Easter VocationsSýnishorn
Everything God does is intentional, and the timing of Jesus’s resurrection is no exception.
As pastor Skye Jethani explains in his book Futureville, the reason why Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday has its origins in the creation account of Genesis 1. Historically, Christians have identified “Sunday as the first day of God’s creative work.” And just “like the creation account in Genesis, which began but did not end on Sunday, God’s re-creation began on Easter Sunday with Jesus’ resurrection but continues to unfold.”
You see, just as the first Sunday was just the beginning of the first creation, Easter Sunday was just the beginning of the final one. And just as God called the First Adam and his bride Eve to help him cultivate the first creation, Jesus the Last Adam has called his bride, the Church, to help him cultivate the final one.
That’s the vocation Jesus gave us, his followers, in today’s passage: to be “witnesses”to that new creation!
At first blush, that word “witnesses” simply appears to be a call to “share the gospel.” But pastor Tim Keller explains that the Greek word here means “more than simply winning people to Christ…the church is to be an agent of the kingdom. It is not only to model the healing of God’s rule but it is to spread it….ordering lives and relationships and institutions and communities according to God’s authority to bring in the blessedness of the kingdom.”
What does that look like practically?
It looks like weeding out things like disorder, injustice, and disease that have no place in the eternal kingdom of God.
It looks like creating beautiful art, places of belonging, and cultural excellence that offer glimpses of what does belong in God’s kingdom.
It looks like serving as faithful representatives of our Risen King, modeling his character of love, peace, and joy to those we work with.
And yes, it looks like making disciples as you go about your life and work.
If Jesus’s “Easter vocation” is King of Kings, our Easter vocation is to be witnesses to his kingship and rightful lordship over every square inch of creation—including your place of work. Embrace your role as a witness for the king and work to make “thy kingdom come” in your place of work “as it is in heaven” today!
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About this Plan
The vocations represented in the characters of the Easter narrative can teach us a lot about God and how our work is a means of co-laboring with the Risen King. In this four-day plan, we’ll look at the vocations of the disciples at Gethsemane, Joseph of Arimathea, Peter, and Jesus’s first followers to draw out applications for our own work today.
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