Over the past few days, I’ve been republishing some edited posts from Resurrection celebrations of the past twelve years that I’ve been writing this blog. And I’ve written a few new posts to intersperse between and among.

Last year on Resurrection Sunday I wrote about the most important and significant thing in my life—and about what I wish for each of you who read this blog. Today I want to say it again, in different words perhaps, but still the same old, old story because it’s that important: it bears repeating that Jesus is Lord.

I’m just a fifty-eight year old mom. I’ve read a few books, birthed eight children, made a lot of mistakes, told some lies, and discovered one overwhelmingly important Truth: Jesus is Lord.

I don’t know where you are in your journey of faith. Maybe, like me, you know that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and that no one comes to God the Father except through Jesus. Maybe you’ve died to yourself, been
“born again” and dedicated your life to the proposition that Jesus is Lord.

Or maybe you’re just not there (dare I say, yet). Maybe you have doubts about Jesus, doubts about God, fears that admitting the truth of Jesus’s lordship over your life will mean a descent into religiosity or intellectual suicide or fluffy self-delusion. Maybe the very idea of becoming a Christian, following the commands of Jesus as they are set forth in the Bible and asking Him for forgiveness for your mistakes and your brokenness and your sin, is anathema to you. Still, Jesus is Lord.

I don’t know much. Sometimes I think I do, but then events usually conspire to show me that all my great knowledge and intelligence are not enough to even run my own life properly, much less that of anyone else. And I’ll leave those who think they can do it to run for president and presume to become the “leader of the free world.” Maybe God is leading someone to do just that. Goodness knows, somebody’s got to govern the country. But whoever becomes president had better know one thing: Jesus is Lord.

Not only do I not know much, but I can’t even say what I do know very well. I certainly don’t speak with the tongues of men and of angels. If God were waiting on my eloquence to convince a dying world of hurting people to turn to Him, we would all be waiting for a long, long time. All I can really say is: Jesus is Lord.

Today is Resurrection Sunday. Jesus, who died and then rose again, is here in this puny little world, and He is Lord, Lord of the earth, Lord of the stars, Lord of the galaxies and black holes and comets and planets and quarks and quasars and anything else that anyone can imagine, as well as many things we haven’t even begun to conceive. That same Jesus who was crucified between two thieves is also the resurrected Lord, Owner and Director of all things in heaven and on earth. Jesus is Lord.

And that great Lord, mighty and powerful and full of all the immenseness of the universe, is a Lord of Love. He loves me. He loves you. He knows my name and my thoughts and my psychological complexities and everything about me, just as he knows you in all your depths and heights and quirks and qualities. Of all the bigness of everything and all the smallest infinitesimal molecules, Jesus is Lord.

Jesus is Lord, and He loves. The only rational response to that vast and intimate loving knowledge is to fall before Him and worship and give thanks and live in joyful gratitude and praise. Of course, I’m not always rational. Neither are you, probably. I muddle along, forget to pray, forget to seek Him, act as if Jesus’s death and resurrection never even happened, try to figure it all out all by myself instead of asking Him to show me the way. Nevertheless, Jesus is Lord.

This one thing I know: Jesus is Lord. He is risen from the dead, and He is Lord. He loves you and me, and He is Lord. The question remains: what am I going to do about that truth? What are you going to do about it?

My prayer for each of us on the Resurrection Sunday is that we will recognize and follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

Edited and reposted from Resurrection Sunday, 2013.

You know when you’re reading a story, especially a thriller or a mystery and there’s a lovely little (or big) twist at the end that is completely unexpected? It’s not where you thought the story was headed, not how you thought it would end, but it works. The ending or surprising climactic scene is something you never would have predicted, and at the same time it’s just what the story needed to tie or untie all the plot knots and make everything come out just right. The story, factually, and in mood and quality, succeeds.

Well, Jesus’s resurrection is sort of like that unforeseen but perfect ending. If I were the Author (thank God I’m not) of the story of creation, sin and redemption, I wouldn’t have been able to dream up the resurrection, not in a million years. My story, if I had been creative enough to write one at all, would have ended with the crucifixion. Jesus, a good man, lived and taught and died—an innocent sacrifice to the cruelty and blindness of both the Romans and the Jews. It’s a sad story, a tragedy, but perhaps one with a moral to it: we humans are hopelessly lost, and we have a tendency to kill those who tell the truth and demonstrate radical love and self-sacrifice.

