Life eternal transforms us
Commentary
Object:
Our scriptures today remind us that Easter is more than a welcoming of spring, and that our Easter message is not centered on burgeoning new life and bunnies, as our popular culture emphasizes. Easter promises us life eternal, which gives us the courage to behave as those first disciples did, bringing the word of God to a world in need of strength. Our prophetic role, in the face of rising nationalism around the world and the denigration of people “not like us,” is a tough role, requiring people who have an assurance that living out the teachings of Jesus is essential for us to live at peace rather than to exist in chaos.
Acts 10:34-43
This scripture passage is the “moral of the story” of the encounter between Peter and Cornelius, a centurion (leader of 100 soldiers) in the “Italian Cohort” ? archers of the Roman army. This man was a Gentile, but a “God-fearing man” who evidently had adopted the Jewish faith. Luke (the author of Acts) says that he prayed “constantly to God” and “gave alms generously” (10:2). The result of this devotion was that one day an angel came to him in a vision and told him to send for Simon Peter, who was staying with a tanner of the same name in the city of Joppa, which is 30 miles away (about a full day’s journey on foot).
Peter had been having an ongoing argument with Paul about who should be accepted in the Christian community. Since Jesus was Jewish, Peter thought, Gentiles first had to become Jewish; only when they knew the laws of Judaism could they then go on to become Christians. Paul disagreed. His father was a Roman citizen, so he surely knew a great many Gentiles. So he had no problem with including them in the Christian fellowship. On the other hand, he had studied with the greatest teacher of Judaism of his day: Gamaliel, who spoke reason to the Sanhedrin over the growing Christian movement. This argument was causing all kinds of difficulty in the early Christian community. Congregations were pitted against each other, with the church at Jerusalem holding Peter’s point of view and the churches of Asia Minor siding with Paul. But the issue also was splitting congregations, which is evident in 1 Corinthians 7, as a single example.
So at the same time that Cornelius’ messenger was approaching the home where Peter was staying, Peter was waiting for lunch and feeling very hungry, even as he was saying his noontime prayers. He had a vision in which God told him not to call profane anything that God has made clean (vv. 9-16). He was just puzzling over this vision when Cornelius’ messenger arrived, and God’s spirit told him that he was to go with the messenger to meet Cornelius and his family.
Peter learned in a split second that the ideas he had had about who could and could not be included in the community, and indeed in God’s love, were no longer appropriate. Happily, Peter really wanted to please God, not just himself or the leadership of the Christian community in Jerusalem, or none of us would be members of the Church today. Peter went with the messenger, and this speech is his presentation of the Good News to that household of God-fearing Gentiles.
The remarkable thing here is that by the time he got to Caesarea he had already understood that God was doing something very special: he was revealing that national origin or previous religious beliefs were no barrier to being acceptable to God. Without that understanding, Peter never would have entered the house of Cornelius, because the Law Jews lived by did not allow them to enter any dwelling of a non-Jew. He could never share a meal with a non-Jew, and many of the foods enjoyed by non-Jews were forbidden to him as a faithful Jew. He was, one by one, breaking rules he had known all his life because he was allowing the Spirit of God to lead him rather than clinging to the past.
As he talks to the people gathered in Cornelius’ home, Peter describes the spread of the Christian doctrine throughout Palestine, which had been faster than he or any other person could have imagined. This little group of disciples, who started out in Galilee with only twelve or so members, had spread through Judea and into the Gentile areas of Caesarea and Tyre. He explains that the attempt by Rome and those in power in Jerusalem to stop that movement by killing the founder, Jesus of Nazareth, had failed. God had raised him from the dead, not for the general populace’s viewing, but for those who had been following him. He claims what John’s gospel tells us: that Jesus ate and drank with those disciples after he was resurrected from the dead (John 20:19-23). No ghost could possibly do that, so Jesus had actually been physically alive. And, Peter continues, all the prophets testify that “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Clearly Cornelius wanted that assurance, or he would not have devoted himself to prayer and the generous distribution of alms to the poor. Our passage stops at the end of Peter’s explanation of what the followers of Christ had seen and believed, but verses 44-48 tell us that the people gathered to listen suddenly had the Holy Spirit bestowed on them in the same way that the disciples had received it on Pentecost! The circumcised believers (Christians who had been Jewish as they grew up) were astounded, but no one could forbid baptism by water to those who had been “baptized in the Spirit” ? that is, given the gift of speaking in tongues, which was the one way the leaders of the faithful could be certain that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been given to a person.
