An Easter Message from Andy Batchelor

Well here we are again at Easter, and I don’t know about you but it only seems a short while ago that we were celebrating Christmas. And it’s interesting to look at the way the world around us views these two festivals. Christmas is a huge marketing opportunity, many companies see it as a critical time for their business, there’s the food, the presents, the decorations, the cards, the tree, the seasonal films, preparations seem to go on for months before. But Easter is a different story – yes there are the eggs and cards, but really most people seem to view it as just an extended bank holiday. But for Christians Easter is the greatest celebration in the church year.

Ministers throughout the world address their congregations on Easter Sunday morning with the words: “He is risen!” The congregation shouts in return: “He is risen indeed!”
For 2,000 years the foundation of Christianity has been built on this simple yet utterly profound truth: Jesus is alive! 

But what does that really mean, why is it important to every Christian who has ever lived and ever will live? This idea of resurrection has often been difficult for people to come to terms with. For many it is easier to think of the soul, the spirit continuing in some form, some sort of ethereal existence after death, and so for many this has become their view of life after death, leaving this world for a better one, a place where God is.

But all we read in the Bible about the resurrection of Jesus contradicts that. He had a physical presence, he ate, drank, and while sometimes he wasn’t recognised at first, he evidently was no ghost, but a real, tangible person. In Jesus’ resurrection appearances we see the affirmation of physical life, his sharing of a meal with his friends, walking with them on the Emmaus road, inviting them to touch him, all their senses confirming he was really there with them.
It was confirmation that God has not abandoned this world, but that something new has happened, something has started to restore the world, to redeem it. God comes to us in this place, the place he created, that he loves, that he will not abandon. Jesus came to rescue and restore God’s world and God’s people.

God doesn’t take his people away to some intangible fluffy place in the sky, he comes to us. The good things, the true things will continue in God’s restored and renewed creation, and he calls us to take part in that process of renewal here and now in this body and in this life.

Rob Bell author, pastor and teacher, talks about how Jesus’ resurrection was the beginning of Gods intention to renew, restore and reconcile, as Colossians 1 states ‘everything on earth or in heaven’.

So Easter Sunday, the first day of the week, is also the first day of the new creation, one where death has lost its hold on humanity, where the whole of creation is now being redeemed. The old has gone, and the new has come. That’s what Jesus has done, and each one of us is a part of that.