Pascha a new beginning for you

Pascha a new beginning for you
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
April 20, 2014

Today we celebrate the day Christ defeated death and the stone was rolled away leaving the tomb empty. It was a new beginning for His followers after spending two traumatized days shocked by how it all turned out so bad. They lost hope, questioned everything they believed while suffering for believing that goodness and miracles from God were all false. After all, if God really sent Christ to them, then He would have not been nailed to the Cross and carried to that tomb.

Hope that they were forgiven for all they had done wrong in their lives was taken away from them. They saw with their own eyes that all Christ preached about led to His death. All the blessings He told them about resulted in this terrible ending.

Sermon on the Mount when He said:

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

Christ even had mercy for a Roman Centurion. The Faith of the Centurion

5 When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help.
6 “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”
7 Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?”
8 The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed.
9 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
10 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.
11 I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.
12 But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
13 Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment.

Those words had filled them with love for others and had them believing they were loved no matter what was happening in their own lives, yet when He died, they believed His life had been wasted and He was not what they thought He was. How could they believe anything He told them? What about the miracles they saw Him do? Were they all some kind of magic trick? Was any of it real?

For those two nights they were filled with grief but afterwards they rejoiced knowing that what Jesus told them, what He stood for and everything He did was from God.

John:20
Jesus Appears to His Disciples

19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”

20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

Peace be with you? He said that after being betrayed, abandoned, beaten, mocked and nailed to the cross. He said "Peace be with you" to the people he called his friends and was willing to die for yet they ran from Him as soon as there was trouble.

There was a spiritual awakening that Sunday morning.

For Greeks the day is called Pascha, otherwise known as Easter.

Origins of Pascha and Great Week Rev. Alciviadis C. Calivas, Th.D has a good article on this and points this passage out.

"...purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Cor 5:7-8).

These people made new. It all meant more to them after Jesus defeated death. His last words of asking for God to forgive everyone for what was done to them changed the way they felt about the spiritual connection they had to the Creator.

There is a difference between religion and spirituality. Most of them were living under the religious rules of their Jewish heritage but Christ made it more personal to them.

Kairos is in play when things happen unpredictably, but at just the right moment. Eternity and clock time seem to intersect for human benefit and instruction. Such an experience, when something eternal appears to break through into everyday life, is an ‘epiphany'. Heaven and earth may seem briefly to coincide and... ‘Something happens'! Something new and profound, something inspiring and life-changing is revealed in an instant.

The new wisdom resonates powerfully with something already present, deep inside. It feels like a reminder and confirmation of something already known but forgotten. Such revelations herald a kind of awakening, a key moment of transition on life's journey towards spiritual maturity. As the fallen leaf never rises to rejoin the tree, so is this a point of no return. The significance of these experiences is re-enforced by ‘synchronicities' unexpected but meaningful coincidences; such as may occur when two people meet for the first time, who later become life partners.

Synchronicities and serendipities - unexpected discoveries - often go together. There is a kind of mystery about kairos. Kairos is spiritual time.
Spiritual Wisdom for Secular Times The search for meaning and faith Psychology Today by Dr. Larry Culliford

So what does all of this have to do with you?

You are not stuck where you are spiritually. You do not have to question everything you thought was the right thing to do for the right reasons because you are hurting today. The outcome of your life has not been written yet.

The followers of Christ were miserable after doing things for a good reason and out of love but ended up knowing that they were not wrong. Their suffering did not have to last a lifetime and they were not stuck in those dark days between the Crucifixion and Resurrection. You are not stuck where you are spiritually either.

In one week it all went to hell from Palm Sunday when Jesus was welcomed.

8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.
9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna[b] to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”[c] “Hosanna[d] in the highest heaven!”
10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”
11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”
(Matthew 21)

To the night He was arrested and His friends abandoned Him, tried and people called for Him to be put to death to the day they heard the news the tomb was empty.

In 7 days the world changed for the people following Jesus but as you grieve now, know that the world can change for you as well.

Look at why you did what you did if the reason was from goodness, then forgive yourself as well as the people who did wrong against you. If you did it for the wrong reasons, ask for forgiveness and then forgive yourself. There is nothing you cannot be forgiven for. Christ not only asked for forgiveness for the people after they betrayed Him, He died for their sake and ours. Let Him heal your spirit so that you can rejoice again just as the people did when they heard the news they were not wrong believing that love lives on.