By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
What if it’s true? What if Jesus is alive and sitting at the right hand of God the Father? What if Easter is about a Risen Savior and not a bunny and what if Christmas is about God coming to earth and becoming a man rather than a jolly old elf and a reindeer with a red nose?
We all chuckle about a reindeer with a red nose and a bunny with a basket of eggs. To some, God becoming man is just as phantasmagorical.
To some, it’s just as unrealistic to think that God, any god, would love us so much to come, suffer and die to set us free of our sin. Let’s face it, we humans are not so very special.
We argue and fight and divide and harm each other. We lie, cheat, and steal from each other. We have little sense of honor and not much integrity as a race.
We take advantage of the weak and honor those who are totally self-centered and vain. We go to war over petty things. We rape, plunder and pillage as if might makes right.
We have some good people as individuals but generally, as a race, we are pretty rotten. Why would any superior being want us, let alone care about us? It just doesn’t make sense. It really doesn’t!
But what if it is true? What if there is a Being so loving It could look past our behavior, our selfishness, our hate filled hearts? What if it considers us worth saving from ourselves?
Even more crazy, what if this Being wants to have a relationship with us? What if it sees something so worthwhile in us that would make us worth redeeming? No, that’s just as nuts as believing in a bunny and an elf.
But, what if? What if Easter is really about an empty tomb and a risen savior? What would that mean to me? To you? Today? The first thing that comes to my mind is that I’m toast! I am so far from good as to be unredeemable.
Yet, if He really came to redeem us humans, then I am one of “us” too. I can be redeemed too! WOW. That blows the mind. The second thought I get is the “Why?”. Why would he love me? You? Us? Humans?
Why would he come to earth to save us? to redeem us? John 3:16 seems to explain the “why?” “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Therein lies the “Why”. Because he loves us! In spite of us. In spite of our behavior. In spite of our selfishness. In spite of us ignoring and mocking and even crucifying him, He loves us!
That kind of love is a game changer. And that leaves me with the “How?” All I have to do is “believe in him” and accept his gift of eternal life.
He doesn’t mean to just believe that he exists. He means to believe that he loves us that much. To believe that he is the God of Gods, Lord of Lords and that he came to redeem us from our sin.
To believe that there is a place of eternal life and peace and rest and joy unstained by tears or grief or loss, unmarred by selfishness and need.
Finally, we have to acknowledge our need and receive the gift of his sacrifice for the redemption of our sin. We don’t get a “get out of Hell free” card just by being human beings. We have to actually realize that we are lost sinners in need of his salvation.
We have to know that we are destined for an endless existence of hate and war and pain and loss and that our only hope lies in His death and the empty tomb. When we get that, then we are ready and willing to give Him everything for what he has.
We accept his death for our lives and his will for ours. When we make that exchange, then we are truly free. Life won’t suddenly become perfect, but it will become tolerable because we know that it is not our end but just a time before our real life begins.
What happens on earth is important, but it is not the end. The darkness is no longer dark when the light enters the picture.
The proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel” is not another train but the light that comes to drive away all the darkness. Now and forever. 1 John 1:5-9
“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all… But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. (But) If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
That’s the story of the empty tomb. Crazy, unrealistic, unbelievable…but what if it’s true?
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.