Tag: Resurrection

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February 2016

February 5th 2016: Matthew 28:1-15

You can follow today’s reading by clicking on this sentence.

Imagine being a guard of the tomb of Jesus on the day of the resurrection. Imagine experiencing this entirely unforeseen event. You’re supposed to be in control. You are the sign and outworking of the total and utter authority of the occupying power. Your way is the right way. In fact, guarding the tomb of a dead man is probably quite a boring, if not pointless, exercise. Why bother?

And then there’s something like an earthquake and the stone you’re guarding is rolled away by an angel. Do angels even exist? And then this angel, who perhaps you thought doesn’t exist, appears to some women. Why talk to them and not you? And he tells them that their Lord and Messiah has risen from the dead. What? Well, it does seem like he’s not here anymore. But you’ve been diligent in the discharge of your duties. Somehow or other this does seem to be true, it does seem that what is being talked about is what has happened. This is a problem. This means trouble, big trouble. Probably for you. Confirmed by what happens when you report what’s happened and are told to hush it up and lie, blame his disciples. It was always on the cards they’d steal the body anyway. What difference does it make?

Except you’re pretty certain they didn’t steal it. You’re pretty certain that something highly unusual has happened. If anything that’s even more scary. Control and order need to be restored, maintained, tightened if anything. We can’t allow people to think that God might have broken out of the bounds of accepted social and religious order and structure. The agreement is he stays in his box, his house, his temple, and the rest of us get on with things the way we want to, the way we know, the best way. Sometimes it helps to invoke the name of God. It enthuses some and frightens others in to line, but really, the power is ours, and we like it that way.

Except this time it seems like God has found a way to be stronger than us. What do we do now?

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2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

August 14th 2014: Luke 23:56b-24:14

Read Luke 23:56b-24:14 here

“He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” Then they remembered his words.

“But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense”

It seems that, on the morning of the resurrection, everyone has forgotten what Jesus had promised to do. Even though the story has unfolded just as He promised, it seems that grief has overtaken them, quite naturally I might add, and their expectations were that their journey of life and hope with Jesus was all over.

Even when the women at the tomb remember His words, told to them by those guarding the tomb and rush to report them to the disciples, “their words seemed to them like nonsense”. Rationality and necessity have quickly replaced the fire of hope in the disciples. Now they are seeking self-preservation as the smouldering embers of their hope have been stubbed out. And yet it is Peter, he who had denied Jesus three times only days before, who has something pricked within him, runs to the tomb, and finds, gloriously, that the words of the women are true. Jesus has risen. He is alive. Things will never be the same.

It’s easy for us to retreat into rationality when things in our spiritual lives seem to go wrong. After all, we think, the gospel stands up to rational and philosophical scrutiny. And so it does, but the truth of the resurrection and the life is that it is so far away from “normal” so out of the ordinary, that it should offend our sensibilities. We should question it, interrogate it, doubt it. We can do all these things, but then it will still be true. Whatever we think or feel, Jesus did die, and on the third day rise again. He did prove Himself and the truth of His claims, once and for all. It is our privilege and our destiny to work out what all that means for us and for those we love, and those we meet today, every day for the rest of our lives.

 

Categories
2014 Lectionary Ramblings Lectionary Ramblings

July 26th 2014: Luke 20:27-40

Read Luke 20:27-40 here

Many people take this passage to be about the resurrection from the dead and marriage, but I’m not entirely convinced that it is the main point. I think the key here is Luke’s reminding of his hearers/readers that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. So, in fact in asking Jesus about marriage after the resurrection, it is possible to suggest they were making fun of Jesus, or trying to trap Him in to making a fool of Himself. After all, if they don’t think the resurrection will happen, why does it matter to them who is married to who? If you don’t think they are truing to, at best, be funny, read verses 28-33 fast a few times and see if you manage not to get confused.

Jesus, as normal, gets to the heart of the matter.Verses 34-38 include a key teaching for all of us to hold on to – those who are deemed worthy (because Jesus died for them, rose for them and intercedes for them at the Father’s right hand today, we could add now, although His hearers at the time could not) are chidden of God, “since they are children of the resurrection”. Jesus moves beyond questions of marriage, and asserts there is a resurrection, where relationship with God matters more than anything else. More than this, He beats the Sadducees at their own game by showing that it was all in the teachings of Moses too.

For us, it is very easy to cynically question whether there is life after this, or whether this is all there is. Some of the key thinkers of our age attempt to narrow our field of vision to simply this life, this time, these places. It is not for us to have to bend to the logic of the age, however, just as Jesus did not bend to the logic, or fall into the trap of the Sadducees. Wen have a promise of life, today, tomorrow and for eternity to share with the world. The world can never take that away, however hard it tries.