God in Reverse - Easter

Author: Mark Fenstermacher
April 15, 2022

When I was a boy, our family lived on the edge of the Bering Sea in northwest Alaska. The town, a place called Nome, sprang up when missionaries found specks of gold on the beach. Soon after gold was discovered, the town grew to the point where it was larger than San Francisco.

There were five children in our family at that time in the early 1960’s. We spent two of the four and a half years in that town living in a converted military freezer over the top of a grocery store warehouse. Our parents were United Methodist missionaries in that small, poverty-stricken town, and it was not uncommon for our Dad—a physician—to go out into the bush in small planes to deal with medical emergencies.

The cold was still bone-chilling at Easter in Nome, and the snow on the ground was both deep and trash strewn. I remember one Easter Sunday morning when we went out to get in the white Chevrolet Greenbrier van, and our Dad discovered that the gearshift was stuck in reverse. So, dressed in our Easter best, we drove in reverse through the town to get to church. It must have been five or six blocks, and even now I wonder what people thought as we drove past them - backwards!

The story of Easter is the story of a God who does not show his glory by descending on clouds with trumpets triumphant, or by entering the city riding in a gleaming chariot, or by turning the stones into bread and promising us what we want, or guaranteeing us that God will send teams of angels to keep us from being hurt if we cast ourselves down from the top of the courthouse. No, in Jesus we see that God comes to us as a child born to a Jewish carpenter from the hill country and his young wife. God comes to us as an itinerant rabbi who tells stories, reaches out to the very people polite society wants nothing to do with, welcomes children and the powerless, insists that greatness is to be found in serving, and power is all about loving all as we have been loved by Him. Instead of making a power move and shoving corrupt Pontius Pilate aside, Jesus allows himself to be led outside the city and nailed to a Roman cross. His body is taken down, carried away, and placed in a donated tomb.

Then, on Easter morning in the half-darkness, the empty tomb is discovered by women (seen by first-century folks as second-class citizens).  It is women—women!—who first tell the resurrection story to the world, much to the surprise of a male-dominated world.

The world is looking for a God of glory and power, but God comes in reverse. Instead of the risen Christ being a vision of shimmering, bright perfection, we can see the wounds in His body because His love is a giving, suffering, humble, saving, healing thing. Easter calls us not the false gods of power, greater affluence, perfect health, self-righteous religion, or popularity but to the life of joyful, loving, generous servanthood.

God comes to us, in Jesus, in reverse. Don’t look for Him in high places but in low places. Seek him in small moments and humble acts of courageous love.  Pick up your cross and follow..

One of the first Christian hymns is found in the 2nd chapter of Philippians. In part, it declares: “Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit. But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings. When he found himself in the form of a human, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (The Common English Bible)

In Jesus of Nazareth, God comes to us in reverse. Born in a stable. Placed in a feeding trough. Crucified near a garbage dump outside the city. Buried in a donated tomb. Discovered alive again in the half-darkness by women. This faith spreading like wildfire especially among slaves, the powerless, and those familiar with crosses.
God loves us so much that God comes to us in reverse. Christ is risen: Hallelujah!

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