Founded on Impossibility
Easter is an invitation to an exchange — your possible for God's impossible.
The Death of Every Possibility
Before we can talk about resurrection, we have to talk about Friday.
Good Friday — and it's worth pausing on that name, because for the disciples, there was nothing good about it. It was the day every last human possibility died. For three years, these men and women had followed Jesus. They watched him heal the sick and raise the dead. They had grown deeply confident that something extraordinary was breaking into the world, and they had poured that confidence into a future.
A political future: Jesus as Messiah-King, setting up God's rule on earth as in heaven. But then the moment of reckoning came, and the chief priests — the very religious leaders of Israel — declared to Pilate, "We have no king but Caesar," and handed him over to be crucified (John 19:15–16). A religious future: maybe the disciples would be the ones to walk alongside Jesus, building something new. Instead, they scattered. Peter denied him three times. The inner circle fell apart. All human possibility — political, relational, spiritual — gone.
"We Had Hoped..."
In Luke 24, two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem. They've given up. On the road to Emmaus, they pour out their grief to a stranger in three devastating words: "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel" (v. 21). Past tense. Hope died with him. It's over — until it isn't.
The Thing That Does Not Happen
Here's something worth sitting with this Easter: resurrection is not a rare event. It's not something that happens infrequently, like a solar eclipse or a hundred-year flood. Resurrection is a thing that simply does not happen. The dead stay dead. That's not pessimism — it's physics, biology, and every human experience stacked together. The rule book is clear.
And then, at early dawn on the first day of the week, the women arrive at the tomb with their burial spices — and find the stone rolled away and the body gone (Luke 24:1–3). The impossible is not an obstacle for this God. It's precisely what Paul means in Romans 4 when he describes God as the one who "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist" (v. 17). Resurrection? Not a thing that happens. This God? Not a problem.
Perplexed, Awe-Struck, Amazed
When the women hear the angel's announcement — "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen" (Luke 24:5–6) — Luke uses one word to describe them: perplexed. Puzzled. Baffled. Bewildered. They have crossed over into territory where the rule book simply doesn't apply anymore.
And then there's Peter — being Peter. He ran to the tomb, stooped down, looked in, saw the linen cloths lying there, and went home marveling (v. 12). He was amazed. He was astonished. He was awed. I wonder if we could use a little more of that.
The Life We're Invited Into
Here's where Easter becomes deeply personal. If the resurrection is an eruption of God's power into the world, then the life of a believer should be an ongoing echo of that eruption. In Romans 8:11, Paul makes an astonishing claim: the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you — and that Spirit desires to give life to your mortal body, right here, right now. Not just someday at the final resurrection, but today.
This is why a Christianity primarily focused on following rules, living a comfortable moral life, and securing a personal spot in heaven falls so flat. The good news is not a self-improvement program. The good news starts with the death of all human possibility — and then the eruption of God's. Jesus made this unforgettably clear to a rich young man who had kept every commandment and still felt the emptiness. When the disciples heard Jesus' answer and asked in astonishment, "Who then can be saved?" — he looked them in the eye and said:
Matthew 19:26 — "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
The Exchange
Not about cleaning up your life, checking more boxes, or becoming a better version of yourself. It's about placing yourself at the foot of the cross and making a trade: your limits for his limitlessness, your careful control for his scandalous grace.
That same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead desires to transform us — to raise us up, to do work in and through us that we could never do on our own. The question Easter asks us every year is the same: Will we keep managing the possible on our own — or will we open our hands and receive what only God can do?
Aaron Gosser, Teaching Elder · Kingdom Church Troy · April 6, 2026