Today (this weekend), people worldwide are remembering and celebrating the greatest event in human history- the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead! All human discovery and achievement, all scientific breakthrough and advancement, pales in comparison to this most glorious event- which was essentially the abolition of death and meaninglessness and the ushering in of genuine hope for the world.

On Easter Sunday, I could tell you that:

Jesus didn’t swoon on the cross but genuinely, truly, died. And it was seen-to by professional executioners.

They buried him in a well-known location, and yet three days later, the tomb was empty.

Women were the first to see him risen from the dead (which brought no credit to the claim in those days because of women’s low role in society). Why mention the women at all? Because it’s actually how it went down.

Five hundred people saw the risen Jesus at one time.

Jesus ate, drank, talked & walked with his closest friends and followers for forty days after his resurrection. His appearance was not just a one-time hallucinated experience.

After witnessing his resurrection, Jesus’ own family members, who were skeptical of him, accepted him as Messiah and God.

Each of the Apostles (excluding John) died gruesome deaths for their claim that Jesus was Messiah and Lord.

I could tell you that people back then were not more gullible about these things than we are. No one in the 1st century (besides the Jews) believed in “resurrection,” or wanted it for that matter – The Greeks had a very low view of the body and afterlife.. and yet the claim that Jesus rose from the dead and was Lord over all changed the world.

These facts concerning Jesus’ resurrection are of enormous importance, but they aren’t delivered to us via scripture as cold facts from a textbook waiting to be dusted off once a year around this time. No, the Christian life is to be one continual celebration and observance of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead!

N.T. Wright, in his book Surprised By Hope, says, “The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you’re now invited to belong to it.”

The Apostle Peter also develops this idea of living out or practicing resurrection in his 1st epistle. He speaks of God’s people as having a living hope, an inheritance, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Peter wants us to think about the real-life implications of the resurrection of Jesus and bring that to bear upon our everyday rhythms.

To Peter, the resurrection of Jesus is a life-altering, earth-shattering, historical event. So significant is the resurrection that it changed the course of history and the possibilities for every human that has ever lived. Peter says that Jesus’ resurrection means that we can now set our hope entirely on the coming Kingdom of God – with 100 % certainty. His call to all Christians is this: set your hope wholly on the grace brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The phrase “the revelation of Jesus Christ” refers to the Day that God will seal up and finish everything that he did at the Resurrection of Jesus. The day that he will destroy death and bring new life to this world, the day when he will make all things new. This hope is everlasting, totally secure because Jesus alone has risen from the dead, never to die again. He has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, and He alone has the keys of hell and death. Now he sits at the right hand of God the Father with all authority and power guiding all things to this end; until the time when he will bring his kingdom to reign on earth, in righteousness and peace, world without end.

I love the way that Tim Keller uses this Tolkienism to refer to the new creation when he says, “The resurrection of Christ means everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost.” -Tim Keller, The Reason for God.

That is the Kingdom of God – Peace, Shalom – complete healing and wholeness to all relationships in all of creation. In the Kingdom of God, we will be fully reconciled to God, to nature, to one another, and to ourselves.

Since all of this is guaranteed to us through Jesus’ resurrection, I want to follow suit with the Apostle Peter and the famous American poet Wendall Berry and say to you, ‘Live out that Hope, Practice Resurrection!’

But what does it look like to practice resurrection?

To the extent that that future is real to you, it will change how you live in the present. We call this “Eschatological Ethics.” Living out the kingdom of God in the here and now.

This idea breaks down into two categories: the calculated and the care-free.

The Calculated

If Jesus Christ is risen from the dead – that means we should calculate all things in light of the final resurrection and the coming kingdom. It means that everything we do in this life has eternal weight and merit to it. Directly following Pauls’ teaching on the truth and effects of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, he concludes –

“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15).

N.T. Wright says, “The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it…What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it). They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.” – N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

Part of the church’s task consists of implementing that achievement of Jesus and anticipating the future kingdom by doing righteousness, justice and bringing peace to the places and people of our city where it is absent.

I see here a correlation to Jesus’ parables of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price. The exhortation of these stories is to give everything you have for the working and building of the kingdom of God. To live our lives as though the kingdom were here now. To begin to practice now the language and characteristics of faith, hope, and love in our everyday lives. For this is the language they speak in the courts of the kingdom of heaven.

