Living the Resurrection

This week as I read the resurrection apperances of Jesus, I have been pondering, wondering....what it actually means to live the Resurrection now in our lives on earth. Easter comes and goes each year and it is a day for celebration (busyness included, time spent weeks before for preparation) but what difference does living in the spirit of Easter really look like? Often we limit this great proclamation to an evangelistic slant, and forget that there is so much for us to appropriate, as Christians. I picked up a book by Megan Mckenna entitled "And Morning Came". The author is a theologian who integrates theology with spirituality and is interested in the living reality of these awesome mysteries that we proclaim as Christians. She believes that the Resurrection is not a single event but an ongoing experience of God's grace and power in our daily lives.

In the final chapter of her book she gives a litany of things to do to practice and be reminded of who we are and what we are to do in the world, individually and as communities. I share here some of them - those that catch my attention, in particular:

Stand with the victim, the outsider, the left out, those different.

Refuse any sort of violence and refuse to act violently.

Resist despair.

Bend the knees of your heart daily in conversion.

Learn to kneel and beg on behalf of others' lives and needs.

Bear the burden of the cross and seek to share the anguish and pain of others so that the pain stops there.

Let the Word of God in the Scripture come true in you daily, weekly.

Pray for your enemies and the enemies of your nation and ask forgiveness for them.

Live with invincible gentleness.

Pray as though everything depended on God and work as though everything depended on you.

Tell stories of hope, resurrection and new life, of justice and peace.

I am glad the Easter season lasts 50 days - i.e. until Pentecost. It give us plenty of time to take in what we celebrated last Sunday. It gives us time to put in practice at ever deeper levels - and thereby witness to the tremendous gift and mystery of the Resurrection.