Rise Up

Easter has to be one of my favorite days. After the agony of holy week we get to celebrate the victory of Easter. In the chancel area of our church there's a cross covered with Easter lilies today. I saw crosses outside of other churches covered in flowers too. It's an incredibly beautiful reminder that God is victorious over sin and death through Christ.

The fact that the church chose the cross as its defining symbol makes sense because it was on the cross that Jesus won the decisive victory. But if you think about it from a first century perspective, it's an odd choice. The cross was a symbol of the most shameful kind of death a person could die. It was reserved for those who deserved a humiliating and excruciating end. Isn't it amazing the the Lord of Glory, the Creator and Sustainer of all gave up his life on a cross?!

Churches cover those instruments of torture with flowers on Easter Sunday. Why? Because that terrible symbol of suffering is transformed into a symbol of victory. Death could not hold him. Love wins - and not quietly or subtly - love wins with resounding shouts of victory. It's simply another example of God's exquisite sense of irony. Flowers covering the cross is a fitting picture of a great reversal.

That same victory - over sin and death and pain - is ours today. We all have wounds that have led to death - the death of some area of our lives, or of a relationship. We (like the disciples) may think that the story is over. But God, in Christ, is victorious. He is not content to see any part of you or me left in the tomb. In his resurrection appearances, Jesus' wounds were evidence of God's great power. Likewise, though we will certainly bear scars from many things, our wounds are transformed into evidence of God's great power, victory, and love if we will only allow them to be.

Ben Shive sings a song about the final judgement called "Rise Up". I think it's actually a great reminder that the Easter victory will one day be consummated, and on that day all will be made right:

Every stone that makes you stumble
And cuts you when you fall
Every serpent here that strikes your heel
To curse you when you crawl
The King of Love one day will crush them all

And every sad seduction
And every clever lie
Every word that woos and wounds
The pilgrim children of the sky
The King of Love will break them by and by

And you will rise up in the end
You will rise up in the end
I know the night is cruel
But the day is coming soon
And you will rise up in the end

All praise to the King of Love who's not content to leave us wounded and dead and alone in our shame; but who instead claims, redeems, and heals us; the One who causes those places of death to bloom with new life and beauty.