Today, unless you are part of a charismatic worship group you have probably never heard anyone speak in tongues or demonstrate any of the other signs of Spirit baptism. Furthermore, you’re probably uneasy with any other of the expressions of “enthusiasm” that characterize charismatic worship.
I had an interesting experience in a worship service where I was a guest many years ago. As the preacher was becoming more and more excited in his preaching, the choir had begun to sing “Hallelujah” at places where he would pause briefly. Then members of the congregation began to shout out their hallelujahs, as well as “Praise you, Lord” and “Yes! Jesus!” Suddenly the woman in front of me leapt to her feet, shouted “Praise you, Jesus!” and passed out. Two men came over and carried her out of the sanctuary.
That was about all I could take. The service had already lasted over an hour, the preacher didn’t seem to be running out of steam, and the congregation was getting to its feet to dance and shout. I quietly left the sanctuary. I wandered outside, where tables had been set up for a picnic that would follow the worship service, and sat down under a canopy, which gave some relief from the hot sun. Two other women were sitting just a few feet from me, and I recognized the woman who had fainted in ecstasy right in front of me. She was talking, and it was clear as I listened that she had never before had this experience, though she had belonged to this church for years. “I’m so embarrassed!” she said to her friend. “I’ve never had this happen to me before.” Her friend was comforting her. “Well, when the Spirit gets ahold of you, you just do things like that. Being slain in the Spirit isn’t something you do, it’s the work of God!” My eyes were opened to a new understanding. Even in Pentecostal churches like hers, not everyone has the experiences associated with the power of the Spirit coming down on the people. And even if you’re used to seeing others pass out, speak in tongues, or prophesy, it doesn’t mean you have those same gifts ? or welcome them. But to the congregation, such events are proof that the Spirit of God is operating in their midst.
In the early church, many differences of opinion were settled by the movement of the Spirit, and in ways that we would not expect today. Would that we moderns had such trust in God as to follow our visions, or to acknowledge that God can be doing a new thing, even in our modern scientific world.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
This passage is a small portion of a longer discussion by Paul of the central importance of the doctrine of the resurrection. Paul admits that he was not one of the original apostles, nor one of those who saw Christ Jesus immediately after he had died on the cross. Evidently there were those who belonged to the movement who nevertheless did not believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead, or he would not be writing this! After all, there had been Thomas the Twin (“Doubting Thomas” as he became immortalized, incorrectly), one of the twelve who had been with him at the Last Supper, who demanded proof ? and got it.
But Paul is addressing a second issue in this short excerpt: his own place in the company of the apostles. We are all familiar with the story of Paul traveling on the road to Damascus with the intent of arresting every Christian he found there, when he was confronted by a voice asking him “Why are you persecuting me?” He was not only told that he was persecuting Jesus, who is and was the Christ (Greek for “Messiah”), but he was struck blind, so that a Christian could come and heal him, claiming him for the work that he was uniquely qualified to do.
He lists all of those who had followed Jesus both before and after his death, the numbers of those who had seen Jesus after his resurrection, and finally himself. He has learned some humility in the service of Christ. He says, “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Nevertheless, he has benefitted from the grace of God, and so have those to whom he has been sent.
Those of us who have been called to the ministry are all children of Paul, metaphorically speaking. We too have only known the risen Christ. We are all post-resurrection apostles. We don’t have the benefit of having known the earthly Jesus. On the other hand, we have never had to balance out the earthly Jesus ? how he looked, how he walked, what kind of speaking voice he had ? against the cosmological Christ. We each portray him as looking like us ? blondish with light tan skin; dark-skinned with curly hair; or golden-skinned with epicanthic eyelids. Also, we never heard him preach, never had to interpret his stories and sayings for ourselves. Paul put in years of study after this incident and before he began to preach, re-reading the Law and the Prophets so that he could speak to Jews in ways they could understand about the fulfillment of their hope, just as we who preach and teach also have to study so that we can help today’s people learn about God through Jesus.
