Matthew 28

Liz Dumain considers the impact of Jesus on our life

Liz Dumain

Matthew 28 is usually a passage for Easter day and we're just past epiphany - surely we should be reading the account of the Kings arriving, or talking about New Year's resolutions or something? Surely we should be all about snow and ice not the Easter bunny?

Speaking of snow and ice, on Friday I FINALLY watched Frozen. How could I possibly have got this far without doing it?! To be fair I've heard so much about it that I thought I'd know every word, every song and all the plot, but I was wrong. Even though I thought I knew it, when I watched it the entertainment for me was all in the detail. Sometimes we know something so well, that we miss the detail.

In the passage, those women went to the tomb where they had laid Jesus' body thinking they knew what they would find, after all crucified people die, and dead people usually stay dead. They knew what God had promised, but it must have felt like everything had gone terribly wrong.

A heavenly being appears! Now, although they hadn't seen an angel before, you can bet they had heard about them. They were likely to have heard Mary, Jesus' mother, talk about the angel that appeared to her. So when this angel begins with the same greeting they probably very quickly realised that things weren't going to turn out the way they had expected. The angel invites them firstly to 'come and see' and then 'go quickly'. The invitation mirrors God's constant invitation to us: come and see and then go and tell.

They went, afraid but joyful. They did what the angel had told them and then Jesus meets them along the way. The instruction the angel gave them for the brothers is to leave for Galilee and Jesus will meet them there. Not to go back to the place he was last seen and try and find him there, but to push on, open the door to the next chapter.

Life is full of times when, like the Marys', we think we know what is going to happen, but life is an unfolding story. We are all part of a bigger story. There is only one who is unchanging. Our God who has always been and will always be. When it feels like everything around us is changing, God asks of us the one question to which the answer springs easily to our lips but crawls painfully from our hearts:

Do - you - trust - me?

It's so easy to say or sing; so easy to think we believe and yet in the painful, confusing whirlwind of change, pain, disappointment or regret the 'yes' that tears from our hearts is often more of a pain riddled moan of love than a joyful shout of triumph. But that's ok.

We all have a story, not of our own making, but of God's writing. A story of separation, reconciliation and hope for the future that can never be robbed or stolen. A story of individual healings, teaching and discoveries. A story of God and you, God and me, one on one, face to face, having the greatest adventure through the thing called life.

We are called into our part of the greatest story, the never ending story, the only story. The need to share it gets bigger and more gut wrenching every single year. The battle for the connection of people with Jesus gets bigger every year because the battle with the enemy gets bigger every year. Every year there are more stories of people struggling to buy their identity, act their security, and create their world on screen. Every year that goes by there are more people with a desperate need inside that longs for approval and seeks it from the masses because they don't know that the only place all of this can be found is one on one with the all loving, ever faithful, identity creating lover of the world.

If we don't plunge in to the adventure of a lifetime by fully committing ourselves to what God has called us to do then we are no better than Queen Elsa shut up in her ice palace willing herself not to feel, not to care, not to get involved. We are kidding ourselves if we let ourselves believe the lie that paralysed in an ice palace of fear is what God wants for us.

Whether we are full of joy and excitement, or full of fear; full of anticipation, or full of tears. Whether we are mourning at an empty tomb, terrified at what God might be doing; confused but obediently stepping forward; confident in the next step, running to tell others; disappointed with God; or longing for more, we need to leave our ice palaces of fear and hear the cry of the Father to his children who need him and cry that we will be his hands and his feet. We will teach these new disciples all that God has spoken. And we WILL be sure of this: he is with us always, even to the end of the age.