Maybe we’ll do better next time, having learned the lesson of Jesus. Probably not.

Jesus is dead at the end of my story. He’s really, truly dead, by the way; this isn’t the sort of story where the hero was only mostly dead but turns out to be revivable. A Roman spear was thrust into his side. His body was sealed in a tomb with a big rock across the entrance, a seal of some kind over the rock, and Roman guards posted outside so that no one could steal the body and pretend to resuscitate it. Jesus’s followers were scattered, demoralized, and discouraged.

And then—the surprise hits me in the face, if I haven’t become inured to the shock from having heard the story so many times. On Sunday some women go to visit Jesus’s tomb, and they meet an angel who tells them that Jesus is not dead. He’s alive!

Whoa, whoa, whoa—wait! You mean the story is that he didn’t really die; he just got badly injured, but he was able to recover and make his way out of the tomb. Or he was a magician with a magic protection coat that made spears and nails seem to pierce him but not really hurt him at all. You mean he became a ghost and appeared to people in a spirit form. Or he was just asleep and looked dead.

Nope, Jesus was dead, and now he’s alive again. Resurrected, as Christians term it.

Could you have predicted that the Author of the human story would have inserted himself into history, allowed himself to suffer and to be killed at the hands of his own creatures, and then . . . come alive again? JRR Tolkien invented the term “eucastrophe”, meaning “a dire situation which is nevertheless salvaged through some unforeseeable turn of events.” (Wikipedia, Eucatastrophe) A resurrection is a really unforeseeable turn of events.

But, and here’s the kicker, the resurrection makes the story work. Without the resurrection, we have a weak, powerless, probably dead god who maybe had good intentions? Without the resurrection of Jesus there is no resurrection, no life after death, for any of us either. Paul said in I Corinthians 5:17, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” If Jesus is not alive, we have no hope of knowing God or having friendship with Him or making any kind of connection. He’s either dead or so distant that we can never get there from here. Without the resurrection, the whole story of human history, including the story of that “good man” Jesus, is essentially meaningless.

When I say story, I mean a True Story. If we are real, actual entities living in a real, fallen world full of real evil, we need a Real, Resurrected Savior who physically not only died but rose from the dead to reign over all things eternally.

And lo and behold, eucatastrophe!(I like that word), in a three-day turn of events I could never have scripted or invented or predicted, Jesus not only died and was buried, but he also rose from the dead and lives eternally. “Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.” (Hebrews 7:25)

We serve a living, creative God of eucatastrophic artistry and imagination. And we have a Risen Savior because of the story-making ability and sacrifice of that same God.

Hallelujah! Eucatastrophe! (Thanks, Tolkien, and with some intellectual indebtedness to my pastor’s sermon this morning.)

Edited and reposted from Easter, 2013.

“Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:6-11

Christian songwriter and artist Michael Card writes in his book (co-written with his wife, Susan), The Homeschool Journey: Windows into the Heart of a Learning Family:

“In Philippians 2:6-11 we find a wonderful passage of Scripture that was a hymn used in the worship services of the early church. Known as the “Carmen Christi” or “hymn to Christ” it is a song that first-century spies overheard the Christians singing at a time when the church was meeting in secret. It was a hymn which undoubtedly afforded them a measure of comfort in their trials because it offered a vision of Christ was and what he had accomplished.

In this hymn, Jesus’ incarnation is highlighted by its three central characteristics: servanthood, humility, and radical obedience. It is from this simple, ancient song that Susan and I derive our vision of who Jesus is and what he means to us. It is the vision that shapes our individual lives, our marriage, our family life, and even the way we choose to educate our children.”

Are we serving one another with humility and in obedience to Jesus Christ who gave himself for us? Are we waiting patiently on the Lord of all things in heaven and on earth, making ourselves like Him in our actions here on earth so that we can be with Him in heaven?

Now that’s an Easter goal that embodies the Christ-like