Jim Wallis has a great three-part excerpt of his upcoming book on the resurrection: "The Call to Conversion." Excerpts below, but read the whole thing. It's definitely a great lead-in to Easter this weekend.

The Victory (Part One)

Jesus is alive. That was the rumor that spread through Jerusalem that first Easter morning. Women came to the tomb early in the morning, the first witnesses to the resurrection. Their testimony as women was not even admissible in court under Jewish law; the word of a woman had no public credibility in that patriarchal culture. But God chose to reveal the miracle of Jesus' resurrection first to women. They were told to report the astonishing news of the empty tomb to the men. At first, the men did not believe it.

Jesus' first appearance was also to a woman, Mary Magdalene. She was in the garden near the tomb, stricken with grief. The one who had accepted and forgiven her, the one whom she loved so deeply, was gone. She saw a figure she thought was the gardener and said to him, "They have taken my Lord. Do you know where they have laid him?" Then a familiar voice called her name, "Mary." She looked up and recognized him. "Master!" she cried. Her Lord had come back, and the heart of the woman who had been cleansed by his love leapt for joy. Mary went straight to the disciples with a simple testimony, "I have seen the Lord." Their excitement must have been enormous.

The Victory (Part Two)

Jesus died for our sins, our doubts, and our fears. He rose from the grave to demonstrate his victory over them and to set us free from their power. He wants us, like Peter, Thomas, Mary, and the others, to know his resurrection. He wanted them to know, and he wants us to know, that his love for his disciples has no bounds, that he died to set us free, and that he rose from the dead to show us his way was true. "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

A conversion was wrought in the disciples. No longer afraid, they fearlessly proclaimed his resurrection in the streets of Jerusalem. What had brought about this miraculous transformation? They had experienced the resurrected Christ, and the experience converted them. They had seen the Lord, and they believed. They turned from fear and turned toward the Lord. Their lives became evidence of the resurrection.

The Victory (Part Three)

We are invited to celebrate the victory of Christ and to live in the world showing we believe it to be true. We are invited to experiment with its truth by risking our security, comfort, resources, time, energy, and our very lives for the sake of his victory. We are called to be those who have left all and risked everything in testifying to his victory. We are called to demonstrate to the world, with our lives, that we have been converted by the resurrection.

The basis of our faith is that Jesus Christ is stronger than any of the powers that confront us: political tyranny, economic oppression, the logic of war. We confront the world's powers not merely with our own strength, resources, ideas, commitment, work, or resistance. Rather, we confront the world with the very life of the resurrected Christ among us.