If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
(1 Corinthians 15:17, 19
Every year after Easter, I find myself returning to the same question: What does it mean to be a Resurrection People? Not just people who believe in the resurrection, or celebrate it once a year, but people whose lives are shaped by it—whose imaginations, choices, and relationships are marked by the hope that God is still bringing life out of death.
Being a Resurrection People doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine. The first disciples didn’t emerge from the empty tomb with easy answers or perfect confidence. They came with fear, confusion, wonder, and hope all tangled together. Resurrection didn’t erase their humanity—it transformed it.
To be a Resurrection People is to trust that God is not finished with us or with this world. It means believing that despair is never the final word, that injustice is not inevitable, that broken relationships can be mended, and that new beginnings are always possible. It means looking at the places where life feels stuck or heavy or uncertain and daring to imagine that God might be planting seeds we cannot yet see.
Resurrection People practice hope—not as wishful thinking, but as a way of living. We choose compassion when indifference would be easier. We choose welcome when exclusion feels safer. We choose repair when harm has been done. We choose joy, not because life is simple, but because God is faithful.
And perhaps most importantly, Resurrection People carry this hope into the world. We become signs of new life for others—through our kindness, our courage, our justice-seeking, our willingness to love.
The stone has been rolled away. The Risen Christ goes ahead of us.
Our calling is simply to follow—
with open hearts, open hands, and resurrection in our bones.
Pastor Greg
P.S. On a Resurrection People can be an affirming people because we know God is working in each person to have them come to resurrection fullness.
