For the Big Mac, it was that creamy, tangy condiment that makes the sandwich delicious still (at least for me) to this day. Now everyone knows that without the beef, the cheese, the bun and the lettuce as well - it wouldn't be a Big Mac.
But without that sauce, well, it'd just be one more cheeseburger. And likewise, for me, without resurrection - Christianity would be just one more nice set of beliefs among several others. It'd be just one more cheeseburger.
Yes, after a lifetime of reflection on my worldview, I've come to the conclusion that Christianity without Resurrection would hold little for me.
Resurrection is Christianity's Secret Sauce. That's it and that's all.
I mean think about it.
Maybe like me, you've been bumping around this world for more than a few decades. Maybe you've experienced some high highs and some low lows. And in some of those lows we wondered if we'd make it through at all, yes?
Maybe like me, you've been bumping around this world for more than a few decades. Maybe you've experienced some high highs and some low lows. And in some of those lows we wondered if we'd make it through at all, yes?
Maybe at times you could almost smell it - you know what I'm talking about. I'm almost sure I could smell Death.
Thinkers of the past have said:
"Nobody makes it out of this life . . . alive".
"Death is the great equalizer."
Old Hamlet almost couldn't look away from it. To him, Death was the final verdict, reducing even the mightiest empire down to a mere windbreak.
"Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away."
Quite depressing just to think about.
Your biggest dreams, highest hopes and most noble projects - all that working and hoping and praying and building and saving and pushing and dreaming - all in the end coming to:
Nothing. Zip. Nada. Nyet. No bueno. Dead.
And what good is any wishful-thinking, self-help philosophy, well-meaning religion - whatever - if in the final analysis, everything ends up Dead?
But here's the Sauce, friends. We're promised something quite different by someone whose Father cracked Death on the head once and for all.
We have in him a real life example of someone that beat Death, and promises the same to us if we'll just bump along behind him and trust him and take a crack at living as if we do.
What if we (and our most noble dreams and high hopes and world-changing projects) could live and last forever?
That's no ordinary cheeseburger.
---
"Dead Things Come Alive"
(I Know a Name)
at
Red Rocks Church, Colorado.
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