Rivertown United Reformed Church

Minister’s Letter – April 2010

Dead – or Alive?

Someone once said to Joseph of Arimathea, “that was such a beautiful, costly, hand-hewn tomb. Why did you give it someone else to be interred in?” “Oh,” said Joseph, “he only needed it for the weekend.” **

If I were ever asked “do you believe in life after death?”, my reply would be quite simple; my relationship with God does not depend on anything physical (it is the Holy Spirit who keeps us in touch). Therefore the ending of my physical life will in no way cut me off from God.

When Jesus said “I will be with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28 v 20), he did not just mean as a memory. Jesus told a woman he met one day at a well “everyone who drinks of this (well) water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life”(John 4 v 14). He told the dying criminal by his side on the cross, whom he forgave, “today you will with me in Paradise” (Matthew 23 v 43). And that erudite trained lawyer, St Paul, wrote “in fact Christ has been raised from the dead” (I Corinthians 15 v 20).

Or as John Pacalubo, Keith Rycroft and Sue McClellan (the former Christian band “Parchment”) wrote in the original chorus of their 1972 song “Zip Bam Boo”:
“You can tie him to a cross or an easy chair, Three days later and he won’t be there, Zip Bam Boo, bama lama la boo, Oh you can’t keep a good boy down”***

But if we are to ask the question seriously, “did Jesus really rise from death on Easter Sunday nearly 2000 years ago, the answer is not going to come from endless debates about empty tombs or what kind of body Jesus had after his death that was able to pass through solid walls. The real answer must come from the thousands of millions of Christians across the world today who have come to meet with God in a personal way. Who have come to understand that God is not a dead word on an ancient page, but a personal presence who is very much alive today!

Christians call Jesus “the Word of God” because, as John’s account of Jesus life puts it, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1 v 1). Christians believe that Jesus was part of God from the beginning of time; that when Jesus was born and shared our human life, eventually dying on the cross, God was right there in him, suffering the pain of death. That is why Jesus said “believe…..that the Father is in me and I am in the Father” (John 10 v 38).

This is important when we think about forgiveness. Jewish belief is that only the offended person can forgive the offender. If God was in Jesus on the cross, then God is able to forgive. Christians believe, with most of the human race, that no-one is perfect. We are all strugglers at best with the pains, burdens, disasters and injustices of life. But we were never meant to struggle alone. God in Jesus struggles with us, in us and through us, loving us through all the stages of our growing, through all our best and worst times, until we are able to take him seriously. God goes on “nudging” us time after time, day after day, throughout our lives. So that one day we will realise we are not alone, and ask God in Jesus to be the personal friend he has always wanted to be to us. And because of the cross we know that God in Jesus will never let us down. That’s what Easter is all about – God alive for ever, with us here in life, able to bring us life, but in a new dimension! One that will never end! Have a great Easter! From your friend and minister, Colin