Breaking boxes
Commentary
The central message of Christian faith is that Jesus was raised from the dead. It is what sets apart Christianity from all other religions. As a teacher, Jesus was very good, but there were others who were also keen. As a prophet, Jesus was a tremendous cultural critic, but others also blasted the powers that ruled. As a miracle worker, Jesus was captivating, but so, too, have been many who pulled novel tricks. Yet when it comes to Easter, Jesus is unparalleled. No one else died and came back to life. In his resurrection Jesus proclaimed the dawn of a new age. The ultimate threat to human existence had been overcome. Jesus is alive and lives forevermore!
Today is a good day for some religious swaggering. We boast so easily about the little things of life: a winning sports team, a new car, and a birthday celebration. But the really big thing of life is our main focus today: Jesus came back from the dead and changed our thinking about life forever! We need to make this known and not hide it in tedium or ordinariness. Today is a good day for shouting and dancing a little! (See Paul's encouragement to boast in 1 Corinthians 1:31 -- "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord!")
For many years our family lived in Canada, and while there we adopted an expanded calendar of social holidays. Along with the usual Christmas and Easter, the shifted Thanksgiving and National Days, came the extra Canadian public festivities of "Civic Day" in August and "Boxing Day" on December 26. "Boxing Day" moved to Canada from England, where it began its career hundreds of years ago as the day on which the excesses of Christmas food were boxed up and distributed to the poor. More recently it has taken on the connotations of a time when the boxes and Christmas wrappings are smashed and trashed and discarded as unwanted leftovers from Christmas gift giving. After the thing of value has emerged from the box, the box is no longer needed. Such boxes need to be broken and made irrelevant. That idea fits with today's Easter preaching.
The three passages of today's lectionary all focus on breaking boxes, not literally, but metaphorically and theologically. When Peter preaches the good news of Jesus to Cornelius, he is breaking the box of ethnic separation that previously bound him, and also the box of religious understandings that had trapped both him and Cornelius prior to this. Paul's commands in his letter to the Colossians call for us to break the boxes of human perception and perspective by stepping into the vantage point of another person -- the resurrected and ascended Christ. In John's Gospel, all of the time-honored boxes of funeral regimen are obliterated as Jesus emerges from the shattered box of his tomb.
A good setup for today might be to create some boxes that are labeled with various falsely-held myths of our human past (such as the earth is flat; no one can run the mile in under four minutes; heavier-than-air ships will never fly; communication is limited to earshot or eyesight distance; and the like), and then to break these boxes as a visible illustration.
Acts 10:34-43
The book of Acts is shaped according to Jesus' command in 1:8. In successive ripples we see the expansion of the church in and beyond "Jerusalem," through "Judea and Samaria," and then reaching past Asia Minor and Europe to the "ends of the earth." Luke makes this movement obvious to us through five similar "progress reports" (6:7; 9:31; 12:24; 16:5; 19:20). Each brings to a conclusion a mission movement that is broader than the last: Jerusalem (2:1--6:7), Judea, and Samaria (6:8--9:31), bridging the way to Gentiles (9:32--12:24), Asia Minor (12:25--16:5), and Europe (16:6--19:20).
It is helpful to understand the above plan for the book of Acts in order to appreciate the significance of Peter's words to Cornelius. Prior to this time Peter, along with virtually all of the early Jewish Christians, understood Jesus' coming, power, and meaning, primarily in terms of Jewish messianic terms. Nearly all of the first preaching of the good news of Jesus' resurrection was brought to Jews in Palestine. Suddenly, however, Peter is divinely led (Acts 10:9-23) to tell the same message of current divine favor and future hope to a prominent Gentile leader. This is a moment of historic significance, for it returns global significance (see Genesis 12:1-3) to the Israelite religion that has been marginalized and localized since the Babylonian conquest. Peter's perspectives are broadened to see God's eternal plan for the recovery of all God's children, not merely the Jews.
In bringing this hope to Cornelius, Peter declares that the confirmation of God's good favor is the Easter message. Jesus' resurrection, according to Peter, has several implications. First, it is God's affirmation of Jesus' ministry (10:40). While there have been many great religious teachers, none have had this kind of divine commendation. One can ignore Jesus' teachings and healings only until one confronts the empty tomb and the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus among his friends. After Easter, no one can write Jesus out of the picture because God did not.
