I sense that many people are finding these discouraging and tiring times. In part it’s ‘post-Covid’ but there’s more. If you had to describe our culture in the eloquent language of wine labels, I think it would be something like this: ‘A primary flavour of despair and pessimism with strong notes of bitterness and frustration.’ Wherever you look – political, economic and environmental – you struggle to find encouragement. There’s a widespread assumption, often unspoken, that everything is destined to fall apart, pass away or break up. Of course, behind this disheartening mood is the long shadow of death. Barely spoken of, death retains its power to turn all human aspirations into nothing. In the face of unyielding finality of death, we are like children making sandcastles at low tide. We may make them as impressive as we can, but they are all doomed to be erased by the incoming tide.
Inevitably, this mood affects motivation. It encourages a psychological and social caution and an inward-looking focus. Dreams and schemes, idealism and heroism are all rejected. People slide into a ‘survival mode’ mentality in which they choose to ‘protect their assets’, adopt a ‘risk-averse strategy’ or simply take no chances. Men and women create secure shells and retreat into them, and there, staring at a screen and with earphones turned high, vanish into some safer and manageable world.
Everywhere, I hear echoes of that phrase that haunts the Book of Ecclesiastes: ‘“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless”’ (Ecclesiastes 1:2 NIV).
Yet into this uninspiring, unfriendly and discouraging situation we have Easter. The Easter story focuses on two points: the cross, revealing God’s love for us; and the empty tomb, revealing the triumph of Jesus in the resurrection. The cross speaks of what God has done for us; the open tomb speaks of how we should live for God.
The problem with Christian belief in the resurrection is not that it is disbelieved but that it is misapplied. Although, all too frequently, it is seen as little more than something that offers us hope after death, it actually has a profound and transforming importance before death. The deep shadows cast by death are dispelled for the Christian by the dazzling light from the resurrection. The empty tomb and the resurrection are not simply one of ‘History’s Surprising Phenomena’; they are an astonishing event that should inspire, empower and encourage.
The fullest discussion of the resurrection of Christ in the Bible is to be found in 1 Corinthians 15, written by the apostle Paul only twenty years after the event itself. After working through the reality and relevance of the resurrection of Christ, he concludes with a glorious and triumphant fanfare: ‘Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain’ (1 Corinthians 15:58 NIV). Paul is saying here that there is not just simply life after death, but life – and abundant life – before it. Because Christ is risen, existence has purpose.
Paul tells his dearly loved Corinthians, and through them us, not to be easily deterred or fickle with our affections but instead to give all we have to ‘the work of the Lord’. I take the phrase ‘the work of the Lord’ – which occurs twice – to apply not just to specifically the Christian sphere of church, mission, preaching or praying, but to every aspect of a Christian’s life, whether at home or work, which is committed to Christ and done for his glory.
Paul’s punchline is the glorious thought that such work is ‘not in vain’ or, in the New Living Translation of the Bible, not ‘useless’. Because Jesus has disarmed and defeated death we no longer live under its power. It is as if Paul takes a copy of Ecclesiastes and changes the bitter word ‘meaningless’ to ‘meaningful’.
Is life pointless, futile and empty? ‘No!’ insists Paul. Because of the resurrection the work of the Lord has meaning, and precisely because it has ultimate meaning, it is worth us investing everything we have in it. The good news of Easter is not simply about an antidote to death – it is about an antidote to the drained and discouraged life we are pressured to lead. It is an injection of Life into life. If you are a Christian and you’re doing good works, keep going! If you aren’t, get started.
Let me offer a final thought. Were that tomb full, our lives would be empty. But it is empty so that our lives can be full.
J.John
Reverend Canon
