If Easter is just an extra day off, family / holiday time, chocolate eggs or a slightly larger hang-over: you’re missing out… BIG TIME!
It still blows me away, how, as an acute alcoholic with a house set up like a pub with beer on tap, how many times I ran out of alcohol on a Good Friday. Driving for hours trying to find anything open, desperate to get more off my face – it was about the only ‘meaning’ Easter had for me: an annoying (but predicable) inconvenience.
But now, this Easter morning, too sore to drive to church, with ‘just’ my immediate family, at home… Easter is incredibly PROFOUND!
It is not just a story – but the reality of the Creator of Heaven & Earth following through on His impossible mission: to rescue people like me & you.
They were so in love with themselves and their sin that they didn’t recognise Him – their very creator. In fact, His words & actions upset their ‘normal’ so much that they just HAD to get rid of Him. This stand-out dissenter suffered more attack than a Trump supporter on twitter.
He didn’t just get insults or canceled, but He was bound, beaten, stripped naked and scourged. For those who don’t know that is, it’s a whipping cubed. Not just a leather strap, but a device designed to rip large chunks of flesh off the body with glass and bone. The average Aussie tough man wouldn’t handle 1 strike, He took 39.
Loosing so much blood He was loosing strength but forced to carry a hunk of wood that would become His execution tool. A procession to His death – at the hands of those He created, the very ones He came to save. You know the next bit – they nailed Him to a cross, where He could only breathe my pulling Himself up on those nails, His torn flesh rubbing against the rough wood of the cross. Every breath He took a repeat of this torture.
Many lasted hours in this state of torture, some, who had not been scourged, lasted days. But they had no other option: survive the pain or die.
Jesus however, was different. He only need to THINK that He wanted off the cross and it all would have ended. He only need SPEAK and thousands of angels would have instantly rescued Him. He could have STARED with His eyes and have the guards die.
Instead, His eyes looked with love. His speech was to forgive them. His thought was to do the Fathers will and remain in that place of pain. Why?
To pay MY debt. To pay for MY sin!
The sin I chose. The sin I loved. The sin that had me firmly in its addictive grip. The sin that was killing me. The sin that condemned me to hell. The sin I had no idea of until He opened my eyes just before ending it all.
Suddenly convicted, instantly arrested and completely broken: I had deliberately sinned against this God I was adamant did not exist. I had stuck my finger up repeatedly in defiance and now knew I deserved His wrath. Surely I would be the object of His anger: torture and hell should surely be the only result?
But no! He chose to do that to Jesus, His own Son, instead of me! His eyes were filled not with anger, disgust or disappointment but with LOVE. A love I had never dreamt of let alone experienced. A love that was unconditional, it expected nothing and did not hold my wrongs against me. It was a love that knew I had absolutely nothing to give in return.
21 years later, I can say it is a love that endures all things. My apathy, my disobedience, my rebellion. Constant failures, increasing incapability and and underlying inability for anything good: today He still loves. He is still faithful. He is still walking with me through the fire, in the deep water. And while at times it feels like I am sinking, He still holds my head up, still, somehow, looking at me with that same, irresistible, heart awakening, soul consuming love.
Jesus, my Deliverer.
Jesus, my King.
ThankYou
– Your unfaithful slave
While my Easter may not be happy, I have His joy and I wouldn’t swap it for anything (even a new spine!).
I pray the same for you this glorious, powerful and incredibly significant day.