We too need the kind of humility Paul had by the time he wrote this letter to the church at Corinth. Paul was made perfect for evangelism by his sense of having made a major mistake in persecuting Christians. He had thought Jesus to be at best a charlatan, at worst a madman who was misleading the simple-minded people of the streets. Either way Jesus was a menace, and his followers, who were spreading his delusions all over Palestine, needed to be stopped.
How easy it is for us to be absolutely certain of our received wisdom! Every parent has had the unsettling experience of their first-grader (or even kindergartner!) informing them that they don’t know the right way to do such-and-such ? teacher says it’s like this! How can it be that the teacher in question doesn’t do the same things the parent does? Clearly that teacher is wrong! Those of us whose children have gone off to college know that this situation will only get worse too ? college students seem to know everything. At least they know better than their parents, their parents’ generation, all politicians, all pastors, and all “experts” as well, except for certain authors and professors. How can they not know what we know is true? It takes a sense of humor to navigate those tides ? a sense of humor, a long memory, and a bit of humility.
It’s always a good thing for us to understand our actual place in the universe, rather than the one we wish we had. Even Paul, one of the most effective evangelists of all time. How much more for those of us preaching to a limited circle.
John 20:1-18
The resurrection of Jesus here is a very private affair. Mary Magdalene is reported as the only person to discover the open tomb. However, when she reports back to the disciples she says, “We do not know where they have laid him.” Now, this is a bit strange. The other gospels are quite specific in this regard.
Luke says that Joanna, Mary “the mother of James,” and “the other women who came with [Jesus] from Galilee” were with her (Luke 23:55; 24:10).
Mark 16:1 adds the name of Salome to the names of Mary Magdalene and Mary “the mother of James,” but has no others accompanying them.
Matthew says only “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.”
“Mary” is the Greek form of “Miriam,” the name of Moses’ and Aaron’s sister, and it was the most common name in Israel, actually accounting for over half of the women and girls born. Each Mary was distinguished by tacking on whose wife or mother or daughter they were; thus “Mary the mother of James (or Joses).” This may have meant that their husbands were dead and so they were now part of their elder son’s household. This was not an unusual circumstance in the days when Rome ruled Palestine.
On the other hand, this designation connected them to the disciples of Jesus, which would be considered much more important to the gospel writers. “The other Mary” is most certainly not Jesus’ mother, however, because Jesus’ mother was identified by John as being at the scene of the crucifixion. Besides, she probably would not be coming to the tomb so early in the morning because she would be in mourning at home, surrounded by those who loved her. The job of anointing the body would fall to others.
It would be unthinkable, also, for any woman to be out and about without an escort, especially in light of the fact that Jerusalem would be crowded with visitors for the festival season. It would not be safe for her. At the least, the other women in Jesus’ circle would most certainly accompany her. But the disciples would not want to be escorting them through the streets, because they were in hiding after the crucifixion. So the “we” in verse 2 is odd, in light of the rest of this story. However, it is interesting to note that in those days the testimony of a woman had to be corroborated in court. Women were considered to be no more reliable in their testimony than a child, so there had to be at least two women testifying in order to be believed.
The two boldest of the male disciples set out to the tomb to see for themselves ? Peter and “the other disciple.” Peter has always been the impulsive one, so it is no surprise that he runs off to the tomb. But who is the other disciple? John’s gospel mentions this other disciple, “the disciple Jesus loved,” in several places. Back in the day when Bible professors believed that John the brother of James (and cousin of Simon Peter) had written the gospel of John, it was considered that he was too humble to name himself so used this designation. But we now know that the very fine Greek speaks of a highly educated man, and also that the language indicates a date as much as 100 years after Jesus’ death, and so past the lifetime of the disciple. So we really don’t know who this man is. And when we lack information, speculation abounds.
Neither of these two men had understood what Jesus kept saying to them about the need for him to die “and rise again.” Peter had dreaded the idea of Jesus’ death, and chastised him for saying this was for certain going to happen. But no one understood the idea of resurrection (any more than we would believe someone today saying they expect to come back to this life after they have died and been buried). So when the two entered the tomb and saw the linen wrappings laying there without Jesus’ body, their reaction was understandably one of confusion.
