Does the resurrection matter?

Easter is coming.

Those words have come to mean a lot of different things. In recent years, they've mostly just come to mean that people will get together to let kids hunt for eggs stuffed with candy. Many will step through the doors of a church building, the only other time besides Christmas that they get dressed up and make an appearance, usually with a big family dinner afterward. It means pictures with chicks, bunnies, and tulips to send to the relatives--a celebration of spring more than anything else.

I read an editorial the other day that talked about how the "true" meaning of Easter was reawakening and "spiritual and moral transformation." Then today I saw a comment on social media about how Jesus was just a man, but a man who died believing it would save the souls of the entire world, so that made him a man worth following and emulating. So is that the case? Is this weekend about simply the death of a good man who thought he was dying for the world, a man with some sort of mental disorder that made him truly think he would be brought back to life? Is it a time for us to think about the ways we need to transform our lives, the ways we need to "reawaken"? Do we really have to believe that Jesus physically, actually, completely died, or can we go along with the idea that it can all be taken as figurative language, because the example Jesus set for us is what matters?

"And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty.
Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God,
because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ,
whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise.
For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen.
And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!
Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable."
1 Corinthians 15:14-19

Paul didn't mince words. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then our faith is something to be pitied. If the resurrection was just some sort of farce, then He wasn't the Messiah promised to Israel. If Jesus stayed in the tomb, then nothing else He did mattered because it meant He was just some sort of lunatic who really shouldn't be emulated. If we worship a Savior who died on a cross and then stayed dead, then our faith is worthless.

On the other hand, a Savior who had the power to step down off of the cross but chose to hang there, mocked and ridiculed, suffocating unless He held himself up by the spikes driven through His feet--that Savior who was then dead and buried, but raised to eternal life and a glorified body?

A Savior who sacrificed Himself for the very people who crucified Him, who prayed for them and used His final breath to point them toward the One True God?

A Savior who promised that He was preparing a place for all those who believe, who wants to spend eternity with us?

A Savior who walked out of the tomb is a Savior worth following.