Second, the resurrection of Jesus confirmed the power of Jesus' perspectives and theology for his followers (10:41). Suddenly they had a new understanding of what God's kingdom was about. Suddenly they became aware of to what lengths God would go to bring reconciliation between heaven and earth. Suddenly they were emboldened to speak with strangers everywhere about a message of absolute significance for everyone. No one can remain the same after attending the funeral of a dear friend, spending time in the cemetery where his body is buried, and then seeing the exploded tomb and talking with him alive again. Jesus' resurrection confirmed the validity of his life, his teachings, and his view of God's history.
Third, Jesus' resurrection confirmed the urgency of the gospel message (10:42). People may hear a great orator and walk away with little or no permanent response. They may see mighty acts of healing and be religiously entertained for a time. But Jesus' open grave announced a new era in human history, according to Peter, one in which the future broke into the present and stared us in the face. These are suddenly the last days, and they demand a response from all people.
In bringing this message of Easter's good news to Cornelius, Peter was breaking boxes. He was breaking out of the box of Jewish ethnocentricity. While Jewish monotheism required full devotion of members of its race, it was benignly pluralistic when it came to other races and other religions. Jewish monotheism was neither evangelistic nor "exclusivistic." Those from other nations might come to and adopt the God of Judaism, but it was a choice they would freely make. If they did not, there was no clear Jewish theology of divine judgment against them. But Peter's new understanding of God's broadened concerns changed all that. The box of Jewish ethnocentricity no longer made sense. The God of Israelite past was still the God of all nations. Jesus' resurrection was not a Jewish matter but a human issue -- all people will die; all must face their maker; all are in need of the divine favor expressed through Jesus.
Peter was also breaking the box of Old Testament centripetal missiology. In the days of ancient Israel, Canaan was the land of covenant promise. Israel was to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, but was to transmit that blessing from its location on the crossroads of society. Israel's unique geographical location -- squeezed between the Mediterranean Sea and the great desert, with Africa, Europe, and Asia on its southern and northern contact points -- meant that all trade routes, all communication lines, and all conquest strategies would eventually bring the nations of its world into its borders. This would allow its religiously defined culture to be observed by other nations with the hopes that they would be attracted and become proselytes to its covenant identity (see Psalm 87). In this new stage of missiology, ushered in by Jesus' resurrection and the divine vision that had driven him to connect with Cornelius, the centripetal attraction to Israel's place was being transformed into a centrifugal thrust into the world at large. The box that limited the good news of God's work in human history to Israel's borders was being blasted from within.
Finally, Peter was acknowledging that the box of the grave was no longer absolute. If Jesus broke out of the tomb, no grave is any longer "safe." We can no longer assume that making it through life is enough. We must also become concerned about life beyond life, or life of eternal consequence. This places more of a moral imperative on the choice we make during our lives. The boxes are broken and, like Humpty Dumpty's shell, cannot be repaired. We have entered a new world order because of Easter.
Colossians 3:1-4
Paul wrote this letter from prison in Rome around A.D. 60. He was waiting for his case to be heard by the emperor (see Acts 21-28). A former slave acquaintance named Onesimus found his way to Rome and ended up as a constant and "useful" companion to Paul (see Philemon). Now Paul was sending Onesimus back to his master Philemon, who lived near Colossae. Tychicus would be Onesimus' traveling companion (see Colossians 4:7-9), and with such mail-deliverers available, Paul decided to send a letter to the Colossian church as well.
The focus of Paul's letter to the Colossians was his address of the "heresy" hinted at in chapter 2. That aberrant teaching appears to have been an early form of Ebionism, which was prevalent among Jewish Christians and Gentile proselytes to Judaism who later became Christians. This view held that Jesus was certainly a prophet divinely affirmed by God, but that the strength of Jesus' teachings was his ability to keep the commands of the Torah. Christians ought to follow Jesus' lead and observe the cultic rituals of Jewish faith, including the accretions that had been added over the years.
