My oldest sister Bonnie was five years older than I am. I remember that when I was really little, we went to her school to see her in a play of “The Little Red Hen.” I don’t remember what part she played or anything else about it, but in that snapshot memory, I was quite impressed that my big sister was brave enough to be up on a stage in front of people. 

 

Bonnie was born mentally handicapped. When I was little, she was a big sister I looked up to. As I got older, I gradually realized that, while I was growing mentally and physically, she was not. She never reached five feet tall. I was only in first grade when I found myself trying to protect her from kids on the playground who teased her because it was funny to watch her run. I was six years old, she was eleven, and I needed to watch out for her. For the rest of her life, my other two sisters and I had to watch out for her. 

 

When Bonnie died, my mom and sisters and I sat around her bed in the hospital telling funny stories about Bonnie and recalling things she had liked and what she had liked to do before she lost most of her capacity for liking and doing. Eventually, though, we had to leave that room with her body lying alone on the hospital bed. As we went through the doorway, each of us stopped and looked back, not knowing how to leave Bonnie there when, all our lives, someone had to take care of her. You don’t leave Bonnie alone!

 

My thought, on the way out that door was, “This changes everything.” 

 

The most amazing change is that, after sixty-six and a half years, Bonnie is no longer handicapped in any way. She is running better than the kids who teased her. She is praising God on key. She is way ahead of me. She has seen Jesus!

 

At the moment Jesus yielded up his spirit, onlookers were mocking him. The land had been in darkness for three hours in the middle of the day. At the moment of Jesus' death, the veil in the temple was torn in two and there was a rock-splitting earthquake. Tombs were opened and dead saints came out of them after Jesus’ resurrection. Events were so startling that even the pagan Roman soldiers on guard said, “Truly this was the Son of God!” 

 

When Jesus’ disciples realized he had really died, they must have believed they had come to the end of the path to glory they had thought they were following with him. Though they didn’t understand what was coming, they had to have been thinking, “Well, this changes everything.” Not for good but for evil. 

 

Some of the women who had followed Jesus went to the tomb after the Sabbath to do for the dead what tradition demanded. They acted out of love and reverence, but not with hope. 

 

Later that day, the disciples were behind locked doors, afraid for their lives. I imagine they were discussing the horrifying events of the past several days, events that were fresh, painful, and baffling. Hopes and expectations for the future were dashed. They must also have been wondering what they were going to do now? How do you go on with life when you’ve had such high hopes for a wonderful future, and now all you have is a dead, flash-in-the-pan rabbi? 

 

Suddenly, Jesus stood among them. “Peace be with you,” he said. “Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord” (John 20:20). One moment they were afraid for their lives, the next moment they were glad. They were confused, but then Jesus “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45). They were hopeless and helpless until Jesus promised they would be “clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). Jesus gave them their reason to go on. 

 

How would we go on without the hope of resurrection? In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul assures us we don’t have to. 

 

“For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:16-20). 

 

Verse 26, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

 

“I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ 

‘O death, where is your victory?
    O death, where is your sting?’

“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:50-58).

 

Take that, Death! This changes everything.