The Church has been asked to be a faithful witness of the Christ event. We are the tellers of the story. With the Word of God in hand and heart we seek to show up in our world as those who intentionally, carefully, and compassionately live out the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, and that He lives in our lives.

The first Witnesses had the advantage of actually being with Jesus so that they could touch Him and hear Him and watch His life as He lived out the meaning of “the Word of Life” (I John 1:1). The rest of us have trusted the faithfulness of the Holy Spirit and the integrity of the first disciples and have come to believe in Christ ourselves.

Jesus has a prophetic word for us who have come after the fact. He said to those who physically lived with Him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed” (John 20:29).

Jesus was aware that there would be many of us who would come to Him long after the earthly event of His life, and He prayed for us. He said, “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:20-21).

Want to hear some good news, Church of the twenty-first century? We have been prayed for by the Messiah Himself. We are not alone in our journey of faith. We are covered by the prayers of Jesus. And, Jesus said to the Father, “You always hear Me” (John 11:42).

Trust the Faithfulness of the Father, and trust the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Then let your life reflect the fact that Jesus loves you and ever lives to intercede for you (Heb. 7:25). Trust His prayers.

It is exciting, thrilling, and marvelous to know that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead; but this truth is just a beginning. That HE LIVES has profound implications in our lives. That HE LIVES means that He is here to be in our lives. His testimony is present tense and not just past tense.

Jesus Christ is present to help His people live victoriously in world systems that tend to defeat. His Life in our lives means that we are enabled to do what we could not do in and of ourselves. We are enabled to love, enabled to live unselfishly and sacrificially, enabled to let God be God in our lives, enabled to “overcome the world” through the faith that Jesus has instilled in us (See I John 5:1-6).

Jesus’ resurrection calls us to experience the life of God right now, today, and to walk forward knowing that our lives and times are in the hands of One who speaks and even death bows. He speaks and we are enabled to rise above the current arrangements and powers, and to live in a new order of things. It is a way of being where the love of God permeates everything and where defeat is a stranger because defeat, like death, must bow when the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead speaks.

The Resurrection calls us to be who we are. And who are we? We are people who take seriously the claims of Jesus and who live faithfully to those claims. Jesus has changed all life for us so much so that we are never again the same. We don’t want to be the same. We don’t want to go back. We are filled with the life of God and the future awaits us.

As late as Early Sunday morning just after the crucifixion the disciples of Jesus still thought he was dead and that their hopes and dreams had died with Him. They had seen Him die, taken down from the cross, and placed into a grave. After all, that’s where you put the dead, isn’t it?

Early on Sunday morning Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome made their way to the grave, hoping that they might be allowed into the grave to anoint the body of Jesus with spices, spices for burial. The anointing hadn’t taken place on Friday because at the time of Jesus’ death the Sun was setting into the Sabbath, and no work was to be done on the Sabbath. So, they waited.

On Sunday morning we know at least one thing. These ladies had no idea they were going to a resurrection. They were going to complete the responsibility to the dead. Proper anointing needed to be done, the body needed to receive the greatest of preparation and expressions of dignity toward the deceased. They were just doing what didn’t get done on Friday.

Then, Jesus showed up and ruined everything. They didn’t get to have their funeral after all. The body was gone. The spices weren’t needed, no mourning was necessary, and they were stunned. In fact, “They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8).

When Mary Magdalene had gained her composer, she went to the disciples not to tell them Jesus was alive but that somebody had taken the body away (John 20:2). Over the next couple of hours Jesus physically appeared to those who loved Him and confirmed that His body wasn’t missing but that He was, in fact, alive.

We serve a Risen Savior.

From a 1999 Good Friday message by William Willimon:

Let us sit in the dark. Let us tell one another the somber story of Jesus' last hours in the land of the living. Let us stare into the darkness and tell the truth of our shadowlands. Then let us gather again, morning after tomorrow, hopeful that by some stunning act of enlightenment, the words are trustworthy and true, that, "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5).

I get nervous around crowds, not because crowds are threatening so much as I just never know how the crowd will decide issues in the heat of the moment. We hear about mass psychology and crowd mentality. One moment the crowd can love you and the next moment it can hate you.

One particular Sunday comes to mind. The crowd was breathless at the arrival of Jesus and turned a simple event into a parade. The crowd went nuts crying out things like, “Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord….Hosanna in the highest” (Mark 11:9-10). Five days later there was another crowd and a lot of the folks who were in the first crowd were in the second crowd, too. Only this time they weren’t worshiping the one of whom they had earlier said, “Blessed is He…” Nope! This time they were calling for His death shouting, “Crucify Him!”(Mark 15:13). Crowds make me nervous.

Palm Sunday is a reminder that Jesus deserves all the praise that people can offer but it is also a reminder that large groups can be an illusion. People can be swayed. People can be turned. They can praise and they can kill. This is a solemn reminder that what you see is not always what you get.

In the heat of the moment and in the pressure of the crowd is there a way for us to stay true to what our faith calls forth in us? Can we say “Yes” when everyone around us saying “No?” Can we say “No” when everyone around is saying “Yes?” Can we stand with Jesus regardless of peer pressure or mass psychology or the stress and strain than can come when we find ourselves alone in the crowd?

Can we just keep on saying, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,” right on through Good Friday and into the glories of Easter morning?