Bishop Todd reflects on this Easter season, as we celebrate and rejoice in our Risen Savior.
Remember with me this brief narrative:
The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name…he was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification… and according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
(Luke 24.46,47; Romans 4.25; 1 Peter 1.3)
Through the resurrection—those are skeletal words which hold together the whole body of followership to Jesus. They are the grounding idea for spirituality in the way of Jesus.
Jesus is alive! Today! In the world in which you daily inhabit.
Superintending human history and life, Jesus is presently living the most consequential life imaginable. Eugene Peterson writes that Christianity is substantially a practice of resurrection—a practice of knowing and being known by the living Christ.
With that in mind, it becomes clear that prayer is never just religion; it is the listening and speaking normative to any developing relationship.
Good deeds are never just impulses, they are born of the living Christ within us. Ethics are never just moralisms, they are the love of the risen Christ animating our will to the good of God and others.
We can respect the dead, celebrate their achievements and honor their character—but we can only follow a living person.
Jesus is alive! Easter says: We follow a risen Jesus!