The men “returned to their homes,” but Mary did not. She continued to stand outside the tomb crying, before she leaned down to peer in through the usual small opening found in Judean tombs, which were often dug into the cliffs. These tombs were the prerogative of the rich, and featured benches around the interior on which bodies were laid out to dessicate. A year later, the bones would be removed and put into bone boxes (“ossuaries”) which were stored in the tomb.
As Mary looks into the tomb, she sees something the two men did not see even though they went completely into the tomb: two angels dressed in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying. Again, this is a much quieter event than Matthew portrays.
In Matthew’s gospel, the women see an angel who looks “like lightning, and his clothing white as snow” come down from heaven and roll the stone away, sitting down on the stone. His encouragement not to be afraid isn’t much help ? they flee the tomb back to the disciples. Their reaction in Matthew’s story is nowhere near the fear Mark portrays: despite instructions to tell the disciples to meet Jesus back in Galilee, they “said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.” Luke’s gospel says that there were two angels, who explain to the women how to understand the work of God in the resurrection, and order them to go tell all this to the disciples. It did no good for the women to convey the message, because the men did not believe them.
But back to John’s version of the Easter story. Mary’s experience here is very different ? rather than getting a message from the angels in the tomb, she is questioned:
“Why are you crying, ma’am?” (The address of “woman” is an honorable way of addressing her.)
“My Lord is missing, and I have no way to know where they put him.”
She is crying so hard at this point that she cannot see Jesus standing in front of her as she turns from the tomb. He repeats the angel’s question, and adds to it “Whom are you looking for?” The latter question is one that will help her focus, rather than sobbing her heart out. And it works.
“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Never mind that she is probably physically unable to do such a thing. She wants to protect this man she has followed all over the country. She was said to have had seven demons before she met Jesus, and now she’s normal. She owes him her life, her health, and maybe her sanity (“having demons” didn’t necessarily mean insanity in the sufferer, it referred to all kinds of physical and emotional problems as well), so of course she intends to take him away from the tomb. She wants him to be among those who loved him, not among those who might steal his body for whatever selfish reason.
What happens next is the simplest thing in the world, or in human relations. Jesus speaks her name. And in the way he says it, she knows three things: this is not the gardener; Jesus is not in the hands of those who have abused his body in life; and she is loved. In amazed happiness, she calls him “My Teacher!” and reaches to embrace him. It is the automatic response we all have when our worst fears have suddenly been smashed, when we see again the face of a loved one from whom we have been separated. Our love simply explodes, and nothing will do but to hold on to one another.
Unfortunately, Jesus cannot take the long time the gesture would demand at that moment. He has to get a message to the disciples, and he entrusts this task to Mary. She, the first witness to the resurrection, and the first to understand what this means to the world (if we believe Matthew and Luke), leaves him and races back to the other disciples, to tell them the Good News. She becomes, in this way, the first Evangelist. She also becomes the embodiment of what that news means to the world ? that Jesus’ Father is now the Father of every believer, and the Jews’ God is now the God of every believer. We are united in the love that Mary knew when she was with Jesus. We are filled with the exuberant joy that she knew when she heard Jesus say her name.
It is a comfort to every Christian to know that Jesus’ death was not the end of him. Whether we believe in the resurrection as Jesus’ physical resurrection, capable of being embraced, or we believe in the resurrection as a rising of the spirit, this is the core belief of Christianity. Death is not the end of us.
While we stopped our reading in First Corinthians today with verse 11, Paul says in the following section that our hope of eternal life is absolutely tied to the resurrection of Jesus: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised.” And vice-versa. And he contends in verse 19: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Indeed, it was this core belief that has enabled Christians to continue in the faith in the face of every kind of persecution down through the ages. It is what has given men like Martin Luther King Jr. the courage to persevere in the face of death threats, and women such as nurse Edith Cavell, who during World War I aided Allied soldiers in escaping Belgium, knowing that she would die for her efforts if she were caught by the Kaiser’s army.
We may never be faced with the choice of dying for what we believe, but we may risk our reputations, our livelihood, our families and friends to right a wrong or to stand up for those who cannot speak for themselves. We may never have a microphone and the ability to speak to the entire nation when we see something that needs to be changed for the benefit of those who have no power, but the simple act of opposing bullying or malicious gossip can make us a target of those who are filled with hate. We may never know what our words, spoken at the right time, can change in our world, but we do know that we are required to speak for the broken-hearted; to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind; and to set the oppressed free.
