Stations of the Resurrection

According to the scriptures, nothing changed in the world on the day that Jesus rose from grave. Rome didn’t stop being in power. The religious leaders who asked for a crucifixion didn’t lose their jobs. It took a while before the followers of Jesus stopped hiding for their lives in a room together. It was all very small at first. So small that you’d think it wasn’t any kind of event at all. I think if we’re honest with ourselves, we may feel the same way at our modern Easter services. We wake up. Put on something a little nicer than usual. Go to sacred ceremony that has pulled out all the celebratory jazz hands shouting, “He’s risen! He is risen indeed!”… only to walk out of that service, to a nice lunch in a world that feels exactly the same before the service. Did Jesus’ resurrection do anything? I mean that’s kind of a scandalous question in the face of multi-billion dollar industry built upon the premise that it did, and I’m not arguing that it didn’t happen. I believe that it did. But my question is did it do anything? What does it do for us today? Did resurrection happen one time or is it still happening in our midst? The most common response I hear is something to the effect of Jesus rose from the dead, defeating death, and if I believe in that, then I will find a good life on the otherside of death. This art show is not about that… because what happens after this life is only something we can speculate, nothing we can really experience as we are alive. So lets side step resurrection as afterlife for now. What does it mean to experience resurrection now? The world may not have changed the morning Jesus was resurrected, but Jesus changed. And then his resurrection encounters with his followers irrevocably changed them, and changed their communities, that changed the world. The premise for these station meditations is that resurrection changes the way you see everything. Jesus started his ministry saying “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Biblically speaking, to repent doesn’t mean to feel sorry or muster up a healthy dose of regret. It means to undergo a complete 180 degree change of mind, heart, and perspective. And on the otherside of His resurrection encounters, we see this about face change in his followers. I believe we are still invited to a perspective change that changes the world. At least in the world we inhabit. Each one of the stations draws from the resurrection story and invites us into a change of perspective: one that affected the followers back then, and one that invites the followers right now.