The Resurrection: A Summary

The Christian year begins with a birth of a baby. The angels sing, the kings of the east come, and the shepherds shout for joy, but we are left with a baby that is tired and hungry and fully God and fully man. The fabric of the universe is torn. The calculations of the wise are altered. God has come.

Four months later in that same calendar we come to the apex of the year. That baby is now a man who is crucified, died, and buried. Dead in the ground, death had won. For three days Satan had his victory. God undone. Hell victorious. On that Sunday morning Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome head to the tomb in pain and grief. The teacher is dead. The Messiah they thought they had known was no more. Their leader dead and so was their hopes and dreams for the future. He had brought so much to their lives and it was now over.

They reach the tomb and a man in white tells them, "He is risen! He is not here." They do not know what to do or what to think. What does it mean that he is risen? The implications were unclear. Jesus is alive, that is enough for now. So they ran back and told the remaining disciples. Peter and John go to see for themselves. It is true Jesus is no longer dead.

Jesus who is God was dead and now he lives.

Over the next few months Jesus appears to many of his followers. He says that the Kingdom has come. But Rome still rules. He says, see with new eyes, but their sight is still darken. Then Jesus ascends into heaven. He is seated at the right now of His Father. The disciples are bewildered. What now? What does this all mean? The Messiah lives! The Kingdom has come! But it is not what we expected. And so they follow his command and head to Jerusalem to wait.

Jesus is the Messiah. This they know. He was dead and now he lives. God has changed the world. Still, they do not fully see it. The world is different, but how, remains to be seen. They must wait in Jerusalem, for God isn't finished yet.

Fear and the Resurrection

Jesus is dead. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome head to the tomb to anoint the body of their so-called Messiah. They had been with Jesus for years now, taking care of him, praying with him, learning from him. He was dead, and so they came to perform their last act of mercy. When they arrived the tomb was open and in the grave a man in white sat, waiting to tell them that Jesus has been raised. The Gospel of Mark then says:

So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

They were afraid. Jesus wasn't supposed to be crucified, but he was. Jesus was supposed to be dead, but he wasn't. Fear struck them. Terror held them. What is this that the dead may walk? They had seen the blind given sight. They knew about the feeding of the thousands. Miracles were performed, even Lazarus stood up.

But this was a different animal. Jesus was dead. They had seen him, his body limp and his spirit broken. They watched while the cross was rudely torn down and the nails pounded out. They followed the procession as Joseph of Arimathea wrapped his body and laid their Lord in a tomb. They saw the stone rolled tight. Jesus was dead.

And now a man in white says he is raised. The possibilities are only now beginning to dawn. Be afraid, Jesus is risen.

Preaching Day...

Today I had the opportunity to preach at Hope Christian Reformed. For the scripture I selected 1 Peter 3:13-18, focusing on the line,  "if someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it.” The funny thing about Christian Hope is that it is such a back/forward expectation. It's like how light behaves as understood by quantum physics--it is both a wave and a particle. Measure it one way and you get a nice wave of light, but measured another, you get little packets of information. 


With Christian Hope the resurrection of Jesus and our future resurrection happens at the same time. You can't separate them without breaking the thing itself. We look back to the Jesus' resurrection and look forward to our resurrection because of what Jesus has done. A funny little hopeful thing.