Sometimes, following this simple practice will rile those who see only their own needs, who are frightened and angry and armed. We need to be courageous in the face of opposition. And it is only this core belief ? that death is not the end of us; that God will bless us and our work, even though we may not see what the seeds we planted grew into ? that can keep us working for the banishment of the chaos that is ever lurking at the edges of civilization, waiting for an opportunity to ravage the work of God.
Acts 10:34-43
This scripture passage is the “moral of the story” of the encounter between Peter and Cornelius, a centurion (leader of 100 soldiers) in the “Italian Cohort” ? archers of the Roman army. This man was a Gentile, but a “God-fearing man” who evidently had adopted the Jewish faith. Luke (the author of Acts) says that he prayed “constantly to God” and “gave alms generously” (10:2). The result of this devotion was that one day an angel came to him in a vision and told him to send for Simon Peter, who was staying with a tanner of the same name in the city of Joppa, which is 30 miles away (about a full day’s journey on foot).
Peter had been having an ongoing argument with Paul about who should be accepted in the Christian community. Since Jesus was Jewish, Peter thought, Gentiles first had to become Jewish; only when they knew the laws of Judaism could they then go on to become Christians. Paul disagreed. His father was a Roman citizen, so he surely knew a great many Gentiles. So he had no problem with including them in the Christian fellowship. On the other hand, he had studied with the greatest teacher of Judaism of his day: Gamaliel, who spoke reason to the Sanhedrin over the growing Christian movement. This argument was causing all kinds of difficulty in the early Christian community. Congregations were pitted against each other, with the church at Jerusalem holding Peter’s point of view and the churches of Asia Minor siding with Paul. But the issue also was splitting congregations, which is evident in 1 Corinthians 7, as a single example.
So at the same time that Cornelius’ messenger was approaching the home where Peter was staying, Peter was waiting for lunch and feeling very hungry, even as he was saying his noontime prayers. He had a vision in which God told him not to call profane anything that God has made clean (vv. 9-16). He was just puzzling over this vision when Cornelius’ messenger arrived, and God’s spirit told him that he was to go with the messenger to meet Cornelius and his family.
Peter learned in a split second that the ideas he had had about who could and could not be included in the community, and indeed in God’s love, were no longer appropriate. Happily, Peter really wanted to please God, not just himself or the leadership of the Christian community in Jerusalem, or none of us would be members of the Church today. Peter went with the messenger, and this speech is his presentation of the Good News to that household of God-fearing Gentiles.
The remarkable thing here is that by the time he got to Caesarea he had already understood that God was doing something very special: he was revealing that national origin or previous religious beliefs were no barrier to being acceptable to God. Without that understanding, Peter never would have entered the house of Cornelius, because the Law Jews lived by did not allow them to enter any dwelling of a non-Jew. He could never share a meal with a non-Jew, and many of the foods enjoyed by non-Jews were forbidden to him as a faithful Jew. He was, one by one, breaking rules he had known all his life because he was allowing the Spirit of God to lead him rather than clinging to the past.
As he talks to the people gathered in Cornelius’ home, Peter describes the spread of the Christian doctrine throughout Palestine, which had been faster than he or any other person could have imagined. This little group of disciples, who started out in Galilee with only twelve or so members, had spread through Judea and into the Gentile areas of Caesarea and Tyre. He explains that the attempt by Rome and those in power in Jerusalem to stop that movement by killing the founder, Jesus of Nazareth, had failed. God had raised him from the dead, not for the general populace’s viewing, but for those who had been following him. He claims what John’s gospel tells us: that Jesus ate and drank with those disciples after he was resurrected from the dead (John 20:19-23). No ghost could possibly do that, so Jesus had actually been physically alive. And, Peter continues, all the prophets testify that “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Clearly Cornelius wanted that assurance, or he would not have devoted himself to prayer and the generous distribution of alms to the poor. Our passage stops at the end of Peter’s explanation of what the followers of Christ had seen and believed, but verses 44-48 tell us that the people gathered to listen suddenly had the Holy Spirit bestowed on them in the same way that the disciples had received it on Pentecost! The circumcised believers (Christians who had been Jewish as they grew up) were astounded, but no one could forbid baptism by water to those who had been “baptized in the Spirit” ? that is, given the gift of speaking in tongues, which was the one way the leaders of the faithful could be certain that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been given to a person.
