AP

Easter Disruption

The world of strategic planning includes reference to ‘disruptor events’. Chat GPT defines this as: ‘a significant occurrence or incident that dramatically changes the normal course of operations, behaviour, or expectations within a system, industry, or society’. Covid-19 was a good example.

By any reckoning, the events of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection constitute the prime disruptor in human history.

From Eden on, the human story is one of repeat cycles looking like Groundhog Day. God gives humanity a fresh start of some kind and we proceed to blow it. The Edenic actions of doubting God’s word and insisting that we know better than him turned into human habits of denying and defying God. Even when God repeatedly intervened to send warning judgements before another fresh start, we kept slipping back into the old ways.

But Jesus! The idea of a god taking human flesh with toenails, sweat glands, tiredness, hunger, thirst and all the rest is astounding. But then that god choosing a shameful and painful death to rescue his people! And further, for him to stride out of the grave in resurrection glory that drew death’s sting!

Put together these events are the disrupter of all disruptions. As the Bible puts it, they are the divine ‘yes’ to all the old promises (2 Cor 1:19-20).

In 1919 John Reed published ‘Ten Days that Shook the World’ about the Russian revolution. The Easter events leave that in the dust – they are the three days that shook eternity.

Rightly we divide human history using the language of BC / AD.  Easter breaks the Groundhog Day of repeat cycles. It moved God’s story of salvation forward in one giant leap. Now in Jesus there are new realities, new ways of looking at the world and new ways to live. There is hope as the human own-goal of defiance to God is addressed by his gifts of forgiveness, reconciliation and life in his Spirit.

How do we respond to disruptor events? This is where the normal range of human responses kick in. We can deny the event and refuse to recognise its reality. We can defy it, like someone shaking his or her fist at a tsunami. Or we can ride the disruptive wave. Each of these responses may have its time and place.

Easter is a disruptor that we can neither deny nor defy. It divides history, but also divides humanity. It cuts across the usual lines of race, family, gender, ability, culture and such like. In a sense it is the only division that matters.

How do we respond to the Easter disruption? On the one hand we can hang our hat with Judas, Pilate, Herod and the rest who defied the moment and shook their fists at God. Or we can follow Paul and the rest who embraced the crucified and risen Jesus with saving faith. Our eternal destiny hangs on this response.

– David Burke, Moderator-General, Presbyterian Church of Australia