He is risen… but He didn’t have to

My Own Personal Easter

2 weeks ago I worked a 72.5 hour week at church. Some of you… perhaps who don’t work at a church… may be thinking that’s nuts. Some of you… perhaps who do work at a church… may be thinking “suck it up princess… that’s a slow week!”.

Well for me it was too much… sort of. After the 8 hour day on Saturday to end the week I was exhausted but felt like I had survived. I was wrong. Sunday morning the awareness and the effect came. I hadn’t just given out alot… I had given out everything. All the light, hope, energy, passion… everything good in me… gone. I wasn’t just empty… the void was in the negative… a vacuum.

Emotionally, mentally, physically I sank into darkness. Yet I can’t regret it. Because I discovered He still whispers there… and it’s so magnified and echoing and teeth-rattling when there’s none of “you” left inside to absorb/redirect/distort/slow it’s vibration. And I began to recognize another sound I haven’t heard in awhile. My roar. It’s different now. It’s changed from this experience. It’s a little less tame… a little more savage… a little more tender. It scares me a bit but I think I like how it sounds.

I can’t regret the rawness because of how real it made me feel and the brutally honest thoughts it produced… thoughts unhindered by the common desire to “think positively”.

I can’t regret it because it took me to a new and scary level of deadness. This put me in the resurrection position… perhaps the spiritual equivalent of the fetal position… the potential of it is tangible and He has already begun drawing me into newness.

About this same time I had a thought that I hadn’t had before… Jesus had to die… but He didn’t have to rise again. There could be no forgiveness without the shedding of blood. The Lamb had to be sacrificed. The penalty had to be paid. “It is finished”. And it was. Everything was fulfilled. You theologians please feel free to prove me wrong but in that moment I couldn’t think of any legal requirement to rise again… save the obvious fact that Jesus said He would. But there was nothing pending, nothing outstanding, nothing undone. Our salvation was complete. So what was the point of rising again?

Fear not… I’m not slipping into heresy… the reasons for, and benefits of, the resurrection of the Christ are myriad. But have you ever thought them through before from the perspective of the apparent lack of a technical need for Christ to rise again?

I am. And God seems to be more showing me then telling me. Through my own current state of deadness and the process of resurrection He is working in me.

Through a supernatural moment in one of our Easter services when He thinned the veil between the spiritual and the physical for a brief moment that I might glimpse the “one song”. For a moment I could “see” the song as well as hear it. The tune of the parking attendants and ushers, the melody of actors and techies, the lilt of every coffee server and toilet scrubber in our church all coalescing with His voice to form one visible sound, one eye-pleasing harmony. The song of His way. His being. His purpose. His agenda.

The song of His work of reconciliation and restoration through Riverwood. Played by the instruments of every common act of service and sacrifice made by so many within my Riverwood family. And in that moment was a wordless and very personal invitation from Him for me to join in again. To raise my voice in the One Song again. To sing. Not so much because I’m needed… but because I am wanted.

This was my Easter.

Do you feel the darkness tremble
When all the saints join in one song
And all the streams flow as one river
To wash away our brokenness
~Martin Smith