Paul resoundingly denies the validity of this approach. Furthermore, he espouses a Christology which is not adoptionistic (like that of the Ebionites), but rather incarnationist. Jesus was not merely a good man who was "adopted" by God because of his faithful observance of laws and commands, but is actually the fullness of deity itself (2:9).
Because of that, the "normal" understanding of life is not from earthbound human perspective, but from the divine, creator view. Since Christians are to identify with Jesus, they ought not limit their understanding of him to the times of his earthly sojourn, but also travel with him post-Easter as he returned to his heavenly frame of reference. This is the instruction Paul gives in 3:1-4.
A wonderful image that can be used effectively with this passage takes its title from E. M. Forester's great novel, A Room with a View. Forrester described the Italian travels of Lucy Honeychurch (note the name!) with her chaperone, and their disappointment in a fashionable Florence hotel where their explicit reservations of rooms with "views" (such as the sculpted gardens and open countryside) cannot be honored. Lucy is given a room overlooking the courtyard where the drama of human life is played out. In the end, it is she, not her chaperone, who has the true room with a view. This is what Paul is describing in godly terms. Our limited perspectives on human life are really boxes in which we have isolated ourselves. Jesus' resurrection and heavenly perspective allows us to break out of the boxes in which we have trapped ourselves, and see things from God's broader and more realistic view.
John 20:1-18
John begins his gospel with a philosophic perspective that ties the meaning of Jesus to the creation of the world (John 1:1-13) and the unique revelation of God to Israel through the Shekinah glory light (John 1:14-18). Chapters 2-12 are rightly called "The Book of Signs" because, through seven "miraculous signs," the glory of Jesus as the incarnate deity is gradually revealed. Chapters 13-20 are often called "The Book of Glory" because Jesus completes his revelation of divine glory first in his on-going relationship with the church through the witness of his disciples (13-17), and then through his sacrificial death as the true Passover Lamb (18-19). Here, in chapter 20, Jesus' resurrection is told in both its historical and cosmological significance. First comes the historical eyewitness report of the tomb being opened and emptied (20:1-13). Then, in verses 14-18, a cosmological dimension is added. John has told us that the tomb was located in a "garden" (19:41); here Mary supposes that she sees the "gardener" (20:15). While this is an explanation of real-time events, it is also an interesting return to John's original "creation/re-creation" themes of chapter 1. God created a garden in which humankind would dwell. Humans fell out of touch with their creator/gardener who used to come and talk with them in the garden. Now Jesus (the true gardener) is found again by his own in the garden. John is certainly making a play on this theme. Even the idea that Mary is not to cling to Jesus in the garden (v. 17) is part of the play; Jesus' resurrection is only the first stage in the process of "re-creation," and Mary must not halt it at this point.
Once again, boxes are broken on Easter. First, there is the box of the tomb. What ought to have held Jesus secure in death is demolished by life. Second, the human perspective of Jesus merely as a human companion is broken from the inside out when Jesus' full resurrection glory is displayed. Here Jesus cannot be held by limited earthly contacts. A few verses later he cannot be boxed into mere prophetic identity, but must be declared "Lord" and "God" by Thomas (20:28).
John wants us to know that Jesus' resurrection on Easter Sunday is a message that has both personal and cosmological significance. Those of us who have been trapped into lifelessness because of the death of friends and relatives, know the personal release that Jesus' return to life brings. And all of us who have felt the limiting boxes of a cause-and-effect world begin to see outside the box when Jesus brings us back into fellowship with our Creator who loves to come walking with us in the garden once again.
Application
We are in the habit of making boxes and God is in the habit of breaking boxes. Adam and Eve got trapped in the shame of their sinful nakedness; God restored their dignity with clothing and promises (Genesis 3). Lot got caught in the demonic box of Sodom's sin; God smashed the box and brought them back to life (Genesis 18-19). Pharaoh thought he could stash Israel in a confined corner of his empire; God exploded the myth of Egyptian supremacy and released the people of promise to find their way to a land of their own (Exodus 1-24). When Sennacherib and his Assyrian armies had Hezekiah and God's people locked up in the box of Jerusalem, God erased the limits of siege, sending the entrappers home and releasing the captives (2 Kings 18-19). Even when Israel played the same game and thought it had God locked in the box of the Temple (see Ezekiel 1-10), God refused to stay in the box.