Again, N.T. Wright, “Every act of love, every deed done in Christ and by the Spirit, every work of true creativity – doing justice, making peace, healing families, resisting temptation, seeking and winning true freedom – is an earthly event in a long history of things that implement Jesus’ own Resurrection and anticipate the final new creation and act as signposts of hope, pointing back to the first and on to the second…” – N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

The Care-free

Tim Keller, in his book, Jesus the King, asks a series of questions that help us to realize the everyday implication of the power and freedom that the resurrection of Jesus offers to our lives. He asks,

“Why is it so hard to face suffering? Why is it so hard to face disability and disease? Why is it so hard to do the right thing if you know it’s going to cost you money, reputation, maybe even your life? Why is it so hard to face your death of death of loved ones? It’s so hard because we think (and act) as though this broken world is the only world we’re ever going to have. It’s easy to feel as if this money is the only wealth we’ll ever have. If I only have one life to live, I better live it to the fullest by bringing ultimate satisfaction to myself. “But if the resurrection is true, then this is not my only life, nor is it my best life, but the best is yet to come.” – Tim Keller, Jesus the King.

Not only is the best to come, but it is “imperishable, undefiled, unfading and reserved in heaven for us, protected by God!

Because of this, we are free. Free to love all people liberally. Free to show kindness to all. Free to forgive. Free to think the best of people. Free to loosen our control and worry. Free to give more away. Free to take ourselves less seriously. We’re free to spend more time being with people, invest in their lives, and less time securing our own little kingdoms. We are free to bless the people who hate and curse us. Might I even suggest free to read another story to our kids or spend more time playing with them? We are free to throw a great party or plant a garden.

People who have no belief in God or the Resurrection – who have no hope in a restored heaven and earth, say stuff like this all the time. How much more can Christians live care-free? Indeed, if Jesus rose from the dead, your life should be care-free, but not because of flippancy. Your life should be care-free because of such great certainty and underlying hope about the future and the kingdom of God.

If you’re lonely in this life, in the resurrection, you will have perfect love. If you’re empty in this life, in the resurrection, you will be fully satisfied.

If you and I know that this is not the only world, the only body, the only life we are ever going to have – that we will one day have a perfect life, a definite, concrete life – then who ultimately cares what people do to you, and what happens in this life?

Because of the resurrection, we can be free from ultimate anxieties in this life; we can be brave and take risks. We can sacrifice greatly. We can face even the worst things with joy and with hope because it doesn’t end there. Death, chaos, and destruction do not have the final word over our lives – Jesus the resurrected Lord does.

It’s because of this hope we can freely give our bodies in obedience to God, to his use, and for his glory. We can have the mind of Christ, who did not hold onto his glory and comforts but laid them aside for others. We can be humble, like Jesus. We can make ourselves the servant of all, like Jesus. We can die to ourselves, our will, our self-preservation for the sake of others and receive a great reward in the Kingdom of God.” Only in the gospel of Jesus Christ can we find such enormous hope to live in. Only the resurrection promises us not just new minds and hearts but also new bodies. Only the resurrection promises that the best is yet to come!

Listen to the voices of the prophets, and just let this vision sink into your bones.

“On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation” (Isaiah 25:6-9)

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:1-5)

Last thing

“If you believe the resurrection is true. If you believe that Jesus has died to save you – to redirect your eternal trajectory irrevocably toward God. If you believe that God has accepted you, for Jesus’ sake, through an act of supreme grace. You are a part of the Kingdom of God which means – a guaranteed new heavens and new earth, a healed material creation, absolute wholeness and well being- physically, spiritually, socially, and economically.” – Tim Keller, Jesus the King.

If you believe this, then Practice Resurrection.

We find ourselves living at a time of great fear, sorrow and disappointment. Many of us are faced with dilemmas that we never expected, like layoffs, furloughs or closing down our businesses, i.e. burying a dream that you’ve worked so hard for. Some things that are being missed during this time simply can’t be recovered: a wedding day, a family’s first baby shower, a senior year of high school, a mother’s 60th birthday, the list could go on. For these and a thousand other situations, there isn’t a redo; you can’t get back these moments, and that is something to lament!

But there is more to lament than personal disappointment right now. There is the pain and grief that the world is not right. There are the millions who have been laid off, the thousands that have died, and the many living in fear and total social isolation. Our current situation has created and highlighted these and a thousand other issues. What can one do? Lament.

