Friday, April 25

That’s Not All There Is

Dr. Robert Gorrell

Reading

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Romans 10:9 (NIV)

Reflection

In Romans, Paul writes about the importance of believing in the Resurrection. That’s where being a follower of Christ begins.

But that’s not all there is to Easter…

The theologian N.T. Wright writes in Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, “Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project—not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.”

We are called to live out the Resurrection and extend the Kingdom of God. Paul continues, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14)

In Romans 10, Paul also asks if anyone can lift themselves up to the glory of Christ or lower themselves to the depths Christ went—dying on a cross to save us. The answer, of course, is no. But Paul reminds us that we can take the story of Christ’s death and resurrection and live it out in our own circles of friends, family, and acquaintances. (Check out the sermon series beginning Sunday, “What’s Next,” for more.)

Our ministry as witnesses to the Resurrection demands our all. Frederick Buechner writes in The Magnificent Defeat, “And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?”

The Resurrection changes everything—who we are and who we are called to serve.

How will you share the “life of heaven” today?

Prayer:
Holy One, thank you for the miracle of Easter. Today, show me how to extend your kingdom into my world. Amen.