Today, unless you are part of a charismatic worship group you have probably never heard anyone speak in tongues or demonstrate any of the other signs of Spirit baptism. Furthermore, you’re probably uneasy with any other of the expressions of “enthusiasm” that characterize charismatic worship.
I had an interesting experience in a worship service where I was a guest many years ago. As the preacher was becoming more and more excited in his preaching, the choir had begun to sing “Hallelujah” at places where he would pause briefly. Then members of the congregation began to shout out their hallelujahs, as well as “Praise you, Lord” and “Yes! Jesus!” Suddenly the woman in front of me leapt to her feet, shouted “Praise you, Jesus!” and passed out. Two men came over and carried her out of the sanctuary.
That was about all I could take. The service had already lasted over an hour, the preacher didn’t seem to be running out of steam, and the congregation was getting to its feet to dance and shout. I quietly left the sanctuary. I wandered outside, where tables had been set up for a picnic that would follow the worship service, and sat down under a canopy, which gave some relief from the hot sun. Two other women were sitting just a few feet from me, and I recognized the woman who had fainted in ecstasy right in front of me. She was talking, and it was clear as I listened that she had never before had this experience, though she had belonged to this church for years. “I’m so embarrassed!” she said to her friend. “I’ve never had this happen to me before.” Her friend was comforting her. “Well, when the Spirit gets ahold of you, you just do things like that. Being slain in the Spirit isn’t something you do, it’s the work of God!” My eyes were opened to a new understanding. Even in Pentecostal churches like hers, not everyone has the experiences associated with the power of the Spirit coming down on the people. And even if you’re used to seeing others pass out, speak in tongues, or prophesy, it doesn’t mean you have those same gifts ? or welcome them. But to the congregation, such events are proof that the Spirit of God is operating in their midst.
In the early church, many differences of opinion were settled by the movement of the Spirit, and in ways that we would not expect today. Would that we moderns had such trust in God as to follow our visions, or to acknowledge that God can be doing a new thing, even in our modern scientific world.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
This passage is a small portion of a longer discussion by Paul of the central importance of the doctrine of the resurrection. Paul admits that he was not one of the original apostles, nor one of those who saw Christ Jesus immediately after he had died on the cross. Evidently there were those who belonged to the movement who nevertheless did not believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead, or he would not be writing this! After all, there had been Thomas the Twin (“Doubting Thomas” as he became immortalized, incorrectly), one of the twelve who had been with him at the Last Supper, who demanded proof ? and got it.
But Paul is addressing a second issue in this short excerpt: his own place in the company of the apostles. We are all familiar with the story of Paul traveling on the road to Damascus with the intent of arresting every Christian he found there, when he was confronted by a voice asking him “Why are you persecuting me?” He was not only told that he was persecuting Jesus, who is and was the Christ (Greek for “Messiah”), but he was struck blind, so that a Christian could come and heal him, claiming him for the work that he was uniquely qualified to do.
He lists all of those who had followed Jesus both before and after his death, the numbers of those who had seen Jesus after his resurrection, and finally himself. He has learned some humility in the service of Christ. He says, “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Nevertheless, he has benefitted from the grace of God, and so have those to whom he has been sent.
Those of us who have been called to the ministry are all children of Paul, metaphorically speaking. We too have only known the risen Christ. We are all post-resurrection apostles. We don’t have the benefit of having known the earthly Jesus. On the other hand, we have never had to balance out the earthly Jesus ? how he looked, how he walked, what kind of speaking voice he had ? against the cosmological Christ. We each portray him as looking like us ? blondish with light tan skin; dark-skinned with curly hair; or golden-skinned with epicanthic eyelids. Also, we never heard him preach, never had to interpret his stories and sayings for ourselves. Paul put in years of study after this incident and before he began to preach, re-reading the Law and the Prophets so that he could speak to Jews in ways they could understand about the fulfillment of their hope, just as we who preach and teach also have to study so that we can help today’s people learn about God through Jesus.
