On Easter Day, we celebrate the astonishing, miraculous resurrection of Jesus. Easter is the promise that death is an empty threat for all of us. If that is true, it changes everything we think about the possibilities for our existence.
The only power the ancient serpent, that dragon called the Devil or Satan, has is to get us so afraid of death that we’ll fall in line behind him.
In Genesis 4, Cain was jealous of his brother Abel and angry that neither Abel nor God was marching to his drum. God warned Cain there was an animal named Sin crouching at his door that wanted to devour him, but he should subdue that snake. He did not—instead he became an agent of the snake and killed his brother.
In a similar way, the Jewish religious leaders were jealous of Jesus and angry he wouldn’t march to their drum. The only solution they could think of was to kill Jesus, which is just Snake Strategy 101.
But the threat of death is empty.
Death is the threat of returning a person back into nothingness; a threat the Snake has been hanging over our heads ever since the Garden of Eden. But Jesus is the snake-crushing man God promised in Genesis 3:15. Our annual Easter celebration is no pastel-colored bunny story, but a telling of the serious and intense battle in which Jesus defeated that ancient dragon. Easter means not only that Jesus’ tomb is empty, but that the dragon’s threat is empty.
Belief in the resurrection is how you, too, can slay the dragon.
Satan says the power of death is real. Jesus says he has death under control. Who are you going to believe?
The way you think things really are will shape the choices you make; and the choices you make will shape your reality. If you believe the Devil and walk away from Christ, then you will embrace your own destruction and death will become real for you.
To not shrink back from death is possible only when you truly believe that the power of the dragon was taken away on Easter morning and all creation is heading toward an empty-tomb reality. No human being and no spiritual being actually has the ability to return you to nothingness, because no one has the power to separate you from the resurrected Christ. That vision can inspire our imaginations to truly live as if the dragon is powerless over us and over the people we care about and over our world. That’s a hard thing to believe . . . but that’s the journey of discipling our imaginations.