadors on earth whose job it is to continue to reconcile people to God, the Father--with the help of the Holy Spirit. (Thank God!)

Easier said than done!

I spent all of Lent trying to know what it means to be in Christ and to have Him in me, when all along, we are not two people joined together like partners but more like one new kind of person. I was trying to find Christ in me when all along I should have picked up my mystical mirror. No wonder I had such a tough time; all of me is He. When He returned and looked like a stranger He showed us that it doesn’t matter how different we look from Christ, He can still be us, and people can recognize Him in each of us.  

I don’t mean to sound like a cynic, but how can I, a twenty-first century Christ, reconcile others to God without the healing power (God knows I’ve tried) and all the other miracles. I’m sure it would have been hard, even for Christ to be so effective in reconciling people to God if He didn’t help them out in so many miraculous ways.

Perhaps He didn’t reconcile human beings to God through the miracles. He reconciled humanity to God by sacrificing His life for them. I can’t die or be baptized again, but I can put others first and I can show them the way to Kingdom Come, because I know the way and so do you.

This is the bottom line. We aspiring immortals are the only Christ some people will ever know.  Rise and shine!