Making Easter ordinary. . .

It occurs to me, now that Easter the Sunday and the season are in the rear view mirror, that the goal of Easter is to embrace Easter as the ordinary shape of our lives, lived now in anticipation and then in fullness.  I think that has it about right.  St. Paul certainly urges us to seek the things that are above, to set our minds upon Christ, to walk worthy of the people He has said we are by baptism and faith, and to keep our eyes fixed upon the goal and finish of the faith.  It is as if he is telling us that the ordinary of our lives is not the life fighting sin as if the battle were all ours to fight but fighting sin because the battle has been won.  This does not in anyway diminish the prominence of the crucifixion or the proclamation of Christ crucified but it ought to dash the idea that somehow or another we are fighting the same battle Christ fought for us.  We are not.  We cannot.  Our battle is the battle of faith, of living from and toward the future Christ has accomplished by His payment for sin with His suffering, His ownership of death and the grave that belonged to us, and His resurrection to show forth our own glorious future in Him.

So often it seems that we paint the Christian life as some dreary battle against the devil who wants to corrupt us, the world which would deceive us, and the God who is stingy with His grace and must be cajoled into being merciful.  At least that is how many of us Christians sound in our weary complaints of how hard it is to be Christian. That is, however, a gross inaccuracy of what the shape of our Christian lives is and should be.  We are not driven any more by fear -- fear of the law to condemn us, fear of the devil to steal us away, fear of death to take our best life, and fear of not getting what we want to make us happy.  We are motivated and driven instead by the finished atonement of Christ so that we no longer must live in the prison of any fear and we are motivated and driven by the future prepared for us by Him who has gone to prepare our eternal place.  Sometimes we Christians sound as if think about being kind at Christmas and being happy for our heavenly future at Easter but the rest of the year it is me'n'Jesus alone at the OK corral gun slinging against the forces of evil waiting for the end of the battle to head to the saloon and drink up a few brewskis.  

When our hearts and minds are focused on ourselves and on the moment, that is perhaps how it feels.  But the whole perspective of the faith is Easter driven.  We are forgiven; we have been redeemed; there is a future for us that death cannot overcome.  This is the context of the Divine Service -- driven toward the promise we have now but will have kept in full on the day God has appointed.  The whole impetus of our daily lives is changed as well.  We do not keep the commands of God as a people who fear His wrath but we delight in the ways of Him who has redeemed us, striving to live in today the confident future we know by faith.  Easter is not a diversion nor a destination but the ordinary shape of our Christian lives.