Easter is a box-breaking event. Nothing seems more secure to us than the metal-clad coffins in which we place the bodies of our dead, and the cement secure vaults in which they are buried. But God is in the habit of breaking boxes, even those that seem incredibly secure, and Easter proves it once and for all. No box could hold Jesus. No trap of death could snare him. Easter is "Boxing Day," when the last great boxes that confine, outline, refine, define, and malign us are broken. So boast about it!
An Alternative Application
John 20:1-18. If you would like to focus only on the resurrection story in John, several themes emerge. First, John tells us that the events take place early in the morning, "while it was still dark." Light and darkness are very meaningful in John's Gospel -- in chapter 1, God creates the world full of light, but it becomes dark; Jesus is the Light of God entering this dark world, and only those who see his glory become bearers of the light of God. In chapter 3, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, but is given a sendoff that surrounds him with light; in chapter 13, Judas enters the room of Jesus' farewell discourse surrounded by the light of Jesus' glory, but when challenged about his motives, leaves the room "and it is night." Here darkness is both the condition of the morning and the figurative blindness or uncertainty of those who do not yet fully comprehend the significance of Jesus' resurrection.
Second, in John's description of the tomb there is evidence of resurrection that resoundingly speaks against grave robbery. Grave robbers would not unwrap a body at the grave; they would make sure they were in a safe place before doing so, but here the strips of linen that were used to wrap the body of Jesus appear to have fallen in place. This would not be so if Jesus' body were unwrapped from the outside; nor could it happen if the one wrapped had only fainted and then come back to life (remember how Jesus commanded others to unwrap Lazarus in John 11). At the same time, the headpiece was folded and placed off to the side by itself. John's testimony speaks of a body that miraculously passed through its death wraps, dropping them in place, and of a living human who took off his death skullcap, folded it and put it away because it was no longer needed.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Another portion of this same psalm was assigned for Palm Sunday, last week.
"I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord." This line from verse 17 is undoubtedly the reason why the lectionary editors have selected Psalm 118 as the Psalm for Easter Day. For its ancient Hebrew author, however, this line clearly does not mean the same thing we commonly understand it to mean, based on our 20/20 Easter hindsight.
The Hebrew people did not have a conception of an afterlife. If there is any persistent human life after death, in their way of thinking, it can only be a shadowy existence in the ghostly realm of Sheol. Consequently, the Psalms celebrate earthly life, and view a long, abundant life as the ultimate blessing from God. "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living," says Psalm 27:13.
"I shall not die, but I shall live." That line from Psalm 118 cannot apply to Jesus -- for if there's one thing the Passion accounts declare, it's that Jesus really did die. The resurrection is not a rescue from death, but is rather a journey straight through it to victory.
The gospel-writers all take pains to point out that Jesus did die. Then they go on to report, with equal emphasis, that the life to which he returned was a real, human life -- not some ghostly apparition. Matthew tells how the disciples "took hold of his feet, and worshiped him." Mark has the angel announce that Jesus has gone ahead of his disciples into Galilee -- not to some celestial realm, but into the dusty streets of his old neighborhood. Luke includes the homey detail of how the risen Jesus ate a piece of fish. As for John, there's that touching scene in the garden, as Jesus and Mary Magdalene physically embrace -- not to mention the scene when Thomas touches his Lord's wounds, to see for himself.
The author of Psalm 118 is a king of Israel, perhaps King David himself. This kingly psalm-writer knows what it's like to wait, on the eve of battle, with terror sitting like some cold, lead weight in his gut -- knowing the enemy forces are vastly superior to his own. "They surrounded me," he writes, "surrounded me on every side ... they surrounded me like bees; they blazed like a fire of thorns ... I was pushed hard, so that I was falling, but the Lord helped me. The Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation" (vv. 12-14). A little later, the psalmist proclaims in relief, "I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord." There's an awe and wonder to his words that can only come from a man who has looked death in the face and has returned to tell the tale. "To be saved does not just mean to be a little encouraged," writes Karl Barth; "it means to be pulled out like a log from a burning fire."
