Real Life: The resurrection is a marker
On Easter Sunday, John Cowan’s guest on Real Life on Newstalk ZB was The Venerable Dr Lyndon Drake, the Archdeacon of Tāmaki Makaurau within the Māori Anglican bishopric of Te Tai Tokerau.
Their conversation spanned Christian ethics, the connection between science/banking and faith, and Lyndon's upcoming return to the UK with his whānau.
You can listen to the full conversation below.
Here is a special moment where John speaks with Lyndon about the resurrection -
John
Religion is fairly common around the world, but the idea of the resurrection, it's something which is a hallmark of Christianity. Is it a central part of what makes you Christian?
Ven. Dr Lyndon Drake
Absolutely. And St Paul, who's one of the earliest church writers, not too long after Jesus' own life in ministry, speaks of the fact that if the resurrection isn't true, then all of the stuff we're doing as Christians is actually pretty pointless. I guess the point he's trying to make is you can probably have a bit more fun in the world, in one sense, if there is in fact no life to come.
And the resurrection is a marker that tells us for sure that God's promised us a life that's beyond this one, and actually I'd have to say it really changes the way I live my life now and the lives of my fellow Christians, because we feel that we can commit to bringing change, as far as we're able to bringing change in this present age of the world, because we can look forward to something that's to come.
We don't have to experience everything now. We don't have to try and fill our lives with everything that can be obtained now. We can instead give ourselves and that ties us back into the first part of the Easter story of Jesus and his giving of himself to bring others back to God.
And ideally and the church often fails at this but at the same time, the ideal is that, because we have the confidence about a life that's to come, marked by the resurrection, and it means that we can choose to give ourselves totally, sacrificially, utterly to the service of other people in this life.
And I think when you see the church at its best, you see us acting in those kinds of ways, and so, absolutely, it radically changes my own life, radically changes the lives of my sisters and brothers in the church and I call them that for a reason. They've become my family and it changes, I think, not just the way we see the world but the way that we live within the world.