We too need the kind of humility Paul had by the time he wrote this letter to the church at Corinth. Paul was made perfect for evangelism by his sense of having made a major mistake in persecuting Christians. He had thought Jesus to be at best a charlatan, at worst a madman who was misleading the simple-minded people of the streets. Either way Jesus was a menace, and his followers, who were spreading his delusions all over Palestine, needed to be stopped.
How easy it is for us to be absolutely certain of our received wisdom! Every parent has had the unsettling experience of their first-grader (or even kindergartner!) informing them that they don’t know the right way to do such-and-such ? teacher says it’s like this! How can it be that the teacher in question doesn’t do the same things the parent does? Clearly that teacher is wrong! Those of us whose children have gone off to college know that this situation will only get worse too ? college students seem to know everything. At least they know better than their parents, their parents’ generation, all politicians, all pastors, and all “experts” as well, except for certain authors and professors. How can they not know what we know is true? It takes a sense of humor to navigate those tides ? a sense of humor, a long memory, and a bit of humility.
It’s always a good thing for us to understand our actual place in the universe, rather than the one we wish we had. Even Paul, one of the most effective evangelists of all time. How much more for those of us preaching to a limited circle.
John 20:1-18
The resurrection of Jesus here is a very private affair. Mary Magdalene is reported as the only person to discover the open tomb. However, when she reports back to the disciples she says, “We do not know where they have laid him.” Now, this is a bit strange. The other gospels are quite specific in this regard.
Luke says that Joanna, Mary “the mother of James,” and “the other women who came with [Jesus] from Galilee” were with her (Luke 23:55; 24:10).
Mark 16:1 adds the name of Salome to the names of Mary Magdalene and Mary “the mother of James,” but has no others accompanying them.
Matthew says only “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.”
“Mary” is the Greek form of “Miriam,” the name of Moses’ and Aaron’s sister, and it was the most common name in Israel, actually accounting for over half of the women and girls born. Each Mary was distinguished by tacking on whose wife or mother or daughter they were; thus “Mary the mother of James (or Joses).” This may have meant that their husbands were dead and so they were now part of their elder son’s household. This was not an unusual circumstance in the days when Rome ruled Palestine.
On the other hand, this designation connected them to the disciples of Jesus, which would be considered much more important to the gospel writers. “The other Mary” is most certainly not Jesus’ mother, however, because Jesus’ mother was identified by John as being at the scene of the crucifixion. Besides, she probably would not be coming to the tomb so early in the morning because she would be in mourning at home, surrounded by those who loved her. The job of anointing the body would fall to others.
It would be unthinkable, also, for any woman to be out and about without an escort, especially in light of the fact that Jerusalem would be crowded with visitors for the festival season. It would not be safe for her. At the least, the other women in Jesus’ circle would most certainly accompany her. But the disciples would not want to be escorting them through the streets, because they were in hiding after the crucifixion. So the “we” in verse 2 is odd, in light of the rest of this story. However, it is interesting to note that in those days the testimony of a woman had to be corroborated in court. Women were considered to be no more reliable in their testimony than a child, so there had to be at least two women testifying in order to be believed.
The two boldest of the male disciples set out to the tomb to see for themselves ? Peter and “the other disciple.” Peter has always been the impulsive one, so it is no surprise that he runs off to the tomb. But who is the other disciple? John’s gospel mentions this other disciple, “the disciple Jesus loved,” in several places. Back in the day when Bible professors believed that John the brother of James (and cousin of Simon Peter) had written the gospel of John, it was considered that he was too humble to name himself so used this designation. But we now know that the very fine Greek speaks of a highly educated man, and also that the language indicates a date as much as 100 years after Jesus’ death, and so past the lifetime of the disciple. So we really don’t know who this man is. And when we lack information, speculation abounds.
Neither of these two men had understood what Jesus kept saying to them about the need for him to die “and rise again.” Peter had dreaded the idea of Jesus’ death, and chastised him for saying this was for certain going to happen. But no one understood the idea of resurrection (any more than we would believe someone today saying they expect to come back to this life after they have died and been buried). So when the two entered the tomb and saw the linen wrappings laying there without Jesus’ body, their reaction was understandably one of confusion.
