How we mark time says a great deal about who we are. Often when we try to remember something we do so by saying it was before or after a significant event, either a milestone or a tragedy in our lives. We pay a great deal of attention to birthdays and death days.
Sunday being the first day of the week is a good example of how we mark time. Sunday is the first day of creation when God said let there be light. Time began on a Sunday, creation began on a Sunday. It is a day of beginnings.
Christians have traditionally observed the Sabbath on Sunday because it is also the day of resurrection, the day of creation beginning a new, the new creation begins with the resurrection of Jesus. Most of the Christian calendar every year is determined by when Easter occurs.
It is interesting how we mark time, it reveals our priorities. Time is ultimately theological, how we mark time says something about our experience of God.
There is when the Resurrection happened and then there is when the Resurrection becomes real to us.
The disciples saw Jesus, then they believed.
Thomas missed out, and saw Jesus later and then he believed.
The movement from unbelief to belief. It is a major event, an even to mark time by.
And there is the movement from belief to unbelief, or to a changed belief. Sometimes this is considered a tragedy; sometimes it is considered a release from prison.
Some of us have dates where we can mark time about when we crossed over from unbelief to belief. Most of us can’t really pinpoint an exact moment of conversion. C.S. Lewis had a profound conversion to Christianity yet he couldn’t pinpoint the moment all he knew was that one day he got onto the bus and he wasn’t a believer, but when he got off of the bus he was.
And then there is the ongoing conversion of life as faith grows, changes and deepens. We are all so different in how this happens.
Ultimately belief is like the beginning of creation, the beginning of time itself, it is both a miracle and an act of faith, a beginning of something that we have no idea where it will all go, all we know is that we begin.
Always beginning, every day is Sunday. Every day is Easter, the first day of something vast, fearful, and wonderful. Every day is the day of resurrection when we meet Jesus somehow against all odds in the flesh of this mortal life, in the wounds and traumas of this life.
Somehow belief springs from this, something different and powerful comes from the wounded hands and body of this person, and thus the wounded hands and body of this world can become the place where we move from unbelief into belief, where the resurrection becomes real to us.
The day of resurrection: the day that we mark time by, the day that redeems all time as we begin anew.
The day that turns days of trauma, days of tragedy, days of brokenness and wounds and turns them into birthdays, beginning days, days of creation.
This is the sign of God’s presence and activity, it says something about who God is and how God marks time.
Belief: it changes our perspective and perception; it changes how we interpret our world, where once there was a dead body we now find our Lord and our God.
What a wonderful surprise God is.