Grace and peace to you from God…
Why do the "make over" shows have such an appeal of us? Some time ago, one of the networks developed the idea of completely making over 15 ugly ducklings (that is people) into beautiful, long necked graceful swans. In fact, they've call the show The Swan! The show's appeal comes from many of our deep-seated psychic directives and needs. We all have an ideal self - a body and a personality - which we would like to see realized. All of us have flaws - physical or character flaws that we would like to address. We all have fears too, profound ones that shout to us in the privacy of our minds - "you are marred, cracked, defective somehow, and being so you are not accepted." That's why these shows are so popular. They prove that what is flawed can become beautiful, that the potentials within us can be realized.
Today is Easter, the day of the ultimate makeover, death made into life, sadness into joy. It is a day of pure joy to us. It signifies so many things. First and foremost, death - the ultimate enemy doesn't have the last word on us - God, and God's love does. While we are destined to die, we are also tied to the resurrected one - and there is life after life.
Easter is the testament too, to love's power. God, in Jesus, came to love us. He taught us that God is good and can be trusted. We don't have to live in fear but are invited to live in hope. "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink or about your body what you will wear. Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more value than they?" Jesus never starved. He showed us how to live - that God is providential and caring. He and his disciples three year itinerant ministry of preaching proved that their only occupation during those 3 years was to learn and teach about God's love. Easter teaches us that power, even the coercive power of the threat of death, cannot match the power of God and the ultimate power of love. Easter encourages us to believe that we too will be "made over", our love perfected and our faith perfected too.
Makeovers spin their great appeal from the hope latent in all of us that change and growth is possible, that the power of stasis and habits that have long defeated us and mired us in ruts of hopelessness and despair can be overturned. We are reminded of Paul's letter to the Roman church - "if God is for us, who can be against us," and "that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ." No obstacle - neither life, nor death, nor powers, nor the waste of time, neither the weakness that our mortality and the sin, its ally, have brought upon us will be able in the end to triumph over God's love in Christ. If God can overcome the cross, our sin will be no obstacle to our reclamation, our perfecting, and our salvation. God can and will do what we cannot do.
Our joy too, is unbounded today because we get a glimpse of the life of the world to come. Scripture, in the book of Colossians, refers to Jesus as the firstborn of all creation; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. How are we to understand this?
First of all, death no longer has any power over Jesus, or to those who are united to him in baptism. He looks in the "rearview mirror" at death, it is behind him. He will not age or decay. His skin will not grow papery thin nor will dark age spots from a liver that is wearing out mar him. He will not grow short of breath, nor gray, nor get arthritic joints - he has become eternal. We say of him that he is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Words express his eternality that way - the only way we can be pointing to realities that mere words cannot contain. The decay of the physical realm has been triumphed over in Jesus' resurrection too - the physical realm is "made over", and made eternal as well. We look forward no longer to death and destruction, but perpetual new life. The New Testament points to that with images of fruit trees that bear fruit and blossoms at the same time. The image is one of a perpetual spring and summer - winter with its death is done.
Jesus' resurrection also signifies another kind of makeover as well. Not only will our physical imperfections be made perfect, and our bodies transcend the process of aging and decay, we will also be remade as emotional and spiritual beings. All the envy, the greed, the suspicion of those who are different from us, our hatreds, our harboring of old wrongs, our collection of injustices, all these we will lose when we join Jesus at our resurrection and rebirth into eternal life. Jesus accomplishes this, of course, in and by the power of his forgiving love. His forgiveness makes us over and we are set free from all the petty emotions and snares of jealousy that constrain and bind us. In heaven, God will set us beside the ones we have loathed in this life and we will look back at our passions laughing. "How could we have taken our pride so seriously? How could we have been so easily wounded and hurt, when only love is what really matters?" God will give us an eternity, without shame or embarrassment to make loving amends to one another, and live out his forgiveness in perpetual "agape" love. Our emotional/spiritual makeover will be made complete - our joy made perfect. We get a glimpse of the effects of that makeover today.
Debbie and I flew back from Europe a few years ago. We left at 12 noon, and because we were flying into time, we got into New York at 12 noon. It was the oddest experience. Time stood still for us, and because it was midday, we had brilliant beaming light the whole time. God gives us that perpetual day in Jesus. The book of Revelation reminds us that there will be no night. Revelation 21:22 reads, "And the city has not need of sun or moon to shine on it for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb."
To be "made over" is to be convinced that you belong to God so that you can rest in the assurances that nothing can ever hurt you. To be "made over" is to run with that conviction, to live in this life as though you were already reborn, "made over" and resurrected. Made over people have no time to hate or to hurt, they see their enemy as belonging to God too much. Made-over people are so filled with the richness of the love of God that they are like fountains, bubbling spring overflowing with life and love.
Hallelujah!
Jesus Christ is risen today. He has made us over with his forgiving love and invites us to be “made over” artists with Him – repainting the world in eternal, life blessing, life enhancing colors.
In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Who We Are