Sunday, March 31, 2024
Sunday Reflection: Easter in Unsettled Times
The women at the tomb must have been shocked: the body was gone. I've always thought they immediately thought there had been grave robbers.
But the resurrection was so much more than shocking. It must have been deeply unsettling to those who followed Christ and those who didn't. Jesus had been blurring the line between life and death for a while-- raising people from the dead and talking about "everlasting life." And then this!
We don't like being unsettled; at least I don't. I like firm ground under my feet and a wide, clean road in front of me. But sometimes I need to be unsettled.
Jesus's unsettling wasn't just for his own time. What he taught unsettles so much of what we want and think, if we are honest. He told the rich man to sell all he had and give the money to the poor. He taught that when someone steals from us, we should give them more. He said that if we want to find him, go talk to someone in prison. Very few of us can take that seriously without being unsettled.
But if you look at your own life, you'll probably see that the inflection points, those moments that were the start of anything good, were almost always a time when you were deeply unsettled-- when something about your identity or safety or relationships or work shifted under you.
And that is what today is about: that great unsettling that came with a life after death.