The perspective of the psalmist is in some ways similar to that of today's death-denying consumer culture. In both world views, God's blessing means little more than a richer, fuller, human life. Death, however, is the invincible adversary, so the only thing to do is to deny it. The good news of Easter, by contrast -- that death is real and will prevail for a time, but cannot triumph in the end -- comes as an audacious and wonderful surprise.
Today is a good day for some religious swaggering. We boast so easily about the little things of life: a winning sports team, a new car, and a birthday celebration. But the really big thing of life is our main focus today: Jesus came back from the dead and changed our thinking about life forever! We need to make this known and not hide it in tedium or ordinariness. Today is a good day for shouting and dancing a little! (See Paul's encouragement to boast in 1 Corinthians 1:31 -- "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord!")
For many years our family lived in Canada, and while there we adopted an expanded calendar of social holidays. Along with the usual Christmas and Easter, the shifted Thanksgiving and National Days, came the extra Canadian public festivities of "Civic Day" in August and "Boxing Day" on December 26. "Boxing Day" moved to Canada from England, where it began its career hundreds of years ago as the day on which the excesses of Christmas food were boxed up and distributed to the poor. More recently it has taken on the connotations of a time when the boxes and Christmas wrappings are smashed and trashed and discarded as unwanted leftovers from Christmas gift giving. After the thing of value has emerged from the box, the box is no longer needed. Such boxes need to be broken and made irrelevant. That idea fits with today's Easter preaching.
The three passages of today's lectionary all focus on breaking boxes, not literally, but metaphorically and theologically. When Peter preaches the good news of Jesus to Cornelius, he is breaking the box of ethnic separation that previously bound him, and also the box of religious understandings that had trapped both him and Cornelius prior to this. Paul's commands in his letter to the Colossians call for us to break the boxes of human perception and perspective by stepping into the vantage point of another person -- the resurrected and ascended Christ. In John's Gospel, all of the time-honored boxes of funeral regimen are obliterated as Jesus emerges from the shattered box of his tomb.
A good setup for today might be to create some boxes that are labeled with various falsely-held myths of our human past (such as the earth is flat; no one can run the mile in under four minutes; heavier-than-air ships will never fly; communication is limited to earshot or eyesight distance; and the like), and then to break these boxes as a visible illustration.
Acts 10:34-43
The book of Acts is shaped according to Jesus' command in 1:8. In successive ripples we see the expansion of the church in and beyond "Jerusalem," through "Judea and Samaria," and then reaching past Asia Minor and Europe to the "ends of the earth." Luke makes this movement obvious to us through five similar "progress reports" (6:7; 9:31; 12:24; 16:5; 19:20). Each brings to a conclusion a mission movement that is broader than the last: Jerusalem (2:1--6:7), Judea, and Samaria (6:8--9:31), bridging the way to Gentiles (9:32--12:24), Asia Minor (12:25--16:5), and Europe (16:6--19:20).
It is helpful to understand the above plan for the book of Acts in order to appreciate the significance of Peter's words to Cornelius. Prior to this time Peter, along with virtually all of the early Jewish Christians, understood Jesus' coming, power, and meaning, primarily in terms of Jewish messianic terms. Nearly all of the first preaching of the good news of Jesus' resurrection was brought to Jews in Palestine. Suddenly, however, Peter is divinely led (Acts 10:9-23) to tell the same message of current divine favor and future hope to a prominent Gentile leader. This is a moment of historic significance, for it returns global significance (see Genesis 12:1-3) to the Israelite religion that has been marginalized and localized since the Babylonian conquest. Peter's perspectives are broadened to see God's eternal plan for the recovery of all God's children, not merely the Jews.
In bringing this hope to Cornelius, Peter declares that the confirmation of God's good favor is the Easter message. Jesus' resurrection, according to Peter, has several implications. First, it is God's affirmation of Jesus' ministry (10:40). While there have been many great religious teachers, none have had this kind of divine commendation. One can ignore Jesus' teachings and healings only until one confronts the empty tomb and the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus among his friends. After Easter, no one can write Jesus out of the picture because God did not.
