Living the Resurrection

By Ian McKerracher

I know most of you will be reading this during the week following Easter. Nevertheless, I must say that Easter is a special time for me. Because I am a Christian, the murder of Jesus Christ that lead to his ultimate victory over sin and death is the focus of my life. And the fact that I am no longer spiritually and philosophically aligned with the mob that shouted, “Crucify Him,” remains to me a miracle of God’s grace. Repentance is truly a gift!

“I lived by a carefully formulated worldview that put me in charge, including the right to ruin my mind with drugs and to choose to be jobless and homeless.”

I became a Christian in October of 1975 after a long series of incremental movements that eventually constituted an end-run around my rebellious heart. In those days I understood in some sense that God was a “Lord,” but the organizational bits of Christian churches, with their pastors and congregational principles, was like the peace of God to me, beyond all understanding. I lived by a carefully formulated worldview that put me in charge, including the right to ruin my mind with drugs and to choose to be jobless and homeless. You tell me. How does some Deity break through all that to become my Lord?

Interestingly enough, it was the resurrection that ultimately created a pathway for me to accept Christ’s lordship. But strangely enough, the power and glory of the resurrection was mediated to me through baptism. After years of pondering what was going on I finally figured it out. As Christians, we have been given in baptism a type, clear as crystal, to show us there is a “this is that” relationship between the resurrection and our baptism. As Paul puts it in scripture:Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:3-4)

In other words, baptism doesn’t just picture our Lord’s death and burial, it works as a concrete picture of our spiritual union with Christ in his death and resurrection. In the same chapter Paul goes on to speak about dying to self, as well as other facets of life in the Spirit, but I have to tell you that before my conversion, none of what the apostle wrote would have made sense. 

Still, in my own way I was very religious. In 1975 I visited several religious institutes. I listened, for instance, to Hare Krishnas explain why I should shave my head, I learned about Buddhist prayers, but never exactly understood to whom I should be praying. I was also told why Eckankar was the “only true path” while being shown the hierarchical list of their deities. But the singular message every non-Christian system I examined was that the self was to be my focus. I was to be engaged fully with the betterment of ME. What none of these gurus could have known was, at the time I was done with myself. I could not have been less interested in any system of self-improvement, spiritual or otherwise.

This was my dilemma in the few months before I became a Christian. I found myself stuck in a worldview that told me I should rule over my life. But that left me struggling to find a way to sneak off the throne of personal autonomy. I didn’t want to rule. Self-rule had messed me up and I knew it. What I needed was help to repair my ragged life. In those days I thought of my existence as something burdensome, to say the least.

Into the mess of confused inner conflict, there came a series of events through which a dim light began to shine. I was a hitchhiker in those days, and it seemed to me as if it was always a Christian who picked me up. The things they did for me and gave to me, and the conversations they had with me, were never less than amazing.

Strangely enough, as I remember it they talked about baptism a lot. It was a term I had heard before, but only in my youth, and always in the context of christening an infant. But the baptism these Christians talked about was something different. The word became a constant echo in my mind. In my travels from city to city I suddenly noticed a number of billboards that said, “Repent and be baptized.” Christians would stop me on the street and ask if I had been baptized. In my mind baptism became a constantly recurring theme, to the point that at one point I decided to be baptized just to get it off my mind..I can’t remember why, now, but the expectation of baptism became so strong that I simply knew it would happen. Moreover, I knew that I was going to be immersed, not sprinkled. I can’t say why, but even in those days the notion of sprinkling came across to me like some sort of baptism-lite. When it was my turn to be baptized, I thought, I wanted the complete plunge. Nothing less than a head-to-toe soaking would sufficiently crush  my rebellious heart. Came the day when I heard of a church in Edmonton that plunged and didn’t sprinkle. As easy as breathing, I decided I would go there someday and get what I needed.

“When it was my turn to be baptized, I thought, I wanted the complete plunge. Nothing less than a head-to-toe soaking would sufficiently crush my rebellious heart.”

Then, in one catalytic moment all my vague aspirations crystallized into immediate necessity. I had been in Calgary for awhile and figured I would hitchhike up to Edmonton to visit some friends. I got picked up by a couple of other hippies who were also going to Edmonton, so away we went together. Along the way we did some “recreational pharmaceuticals” to make the trip more pleasant for all of us.

At some point the driver mentioned that he had to speak to a friend who lived a short distance off the main highway. He asked if I minded, but I had no duties on the clock and didn’t care. Just so long as we got to Edmonton sometime. We took a secondary road and went some distance toward the east when a small Alberta town (whose name I have forgotten) came into view. It was at the bottom of a long incline down to a river valley with the town built up on both sides of the river. During our descent into the town we had to pass a graveyard and in the middle of that cemetery was a life-size statue of Jesus with arms stretched toward me in what today I know was a gesture of welcome.But into my consciousness that day came the terrifying thought, “Look! There is JESUS CHRIST, HIMSELF! He has returned like he said he would and here I am, stoned out of my mind and I have no escape, no appeal, no second chance! I knew the Bible said, “Whoever does not believe and is not baptized is going to HELL, and then I thought, “IT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW! I am going to Hell…. RIGHT NOW!”

The dry-mouthed terror of that thought held me in its grip for about 20 seconds. And it was during this time that the clear reality of my spiritual poverty melted me to a whimpering puddle of regret and shame. I knew I was a sinner, and I knew I was headed straight to hell, that is, until the fog of that fear lifted and I could see straight again. Then I realized I did have a second chance! What I saw was only a statue and that meant I still had time! Needless to say, when I got to Edmonton I showed up at The People’s Church the next time the doors were open and expressed my new-found faith in Jesus Christ in baptism. The church was  neck-deep in the Jesus People Revival, so I was surrounded by young people just like me, thus making the transition easier. But they didn’t make the baptism easy. They told me that if I was just going to go back on the road they would not baptize me because it had to be coupled with something called repentance. No problem. I had already repented. At the time, given my experience with the statue, they could have suggested that I needed to jump off the High-Level Bridge and I would have obeyed.

After 45+ years I am still a member of the People’s Church. I have stayed with the people there through all the ups and the downs, and I have to say that it is a very different church than the one into which I stumbled so many years ago. But then, I’m not the same either. Even though I now realize that baptism is not salvation, the day that I was baptized was, for me, the day I rose from the dead existence in which my own way of thinking had held me into the glorious liberty of being alive in Christ. Today I look forward to the resurrection of all who trust in Christ. He will return to gather his people to Himself, and I thank God that when it finally happens, by God’s grace I will be part of that crowd.