Children of the Resurrection – Luke 20:27-38
We hear the assurance from Jesus in the last line in this passage: God is the God of the living, and to God all are living. But what does it mean for us? How can we live as a Child of the Resurrection? How does the experience of Jesus – this example of Jesus – live on through you and me? And how do we bear witness to the resurrection in our experience of others?
Living as a Child of the Resurrection isn’t a matter of physical life and physical death. It’s about being transformed by the witness of Jesus and being able to live renewed in that spirit. It’s about being transformed by the resurrection promise that’s held in Jesus’ words and deeds.
Living as a Child of the Resurrection is a rejection of the death culture of this world. It’s about changing our focus and moving from death into new life. It’s the realization that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God. Because of that and because of God’s constant presence and constant love for us as living Children of the Resurrection, our challenge is to allow that love to flow through us and out into the world.
Love isn’t just some mushy sentiment any more than resurrection is some floaty experience of puffy clouds and disconnecting from everything that matters. Our practice of love in this world must be modeled on God’s love for us. It must be active, engaged, and always focused on justice and mercy for all God’s children as well as preserving our earthly home.
We know that every single day we’re surrounded by death. We’re surrounded by viciousness. We live drowning in a system that devalues human life and destroys the beautiful creation that God has gifted us with beginning with the Garden of Eden. Instead of living in the beauty and harmony that gift, we’re soaked in fear until it seeps into our pores. We’re taught to hate. We’re robbed of our trust. We’re taught that spending more and amassing more and more stuff is the only way to ease our fears and relieve our anxiety. Stuff makes you safe; stuff makes you happy, or at least that’s what those billions of dollars of advertising tell us.
That irony is that this is just another form of death, of becoming dead inside, and it’s as much of a risk to our spiritual lives as the physical risk we take getting out of the bed and going out into the world each day.
But through the love of God and the example of Jesus Christ, we can move from death to life and become what we were intended to be: Children of the Resurrection.