Second, the resurrection of Jesus confirmed the power of Jesus' perspectives and theology for his followers (10:41). Suddenly they had a new understanding of what God's kingdom was about. Suddenly they became aware of to what lengths God would go to bring reconciliation between heaven and earth. Suddenly they were emboldened to speak with strangers everywhere about a message of absolute significance for everyone. No one can remain the same after attending the funeral of a dear friend, spending time in the cemetery where his body is buried, and then seeing the exploded tomb and talking with him alive again. Jesus' resurrection confirmed the validity of his life, his teachings, and his view of God's history.
Third, Jesus' resurrection confirmed the urgency of the gospel message (10:42). People may hear a great orator and walk away with little or no permanent response. They may see mighty acts of healing and be religiously entertained for a time. But Jesus' open grave announced a new era in human history, according to Peter, one in which the future broke into the present and stared us in the face. These are suddenly the last days, and they demand a response from all people.
In bringing this message of Easter's good news to Cornelius, Peter was breaking boxes. He was breaking out of the box of Jewish ethnocentricity. While Jewish monotheism required full devotion of members of its race, it was benignly pluralistic when it came to other races and other religions. Jewish monotheism was neither evangelistic nor "exclusivistic." Those from other nations might come to and adopt the God of Judaism, but it was a choice they would freely make. If they did not, there was no clear Jewish theology of divine judgment against them. But Peter's new understanding of God's broadened concerns changed all that. The box of Jewish ethnocentricity no longer made sense. The God of Israelite past was still the God of all nations. Jesus' resurrection was not a Jewish matter but a human issue -- all people will die; all must face their maker; all are in need of the divine favor expressed through Jesus.
Peter was also breaking the box of Old Testament centripetal missiology. In the days of ancient Israel, Canaan was the land of covenant promise. Israel was to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, but was to transmit that blessing from its location on the crossroads of society. Israel's unique geographical location -- squeezed between the Mediterranean Sea and the great desert, with Africa, Europe, and Asia on its southern and northern contact points -- meant that all trade routes, all communication lines, and all conquest strategies would eventually bring the nations of its world into its borders. This would allow its religiously defined culture to be observed by other nations with the hopes that they would be attracted and become proselytes to its covenant identity (see Psalm 87). In this new stage of missiology, ushered in by Jesus' resurrection and the divine vision that had driven him to connect with Cornelius, the centripetal attraction to Israel's place was being transformed into a centrifugal thrust into the world at large. The box that limited the good news of God's work in human history to Israel's borders was being blasted from within.
Finally, Peter was acknowledging that the box of the grave was no longer absolute. If Jesus broke out of the tomb, no grave is any longer "safe." We can no longer assume that making it through life is enough. We must also become concerned about life beyond life, or life of eternal consequence. This places more of a moral imperative on the choice we make during our lives. The boxes are broken and, like Humpty Dumpty's shell, cannot be repaired. We have entered a new world order because of Easter.
Colossians 3:1-4
Paul wrote this letter from prison in Rome around A.D. 60. He was waiting for his case to be heard by the emperor (see Acts 21-28). A former slave acquaintance named Onesimus found his way to Rome and ended up as a constant and "useful" companion to Paul (see Philemon). Now Paul was sending Onesimus back to his master Philemon, who lived near Colossae. Tychicus would be Onesimus' traveling companion (see Colossians 4:7-9), and with such mail-deliverers available, Paul decided to send a letter to the Colossian church as well.
The focus of Paul's letter to the Colossians was his address of the "heresy" hinted at in chapter 2. That aberrant teaching appears to have been an early form of Ebionism, which was prevalent among Jewish Christians and Gentile proselytes to Judaism who later became Christians. This view held that Jesus was certainly a prophet divinely affirmed by God, but that the strength of Jesus' teachings was his ability to keep the commands of the Torah. Christians ought to follow Jesus' lead and observe the cultic rituals of Jewish faith, including the accretions that had been added over the years.
Paul resoundingly denies the validity of this approach. Furthermore, he espouses a Christology which is not adoptionistic (like that of the Ebionites), but rather incarnationist. Jesus was not merely a good man who was "adopted" by God because of his faithful observance of laws and commands, but is actually the fullness of deity itself (2:9).
