The Resurrection of Christ

To celebrate this great day of Easter, I turn to two great theologians. 

An Icon of the Resurrection of Christ

The first is brilliant (and sometimes overly dense) Swiss theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, 

If one does away with the fact of the Resurrection, one also does away with the Cross, for both stand and fall together, and one would then have to find a new center for the whole message of the gospel.

I also had to quote something from the greatest living New Testament scholar (by my lights), N. T. Wright’s whose book on the Resurrection may be the most important new book I’ve read in the past decade: 

Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.

And 

The resurrection completes the inauguration of God’s kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating that God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven.

Finally from Wright, 

The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you’re now invited to belong to it.

As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!"

Today, let’s say yes to God’s invitation to a resurrected and new life.