The death of Jesus is either the end or it is the beginning. The Jesus journey either tells humankind that love is victorious and the risk is worth taking or it chronicles a sad and meaningless walk into despair. "If Christ has not been raised then our preaching is useless and your believing it is useless... If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are the most unfortunate of all people" (1 Corinthians 15:15, 19).
Our faith is that the Father upheld the life of Jesus and reclaimed it as eternal. Jesus, therefore, is the really real. Or, to speak theologically, Jesus is eternal life. The resurrected Jesus is our assurance that it is okay to be human, even better to be noble, and best of all to be devoured for the sake of it.
Now as long as the cross in even its subtle forms is a scandal, then the resurrection is impossible to experience. Our faith is a choice against despair and against abandonment. Our hope is not just a hope for good fortune; it is a radical hope for God himself--that God is, in fact, who God should be--love that we can understand.
To be true to himself and to his father's love, Jesus found himself undergoing both suffering and rejection. His pain was not just the pathetic and masochistic suffering and rejection of the sinful world, but it was precisely the result of his radical decision for the kingdom and kingdom values, which are "not of this world." In other words, Jesus was not an unfortunate victim of circumstances, but he in fact designed his own death by choosing for life "and life more abundantly." To opt for the really real is to find yourself at odds with most of the world's systems, institutions, expectations--and even religions.
Jesus allowed that to happen in him--and the Father backed it up!
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