Because of that, the "normal" understanding of life is not from earthbound human perspective, but from the divine, creator view. Since Christians are to identify with Jesus, they ought not limit their understanding of him to the times of his earthly sojourn, but also travel with him post-Easter as he returned to his heavenly frame of reference. This is the instruction Paul gives in 3:1-4.
A wonderful image that can be used effectively with this passage takes its title from E. M. Forester's great novel, A Room with a View. Forrester described the Italian travels of Lucy Honeychurch (note the name!) with her chaperone, and their disappointment in a fashionable Florence hotel where their explicit reservations of rooms with "views" (such as the sculpted gardens and open countryside) cannot be honored. Lucy is given a room overlooking the courtyard where the drama of human life is played out. In the end, it is she, not her chaperone, who has the true room with a view. This is what Paul is describing in godly terms. Our limited perspectives on human life are really boxes in which we have isolated ourselves. Jesus' resurrection and heavenly perspective allows us to break out of the boxes in which we have trapped ourselves, and see things from God's broader and more realistic view.
John 20:1-18
John begins his gospel with a philosophic perspective that ties the meaning of Jesus to the creation of the world (John 1:1-13) and the unique revelation of God to Israel through the Shekinah glory light (John 1:14-18). Chapters 2-12 are rightly called "The Book of Signs" because, through seven "miraculous signs," the glory of Jesus as the incarnate deity is gradually revealed. Chapters 13-20 are often called "The Book of Glory" because Jesus completes his revelation of divine glory first in his on-going relationship with the church through the witness of his disciples (13-17), and then through his sacrificial death as the true Passover Lamb (18-19). Here, in chapter 20, Jesus' resurrection is told in both its historical and cosmological significance. First comes the historical eyewitness report of the tomb being opened and emptied (20:1-13). Then, in verses 14-18, a cosmological dimension is added. John has told us that the tomb was located in a "garden" (19:41); here Mary supposes that she sees the "gardener" (20:15). While this is an explanation of real-time events, it is also an interesting return to John's original "creation/re-creation" themes of chapter 1. God created a garden in which humankind would dwell. Humans fell out of touch with their creator/gardener who used to come and talk with them in the garden. Now Jesus (the true gardener) is found again by his own in the garden. John is certainly making a play on this theme. Even the idea that Mary is not to cling to Jesus in the garden (v. 17) is part of the play; Jesus' resurrection is only the first stage in the process of "re-creation," and Mary must not halt it at this point.
Once again, boxes are broken on Easter. First, there is the box of the tomb. What ought to have held Jesus secure in death is demolished by life. Second, the human perspective of Jesus merely as a human companion is broken from the inside out when Jesus' full resurrection glory is displayed. Here Jesus cannot be held by limited earthly contacts. A few verses later he cannot be boxed into mere prophetic identity, but must be declared "Lord" and "God" by Thomas (20:28).
John wants us to know that Jesus' resurrection on Easter Sunday is a message that has both personal and cosmological significance. Those of us who have been trapped into lifelessness because of the death of friends and relatives, know the personal release that Jesus' return to life brings. And all of us who have felt the limiting boxes of a cause-and-effect world begin to see outside the box when Jesus brings us back into fellowship with our Creator who loves to come walking with us in the garden once again.
Application
We are in the habit of making boxes and God is in the habit of breaking boxes. Adam and Eve got trapped in the shame of their sinful nakedness; God restored their dignity with clothing and promises (Genesis 3). Lot got caught in the demonic box of Sodom's sin; God smashed the box and brought them back to life (Genesis 18-19). Pharaoh thought he could stash Israel in a confined corner of his empire; God exploded the myth of Egyptian supremacy and released the people of promise to find their way to a land of their own (Exodus 1-24). When Sennacherib and his Assyrian armies had Hezekiah and God's people locked up in the box of Jerusalem, God erased the limits of siege, sending the entrappers home and releasing the captives (2 Kings 18-19). Even when Israel played the same game and thought it had God locked in the box of the Temple (see Ezekiel 1-10), God refused to stay in the box.
Easter is a box-breaking event. Nothing seems more secure to us than the metal-clad coffins in which we place the bodies of our dead, and the cement secure vaults in which they are buried. But God is in the habit of breaking boxes, even those that seem incredibly secure, and Easter proves it once and for all. No box could hold Jesus. No trap of death could snare him. Easter is "Boxing Day," when the last great boxes that confine, outline, refine, define, and malign us are broken. So boast about it!