What do I mean by lament?

Lament is a passionate state or expression of grief or sorrow. Lament follows the theme that, at one time, everything was good, but now all is lost. Lament is an intense, almost violent form of grief-stricken prayer. This concept is something almost entirely absent from the western Church, but was and still is very prominent in Jewish life and Eastern cultures.

I do think we’ve seen a culturally relevant example in recent history in one person in particular – Mr. Rogers. That saintly man carried the grief and pain of others in his soul. He acted as a counselor and friend for the children on his show, the children’s families and production crew members. He made deep, personal investment into the lives of those around him, seeking to know their names, their stories, and following up when he’d see them again. And though his daily process involved speaking into children’s lives, all too often, there were no ultimate answers to the issues they were facing. Both the theatrical biopic film and the recent documentary highlight a frequent occurrence that followed the taping of his shows: when filming finished and the studio was empty, Fred Rogers would often bang on his piano. I think in some way, Mr. Rogers was practicing lament (though without words) when he would pound on the keys. You could hear the anger, the pain and the protest in his playing – that’s lament. Lament is the outcry when there is no answer; it’s the pain of the process. Lament is the expression of the pain of the journey without an end in sight.

In our culture, we are very uncomfortable sitting in grief; we want to move to the good and the hopeful quickly. The idea of lament is not a comforting or comfortable idea to us. If we’re ever brave enough to practice it, we do our best to make it brief.

Maybe that’s because it feels hopeless and dismal to us. Lament doesn’t fit the western ideal of “Happily ever after,” nor does it fit our Systematic theologies of nicely categorizing things. I love what Oswald Bayer has observed: “Systematic theology (in dealing with suffering) in general tends to refer to a happy ending all too hastily and fails to take seriously the fruitless disorientation of the journey in all its uncertainties.” For the follower of Jesus, joy is the final word on the trials and difficulties we experience in life. However, much of that earthly experience will be marked with hardship, suffering, grief and lament.

Doubtless, this is why lament takes up significant space in the Biblical story, recognizing that we are living in a world that was never meant to be – a world filled with dark forces, evil, violence, decay, sickness, disease and death. We live in a world of sin.

Lament bemoans the world that is. But Biblical lament does so because the world is not what it should be (good God, good creation) and not what it shall be (redeeming God, redeemed creation).

“Lament can refer to the mystery of God, ‘his ways are not our ways.’ It can refer to the false absolutism of rationalism, to which postmodernists now react legitimately. It can reflect on distrust of an ordered universe, and on disbelief in the sovereignty of the creator. It can reflect the amount of pain and suffering humans can endure, collapse under, or transcend, resulting in post-traumatic nervous stress or in post-traumatic spiritual growth.” – The Psalms as Christian Lament, Walke, Moore, and Houston.

A basic framework for lament is orientation, disorientation, reorientation. And this can be seen in many Psalms, which can function as a guide for us through lament. The Psalms direct our complaints, our fears, our doubts, our failure, our praise, our needs and our hopes, to God and God alone. Along with this, the Psalms permit us to speak to God in total, raw authenticity and unfiltered honesty. Yet, they never leave us there. The point of scripture is to shape our hearts and minds into the right kind of thoughts and desires, to be and become God’s faithful and righteous people. I desire that by looking together at these very raw and unfiltered Psalms – the Spirit would shape our raw emotions and confessions into the right emotions and confessions.

For our example, let’s look at Psalm 44. In this Psalm, like many others, everything was great. Security, prosperity, victory – Israel was living in covenant faithfulness to Yahweh. Then something went terribly wrong. They lost a great battle, and they’d been bereaved, killed and humiliated. But how can that be? Wasn’t it YHWH, the Most High God, who fought for Israel? Had they lost God? Had God abandoned them? Was God asleep(vs.23)? What was going on? Rather than becoming stoic, nihilist, or cynical, the Psalm will teach us to take our complaint or lament to God, the one who sees, hears and knows (Exodus 3:7).

So let’s break down Psalm 44 into our three-part framework. It might be helpful to grab a notebook and work through this exercise with me so we can apply these principles personally.

