04/15/2025
Here we are in the final countdown (and I’m not referring to the 1986 hit song by Europe that has over 1 billion views on YouTube).
Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, all culminating in the most significant day in human history: Easter.
I want to ask an obvious question that people in a post-Christian culture raise: SO WHAT? Even if Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection actually happened, what difference does it make? The world is still the world. Our lives are still our lives. Our jobs, families, homes, and activities are still present. And many people find themselves “just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round” (John Lennon).
If Jesus did rise from the dead, why is the world still a mess? Why do people still get cancer? Why do children still die? Why do marriages still split up, people still get robbed, and terrorists still attack?
This is very important, so I hope you will read to the end. Jesus’s resurrection doesn’t solve all the world’s problems—for now—but it does solve the dilemma of what to do while we are in the midst of those problems.
Imagine you are in a dark room with no windows or doors. The air is stifling hot, and it seems like you’re suffocating. You feel along the paint-chipped walls, searching for a way out to no avail. You know you’re going to die, trapped in that room of no answers, no solutions, and no hope.
All of a sudden, you hear a click. You turn your face toward the sound and see a slight crack with light shimmering through. As you look more closely, you realize that where there was only a wall, a door has now appeared, and a small radiance of light is penetrating the surrounding darkness.
What do you do? People have said your entire life that light does not exist. This room is all there is. Nothingness lies beyond the room. Therefore, you are taught to do your best to find your way around in the darkness and discover your own sense of meaning, purpose, and happiness.
Is it possible that the door is real and that light is penetrating the darkness, even though most of the room is still covered in a canopy of black? If you believe the door exists and the light is real, you now come to two very important realizations: (1) You have a way out. And (2) Light overcomes the darkness. The light has not destroyed all the darkness in the moment. But as the door opens wider, more light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:5).
This is the hope of the resurrection. It’s “otherworldly” in that we know there’s a reality of life beyond the room, our world. But it’s also very much for this world in that the light gradually, slowly, overcomes the room’s darkness.
We are not to be so heavenly-minded that we do no earthly good. Nor are we so earthly-minded that we have no heavenly hope. The resurrection is the bridge to the life that is to come from the life that is. Our living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Peter 1:3) is not just that we will escape the trials and travails of this world. Our hope is that the resurrection power of Jesus triumphs over the trials and travails of this world. Ultimately, we are promised a “new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1), but until that time comes, let’s keep widening the door so that more light—the light of the Resurrected One—will penetrate the darkness of our world.
Is there an “afterlife”? Yes, if we mean there is more than what is in the room of this physical life. But, in the words of N. T. Wright, “Resurrection isn’t a fancy way of saying `going to heaven when you die.’ It is not about `life after death’ as such. Rather, it’s a way of talking about being bodily alive again after a period of being bodily dead. Resurrection is a second-stage postmortem life: `life after life after death’” (Simply Christian, 114-115).
What’s interesting is that none of the resurrection stories in the Gospels and in the Book of Acts speak about Jesus’s resurrection as though it only concerns the “afterlife.” Instead, they say, “If Jesus has been raised, that means that God’s new world, God’s kingdom, has indeed arrived; and that means we have a job to do. The world must hear what the God of Israel, the creator God, has achieved through His Messiah” (idem.).
Indeed, we have a job to do. Let’s widen the door and let in the light. It’s time to get busy, because, indeed, we are in the final countdown.