An Alternative Application
John 20:1-18. If you would like to focus only on the resurrection story in John, several themes emerge. First, John tells us that the events take place early in the morning, "while it was still dark." Light and darkness are very meaningful in John's Gospel -- in chapter 1, God creates the world full of light, but it becomes dark; Jesus is the Light of God entering this dark world, and only those who see his glory become bearers of the light of God. In chapter 3, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, but is given a sendoff that surrounds him with light; in chapter 13, Judas enters the room of Jesus' farewell discourse surrounded by the light of Jesus' glory, but when challenged about his motives, leaves the room "and it is night." Here darkness is both the condition of the morning and the figurative blindness or uncertainty of those who do not yet fully comprehend the significance of Jesus' resurrection.
Second, in John's description of the tomb there is evidence of resurrection that resoundingly speaks against grave robbery. Grave robbers would not unwrap a body at the grave; they would make sure they were in a safe place before doing so, but here the strips of linen that were used to wrap the body of Jesus appear to have fallen in place. This would not be so if Jesus' body were unwrapped from the outside; nor could it happen if the one wrapped had only fainted and then come back to life (remember how Jesus commanded others to unwrap Lazarus in John 11). At the same time, the headpiece was folded and placed off to the side by itself. John's testimony speaks of a body that miraculously passed through its death wraps, dropping them in place, and of a living human who took off his death skullcap, folded it and put it away because it was no longer needed.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Another portion of this same psalm was assigned for Palm Sunday, last week.
"I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord." This line from verse 17 is undoubtedly the reason why the lectionary editors have selected Psalm 118 as the Psalm for Easter Day. For its ancient Hebrew author, however, this line clearly does not mean the same thing we commonly understand it to mean, based on our 20/20 Easter hindsight.
The Hebrew people did not have a conception of an afterlife. If there is any persistent human life after death, in their way of thinking, it can only be a shadowy existence in the ghostly realm of Sheol. Consequently, the Psalms celebrate earthly life, and view a long, abundant life as the ultimate blessing from God. "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living," says Psalm 27:13.
"I shall not die, but I shall live." That line from Psalm 118 cannot apply to Jesus -- for if there's one thing the Passion accounts declare, it's that Jesus really did die. The resurrection is not a rescue from death, but is rather a journey straight through it to victory.
The gospel-writers all take pains to point out that Jesus did die. Then they go on to report, with equal emphasis, that the life to which he returned was a real, human life -- not some ghostly apparition. Matthew tells how the disciples "took hold of his feet, and worshiped him." Mark has the angel announce that Jesus has gone ahead of his disciples into Galilee -- not to some celestial realm, but into the dusty streets of his old neighborhood. Luke includes the homey detail of how the risen Jesus ate a piece of fish. As for John, there's that touching scene in the garden, as Jesus and Mary Magdalene physically embrace -- not to mention the scene when Thomas touches his Lord's wounds, to see for himself.
The author of Psalm 118 is a king of Israel, perhaps King David himself. This kingly psalm-writer knows what it's like to wait, on the eve of battle, with terror sitting like some cold, lead weight in his gut -- knowing the enemy forces are vastly superior to his own. "They surrounded me," he writes, "surrounded me on every side ... they surrounded me like bees; they blazed like a fire of thorns ... I was pushed hard, so that I was falling, but the Lord helped me. The Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation" (vv. 12-14). A little later, the psalmist proclaims in relief, "I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord." There's an awe and wonder to his words that can only come from a man who has looked death in the face and has returned to tell the tale. "To be saved does not just mean to be a little encouraged," writes Karl Barth; "it means to be pulled out like a log from a burning fire."
The perspective of the psalmist is in some ways similar to that of today's death-denying consumer culture. In both world views, God's blessing means little more than a richer, fuller, human life. Death, however, is the invincible adversary, so the only thing to do is to deny it. The good news of Easter, by contrast -- that death is real and will prevail for a time, but cannot triumph in the end -- comes as an audacious and wonderful surprise.
