The Comeback Win

One thing I love about Easter is that it falls in springtime. Have you ever considered what it would be like if Easter came in the middle of summer, or as fall was descending? There's such beautiful, inescapable symbolism in that Easter takes place in spring. At this time of year - in fact, on this very year itself - we Midwesterners usually find ourselves being toyed with by a teeter-totter effect between wintry and spring-like weather, and depending on how March "came in" (i.e. like a lion, or like a lamb, as the old addage goes), we may have snow still on the ground at Easter, trying to make it look like spring is a ways off yet. 

But many years Easter is a triumphant display of spring winning out over the last fling of winter. Perennial flowers, green grass, and buds on tree branches are forcing their way forth from any lingering snow, bringing the landscape back to life after the deadness of winter that can seem to envelop our very spirits at times. It's as if the earth is coming back to life, and no amount of stubborn loitering by winter can prevent that resurgence. 

I love how well this dramatic phenomenon of life on earth symbolizes what my savior did on Easter. 

On the day Easter now commemorates, there were no such things as Christians yet. Only some Jews who had faithfully followed around a Jewish man from Nazareth who was the son of a carpenter turned celebrity and miracle worker, who, by the way, claimed to be the Son of God. It was the third day. He had said mysterious things in the years, months, weeks, and even days before last Friday...about knowing he would die, but that he would actually come back to life. And to their horror he was indeed taken prisoner by the religious leaders, put on trial overnight for blasphemy, and then executed by crucifixion on Friday morning. Their master and teacher, Jesus, was lain in a tomb and it was over. They might be the ones next to be slaughtered because they were witnesses of this man and might be a threat to carry on his blasphemous teachings. 

Now.....it was the third day....and still Jesus was dead. The jig was up. They had gotten their hopes up for nothing. The longing in their souls would never be answered.  The snow would never melt. The deadness of winter would never end. It was over...

And then it WASN'T over. 

Women who had also followed Jesus with the disciples came rushing back to their place of hiding with a shocking report, having just been at the tomb where Jesus' dead body was put to rest. They'd gone just to see if the Roman guards would let them go honor him with spices and embalming...

....But the guards were GONE, the tomb was EMPTY, and angelic beings were there saying Jesus was alive again!!! Could it be???

Later that day other followers of Jesus encountered the risen and living Jesus Christ, as did many others in weeks following, and the miracle was established as fact. Suddenly, instead of Jews hoping for freedom from Roman oppression, there were Christians from all surrounding regions who'd been set from from the ultimate oppression of sin and guilt. Instead of fearful hibernation in safe houses, there were people on fire spilling out into the streets of Jerusalem and beyond, with the message that God had kept his promise in the ancient prophecies, and Jesus had proven he was the Messiah and in the process, had proven the most important fact of all:

JESUS IS MORE POWERFUL THAN DEATH ITSELF. JESUS, AS HE SAID HE WAS, IS LIFE ITSELF. 

"I am the resurrection and the life," Jesus once told another good friend named Martha, when he visited after her brother Lazarus had died (immediately following this, by the way, he raised Lazarus back to life after four days in the grave). "The one who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die... (John 11:25-26)."

Winter eventually ends. No matter how much snow is on the ground today, no matter what cold winds blow... Winter eventually loses to spring. 

Life gets its comeback win.

I so often feel like I'll never escape the hold sin has on my life. I feel hemmed in on every side like I'm surrounded by a stealthy mob of assassins that lurk around every corner, waiting to slice me or hit me with a poison dart as I go by, until this dark life and even darker world eventually pull me down to the curb and my spirit ebbs out to nothing. 

Each year I feel like winter will never end. But each year, sooner or later, winter gives way and the snow and ice and cold and gray skies just can't hold down the verdant and colorful life that must burst out again!

The winter of this life lived in our bodies, tainted by sin and sadness, loss and grief, pain and frustration, sickness and addiction, WILL END. And when it does, death will immediately turn us right back over to life because of what God has done for us in Jesus. When Jesus stepped out of his opened tomb and out into the morning sunlight, greeted by angels from the Father, he was giving the mic drop to end the speech of truth and freedom that his whole life and death beforehand had started. He told the rest of mankind for the rest of history that the winter of our captivity to sin was over, and he was the vibrant shoot of a flower busting out from under the shroud of snow that covered the ground. 

And now, because he beat his own death with his own life, you and me and every other follower of this risen, invincible Jesus can look forward to beating our own deaths too. 

Winter may come and take us all for a season. But there WILL BE SPRING!! There will be a comeback. 

Jesus' resurrection is OUR comeback win. 

"Death has been swallowed up in victory.

 'Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?'

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory

through our Lord Jesus Christ."

- 1 Corinthians 15:54b-57