Why the Easter Story Needs to Be Important and Personal

Have you ever listened to someone else’s story? What happens when the story becomes personal? Once you see yourself in the story, it changes you. Now, there’s a difference between it being personal and important. Do you drive a little slower or more carefully after having kids than before? You always knew safety was important, but then it became personal.

One of the most complicated things with Easter is that the story is an account. As Christians, we believe Easter is a documentation of what actually happened. But even with that, it’s a story. It’s a great, inspiring, hopeful, and true story, but it’s very easy for it to stay just that. A story.

We can all recognize that this is an extremely important story, but for most, it’s not personal. It’s hard for it to truly become our story, unless we need it to.

A World of Stories
We live in a world where there are many stories, good and not-so-good. We take them and make them personal more often than we realize.

• There’s a story about how people are that has become your story.
• There’s a story about what will make you happy and bring you peace.
• There’s a story of what it will take for you to find and feel love.
• There’s the story you tell yourself about you, or the one someone else has attempted to write about you.
  
  

There’s so much power in a story, more than we realize. Stories move us. Stories drive us. And when we look at the worst parts of the world, there’s a story that’s behind them, too. Racism, hate, and horrible things done in the name of religion. Oppression, wars, and nations against nations. They all start with one story that people made their story. They made it personal.

What if the same old Easter story could become your story in a powerful way?

Luke 24
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.

The women showed up not because they were expecting anything other than a dead body. They had come to finish a burial because Jesus had been hastily buried by some men before the Sabbath.

Wonder
The women wondered, and the people wondered. This is more than them just experiencing the events. Jesus had told them beforehand that they were going to happen. He told them the story at least 4 separate times – that He would be arrested, crucified, die, and rise on the third day.

Why?

Because they had so many assumptions about Jesus – who He was, what He would do – a religious sage, a rabbi, a political leader who would overthrow the way things were. They didn’t connect the dots, and it’s difficult for us, too. We all know this story is important, but is it important AND personal?

We have some of those assumptions too. From outside the story, we look in and make some assumptions. It feels strange when they’re challenged. We wonder what’s really going on because we don’t like not knowing or not understanding. It’s so easy to see wondering as a deficiency or a dead end, but it’s actually the beginning of a new journey.

Confusion
The contradiction we experience in wondering actually disrupts the assumptions we had, the story we’ve been working with.

Luke 24
5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’

The angels say things about looking for the living among the dead. That’s an interesting thing to say. These women and disciples are not looking for living among the dead but rather looking for the dead above the dead.

The angels are saying, “Everything you thought you were going to encounter is being turned on its head.”

And they’re not even condemned by the angels (or Jesus) for not believing, for wondering, or even for the fact that they’d thrown in the towel on the whole thing. As the angels did with them, they do with us. Why are we looking among the dead?

They challenge our assumptions, and we challenge our assumptions by going back to what Jesus said about himself.

Luke 24
8 Then they remembered his words.

Jesus said things like, “I am the resurrection and the life,” “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
 
Suddenly, the story was becoming their story.

These disciples and women loved Jesus. They followed Jesus. They believed in Jesus, and they still came to bury Jesus. Which means you can love Jesus and still live as if resurrection isn’t real.

The empty tomb shows that it was never your circumstances, past, or the powerful stories, people, and forces they animate. It was sin and death. And they are now defeated.

Everything you thought had the final word in your life doesn’t.

That’s where the story can become uniquely personal. It can change us. It contradicts us, and comforts us in our stories, along with the ones we’ve embraced and believed.

That’s the Easter story. The important part is that Jesus, the son of God, came, was crucified, died, was buried, but then rose again.

And not just as a spectacle, but to do something for you that you couldn’t do for yourself. To forgive your sin, to give you hope, to remove the specter of death (large or small) from your life.

This has to go from being just important to becoming something personal for you if Jesus’ words are going to snap into focus. Something you need. But if it becomes personal and important, it’s what you always needed.