On the Resurrection...

My first public speaking engagement was at my little brother’s funeral in 2008.

His death was tragic, completely unexpected, and came only four years after my father’s sudden brush with death as the result of mosquito-borne meningo-encephalitis which left him with traumatic brain injury, paraplegia, and epilepsy.

I didn’t think I could experience grief at a deeper level than that which I had endured watching my father suffer.

But in the moments, hours, and days following my brother’s death, I wrestled with God in ways too intimate and too gruesome to ever put to words.

I don’t often revisit them for the pain is visceral and has a way of finding me on its own without any invitation.

There is a moment in time in which every beating heart must settle the question Jesus posed to Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16).

Though Jesus had saved me from my hell-bound race more than a decade earlier, it wasn’t until the news of my brother’s death that I found myself confronted with this question and no path of escape.

“Who do you say that I am?”

I wish I could write that I answered immediately.

I did not.

My heart was so broken, I refused to look upon my brother’s body.

I could not…would not say goodbye.

Initially, I even refused to attend his memorial.

But He relentlessly pursued me.

“Who do you say that I am?”

It took 3 days for me to break…to bow my knee.

“You are Jesus, Messiah. Son of the living God. You are the resurrection and the life. Because of you, though I die, I will live again.”

Because of you, though Jason died, he will live again.

Truth was no longer an Easter story or words written on the pages of the Bible.

It was no longer a distant theological treatise or a mere part of the systematic doctrine I’d put to memory.

Truth was a person and a relationship and the resurrection was the central, life changing theme.

Death lost its sting.

The Resurrection changed everything.

It changed me.

I hope it has changed you.

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” —Bonhoeffer

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die…”
                                              —John 11:25