Easter 2011
Sit Up, Get Up, Come Out, and Live. During the month of April, leading up to Easter Sunday, we are looking at narratives of Jesus raising people from the dead. While the narratives are undoubtedly amazing and cool, there is a sense that something more than “just” raising someone from the dead is going on. Each of these narratives are surrounded by, and sometimes even interrupted by other seemingly unrelated events. But the truth is that they aren’t at all unrelated, they may even be the point. As we make our way through these passages, we get the sense that there are whispers of something bigger, grander, and more mysterious than even life from death going on. It’s as though the miracles of raising people from the dead weren’t really big enough…they weren’t the main attraction or the best or biggest thing that could happen. You get the sense that Jesus is trying to show us, teach us, even lead us to something more amazing than that. All through these narratives we catch glimpses and whispers, whispers of the Messiah (Savior) and glimpses of things our minds can’t wrap around. It’s as though when Jesus speaks to a dead boy and says, “Sit up”, speaks to a dead girl and says, “Get up”; when he speaks to his dead friend Lazarus and says, “Come out”…it’s like he wasn’t talking to them, but to the rest of us. It’s like He is inviting all of us looking in to come join in what’s going on. It’s like He’s asking us if we really believe that we are alive, I mean really living…or just waiting for something bigger and better. It’s as though He is saying to me, and to you, “sit up, get up, come out….and live.”