What should our response to Easter be? What does the resurrection mean, and how do we apply that in our daily lives? Saint Paul tells us that we should "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without murmuring and arguing, so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world." (Philippians 2. 5-15)
Jesus, who had everything that belongs to God, gave it all up for us; to undo the damage we had done in trying to become like God. After, and only after the self-emptying, the humbling, temptations, suffering, death, and loss of fellowship with the Father, did the miracle of Easter come, when the restoration of everything began.
We are called to "take up our cross and follow him", and that must mean that emptiness and even brokenness are prerequisites for the Holy Spirit to guide us whether as individuals or as churches.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians that God has deliberately chosen the weak and unimportant to show his strength. "Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God." (1.26-29). We do not like to think of ourselves as weak and foolish, but it is a temptation common to us all to want to know, or even to think that we have the ability to know what God wants, or is going to do in any given situation. I know we all have this temptation, because it is the primeval temptation from the Garden of Eden: that we should know what is "good and evil" and by so doing know God's thoughts.
But, if we cannot know God's thoughts, how are we to know what the Holy Spirit wants of us? There is no simple answer to that question, but there are Biblical guidelines. In Acts 1, the disciples, at a meeting with the risen Lord, are told by him not to act (yet), but to "wait for the gift my Father promised". This is not necessarily a passive waiting, though that may have its place, but a listening to what the Spirit is saying to the churches (look at Revelation chapters 2 & 3, for a Biblical model for a ministerial review of a church). Many years ago, a pastor who had visited one of the mega-churches in the USA, while reporting back on what he had learnt from his visit, said "we spend too much time asking God to bless what we are doing, rather than doing what God is blessing". About twenty years later, the pastor of a more recent mega-church, Rick Warren, in The Purpose Driven Church says "church leaders should stop praying 'Lord, bless what I'm doing' and start praying, 'Lord, help me to do what you are blessing'." (p. 15). This sort of waiting for God has an alert and expectant character, as we seek to find out what it is that God is blessing.
Like the first disciples when they met the risen Jesus, we too may experience a whole range of reactions: doubt, disillusionment, disbelief, belief, joy, etc. Like them we too may have to wait for the Holy Spirit to come, without knowing what God is planning to do. But God did do something, in his own good time for them then, and what he did caused many lives to change direction, sometimes dramatically. If we truly meet with the risen Christ, perhaps something similar will happen to us, as individuals or as a church. Perhaps we will have to wait for God's Holy Spirit to act, and the waiting may be longer or shorter than we would like, and perhaps when the Holy Spirit does act, we may find our whole future to be very different to the one we expected beforehand. And perhaps none of that will happen until we have been on our own journey of self emptying, suffering, and death, before finding our resurrection in our meeting with the risen Lord.
Yours in Christ,
Richard Pamplin