From Crucifixion through Tomb to Resurrection

Easter is a message of a new light and a new faith . This new light is Christ himself, the alpha and the omega because He is the source of everlasting life.

These are promising beginnings. There is no one who does not need the Saviour. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory God intends for each human being (Romans 3:23). Isaiah 53 says: ‘We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (v 6). This is Jesus, our only Saviour. This is the Son of God, born of Mary, raised in Nazareth, the young man who was perfectly filled with the Spirit of God, born to be our Wounded Healer.

It is safe to say that Jesus was not crucified because he taught love and forgiveness or because he set about debating legal points with the scribes of his day. Base on theological perspective, Jesus was crucified because of our sins but if we look at it on political point of view, Jesus was crucified because he was seen as a threat to the powers-that-be. His brand of non-violent resistance, his manner of stirring the people and empowering the poor, were incorrectly judged by his adversaries to be challenging the political power structures of his day.

Jesus presence and achievement were the very real threat to the status of lawful authority. If Jesus was seen as 'Christ' and 'Lord' to some, this very fact threatened the familiar lordship of others, notably the chief priests and scribes. Consequently, Jesus was a problem to the Jewish hierarchy from both religious and political perspectives.

It is clear how political leaders in first-century of Judea had overlooked injustice and allowed Jesus Christ to be wrongly sentenced and crucified. Now, we must pray that this phenomenon as what happened to Jesus before and a lot of people believed that this was happened to DP too recently, will never be happened again because if we will attempt to make the same mistake, we ignore the needs of the poor and vulnerable in our society. This message is clear and its implication sounds familiar to you for we already knew what does it meant.

Our prayer for us all this Easter is that we might know God’s life-giving Spirit, even in the darkest places of our own lives and of our nation and our communities. May we be enlivened by that Spirit to participate in God’s transformation of death into life and may we constantly rejoice and give thanks to the Lord our God who gave his only Son that we might have life and have it abundantly.

Jesus came to help the poor and vulnerable, the hurting and the meek in our society. The death and resurrection of Jesus has implications for our social arrangements as well as our spiritual destiny.

Don’t ‘crucify’ Jesus afresh this Easter just because of our political and personal ambition. The death and resurrection of Jesus offers an opportunity to experience and share the love, joy and peace of God.

HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA!