He is risen indeed: alleluia!
And you and I, gentle reader, are risen with him, if only we’d believe it. Personally, I find it a tough call: I look at our war-torn, quake-shattered world and find myself more in tune with Woodbine Willie, who wrote:
O Grave, where is thy victory?
O Death, where is thy sting?
Thy victory is ev’rywhere,
Thy sting’s in ev’rything.
You can read the full poem here: Missing—Believed Killed: On Reading a Mother’s Letter
I’m with Woodbine Willie and I’m with Thomas: I want to see, to touch, to know, to be sure. I want to believe — I want to be like Paul, who wrote so many years before, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…” (Philippians 3:10, NIV) — I just wish he hadn’t written that bit about sharing the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings…
But without suffering, without death, there can be no resurrection and no resurrection power. If we as Christ’s followers are to share in the power of his resurrection, we must also share in the fellowship of his suffering. Some of us must lay down our lives. Some of us must pick up the world’s pain and carry it. Some of us will collapse under the weight. Some of us will be trampled underfoot by the very people we thought were our brothers and sisters, by our own colleagues and friends. Some of us have been, as we’ve seen balance sheets, business interests and self-preservation instincts take precedence over love.
As you celebrate Easter today, if you find yourself like me wondering where the power of the resurrection is in our world, in this trade of ours and in your own life, you could do worse, I guess, than read Adrian Warnock’s Raised With Christ. I haven’t read it yet myself so I don’t know to what extent he tackles suffering and death as the cost of resurrection in the book or whether it’s all about triumphant living and victory: if you read this post, Adrian, please do tell. But in the meantime, here are some of the reviews and interviews so far, most recent first:
- Cookiesdays: Raised with Christ
- Forgiven Geek: Unplanned, Candid Interview with Adrian Warnock
- Blogging Theologically: “I Must Never Again Let the Resurrection Become Something I Assume” – An Interview with Adrian Warnock
- Shibboleth: Raised with Christ
- TheVirtualWord: Raised with Christ (a mini-review)
- thebluefish.org: Review: Raised with Christ (Adrian Warnock)
- Gentle Wisdom: Raised with Christ: Review part 1 — first in an eight-part review series by Peter Kirk: probably the most comprehensive look at the book so far.
Alleluia: Christ is risen! May you, gentle reader, know the power of that resurrection in your life and ministry today and always.
