Easter Reflections

I had to preach this past Sunday. As usual, getting a sermon together by Sunday usually involves much floundering, theological digging, excruiciating textual study, and then my favorite part, the part where you talk through the passage over and over in your mind until a language emerges to express what you want to say.

But Easter was difficult, and I found myself hung up on the resurrection part. What exactly is the point of the resurrection? Why couldn't Jesus simply have ascended into Heaven. Why did Jesus have to come back in the flesh on earth? Why was this event the pinnacle of the Christian calendar? Hadn't the work of salvation been accomplished on the cross?

Apparently not. I found this strange verse in Romans 4: "he was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification." I thought that forgiveness of sins was justification. I did some digging and found out that justification is actually a two part process. To have one's sins forgiven is only half of being justified. Just because one is not found guilty is not the same as being found righteousness. In order for us to be truly justified, we must recieve both the forgiveness of sins and have the righteousness of Christ imputed to us so that we can be fully recieved into God's presence as his beloved children. Thus, death and resurrection are necessary for our salvation. Death pays for sins. Christ's resurrection makes it possible for us to be resurrected with him, to defy death, and to be joined with him in the inheritance of new life.

Solving this problem made preaching a little easier, but I faced another problem. It felt backwards. I was preaching (hypothetically) about the significance of the resurrection by showing why the resurrection was necessary for our justification. Rather than showing why it was necessary for Jesus to rise from the dead, wouldn't I be better off showing how wonderful it was that God had the power to accomplish such a feat and how thankful we should be for having gone through with it? But that seems like a nobrainer. Of course Jesus had to rise from the dead. What choice did he have? Being the Son of God, he couldn't just stay dead, right? He came to save his people, he died on the cross, he's going to finish the job, right? Wasn't the hard part over with?

I preached on the resurrection, but I think I might have failed out on this one. Any ideas? What is the meaning of the resurrection.