1. Orientation.

Verses 1-8 express the idea that “everything was good.” This part of the Psalm helps us identify God’s goodness and faithfulness in times past. That he has been faithful in all seasons and situations. Take a moment to read through this section. Then, write down a brief list of God’s goodness and faithfulness to you in the past.


2. Disorientation.

Verses 9-22 articulate the Psalmist’s observations, a feeling that all was lost and a desire to understand what was happening. This part of the Psalm helps us identify our grief. What is bringing pain, frustration or fear into our lives? Bring these things as complaints to God. Remember, one primary function of the Psalms is to teach us to take our lives – every part of them – to God. Cast your cares upon him. Take a moment and list out (at least) three laments from your current situation.

Now focus on v22, and contrast it with Romans chapter 8:31-39. How does this passage complete the lament of Psalm 44:22?

3. Reorientation.

Psalm 44:23-26 presents the Psalmist’s appeal for redemption. Take this lament and make it your prayer: What is it that you want the Lord to do for you? Be specific, not generic. Be honest. Say what is in you and not what should be in you. Take this prayer with you into your week. Each time you feel those feelings of doubt, fear or abandonment, etc., take it to our Lord who journeys the way with us. Lament can lead us into a fruitful time, leading to a deepening of our love and trust in God.

Ultimately, lament can express a more profound trust in God, or it can wholly reject God. Lament can become either the spiritual experience of trustful humility or the defiance of God in pride.


Biblically, lament is a transitional state like the Exodus: a tempted environment of murmurings and distrust, or joyful anticipation of the promised land.

So Church, as we are traveling through this wilderness season, a long journey of unknowns, of scarcity, of fear on the right and the left; the temptation for us will be like that of the children of Israel – to question God’s goodness, love, faithfulness and promises. The temptation will be to doubt Him. And this is where the Psalms, and especially the Psalms of Lament, can teach us. The Psalms direct our complaints, our fears, our doubts, our failure, and our praise, our needs and our hopes to God and God alone.

Martin Luther, commenting on the richness of the Psalms, said:

“Where do you find deeper, more sorrowful, or pitiful words of sadness than in the Psalms of lamentation? There again, you look into the hearts of the Saints, as into death, yes, as into hell itself… When they speak of fear and hope, they use such words that no painter could so depict for your fear or hope, and no Cicero or other orator has so portrayed them. And that they speak these words to God and with God, this I repeat, is the best thing of all. This gives the words double earnestness and life.” – Martin Luther, Word and Sacrament

My prayer is that, in this strange season, we would engage this ancient practice of bringing our cares, our grief and our anger to God. I pray that the Psalms of Lamentation will teach us how to lament properly, how to bring our laments to God and how to fellowship in the sufferings of Jesus, and through it be more conformed to His image.


One last thought on Lament.

There is one massive difference between the Old Testament context of lament and the Christian’s New Testament context. The Jews of the Old Testament could protest their perceived unjust suffering (though there aren’t many characters who didn’t suffer greatly)because much of the Mosaic Law promised monetary blessing, health and happiness in response to faithfulness to the covenant. But for Christians who are under the New Covenant, inaugurated by Jesus, we cannot protest suffering. Christians are followers of Jesus, and He makes it clear that suffering is a part of the program for the Christian journey. As He suffered innocently, so must His followers, for they are not greater than their master (John 5:1-5; 8:34-39). Consequently, a voiced protest is not heard in Christ or the apostles’ teaching.

As C.S Lewis reminds us, “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course, it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.” – C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Christians can lament, but they cannot protest to the one who, with cracked lips, lacerated back, pierced hands and feet, with labored breaths and beard torn from His face, suffered the death of the cross for our sake.

English Poet George Herbert wrote an incredible poem called The Sacrifice. Stanza after stanza (62 in total), He chronicles the various sufferings and afflictions of the life of Jesus – each one with the refrain “Was ever grief like mine?”

Truly, Jesus, the son of God, was a man of sorrow and one who could say – “darkness is a close friend of mine” (Psalm 88:18).

God has suffered; He knows the difficulty of the journey, for He Himself has traveled it before, and He is journeying with us even now. As Psalm 62 says, “Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”

Soren Kierkegaard, who reflected much on the life of Job, left his mark in the corner of Copenhagen’s Cathedral. It reads: “We believe that God is great enough to harbor our little lives with all their grievances and that he can lead us from darkness through to the other side.” Amen, and Amen