The men “returned to their homes,” but Mary did not. She continued to stand outside the tomb crying, before she leaned down to peer in through the usual small opening found in Judean tombs, which were often dug into the cliffs. These tombs were the prerogative of the rich, and featured benches around the interior on which bodies were laid out to dessicate. A year later, the bones would be removed and put into bone boxes (“ossuaries”) which were stored in the tomb.
As Mary looks into the tomb, she sees something the two men did not see even though they went completely into the tomb: two angels dressed in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying. Again, this is a much quieter event than Matthew portrays.
In Matthew’s gospel, the women see an angel who looks “like lightning, and his clothing white as snow” come down from heaven and roll the stone away, sitting down on the stone. His encouragement not to be afraid isn’t much help ? they flee the tomb back to the disciples. Their reaction in Matthew’s story is nowhere near the fear Mark portrays: despite instructions to tell the disciples to meet Jesus back in Galilee, they “said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.” Luke’s gospel says that there were two angels, who explain to the women how to understand the work of God in the resurrection, and order them to go tell all this to the disciples. It did no good for the women to convey the message, because the men did not believe them.
But back to John’s version of the Easter story. Mary’s experience here is very different ? rather than getting a message from the angels in the tomb, she is questioned:
“Why are you crying, ma’am?” (The address of “woman” is an honorable way of addressing her.)
“My Lord is missing, and I have no way to know where they put him.”
She is crying so hard at this point that she cannot see Jesus standing in front of her as she turns from the tomb. He repeats the angel’s question, and adds to it “Whom are you looking for?” The latter question is one that will help her focus, rather than sobbing her heart out. And it works.
“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Never mind that she is probably physically unable to do such a thing. She wants to protect this man she has followed all over the country. She was said to have had seven demons before she met Jesus, and now she’s normal. She owes him her life, her health, and maybe her sanity (“having demons” didn’t necessarily mean insanity in the sufferer, it referred to all kinds of physical and emotional problems as well), so of course she intends to take him away from the tomb. She wants him to be among those who loved him, not among those who might steal his body for whatever selfish reason.
What happens next is the simplest thing in the world, or in human relations. Jesus speaks her name. And in the way he says it, she knows three things: this is not the gardener; Jesus is not in the hands of those who have abused his body in life; and she is loved. In amazed happiness, she calls him “My Teacher!” and reaches to embrace him. It is the automatic response we all have when our worst fears have suddenly been smashed, when we see again the face of a loved one from whom we have been separated. Our love simply explodes, and nothing will do but to hold on to one another.
Unfortunately, Jesus cannot take the long time the gesture would demand at that moment. He has to get a message to the disciples, and he entrusts this task to Mary. She, the first witness to the resurrection, and the first to understand what this means to the world (if we believe Matthew and Luke), leaves him and races back to the other disciples, to tell them the Good News. She becomes, in this way, the first Evangelist. She also becomes the embodiment of what that news means to the world ? that Jesus’ Father is now the Father of every believer, and the Jews’ God is now the God of every believer. We are united in the love that Mary knew when she was with Jesus. We are filled with the exuberant joy that she knew when she heard Jesus say her name.
It is a comfort to every Christian to know that Jesus’ death was not the end of him. Whether we believe in the resurrection as Jesus’ physical resurrection, capable of being embraced, or we believe in the resurrection as a rising of the spirit, this is the core belief of Christianity. Death is not the end of us.
While we stopped our reading in First Corinthians today with verse 11, Paul says in the following section that our hope of eternal life is absolutely tied to the resurrection of Jesus: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised.” And vice-versa. And he contends in verse 19: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Indeed, it was this core belief that has enabled Christians to continue in the faith in the face of every kind of persecution down through the ages. It is what has given men like Martin Luther King Jr. the courage to persevere in the face of death threats, and women such as nurse Edith Cavell, who during World War I aided Allied soldiers in escaping Belgium, knowing that she would die for her efforts if she were caught by the Kaiser’s army.
We may never be faced with the choice of dying for what we believe, but we may risk our reputations, our livelihood, our families and friends to right a wrong or to stand up for those who cannot speak for themselves. We may never have a microphone and the ability to speak to the entire nation when we see something that needs to be changed for the benefit of those who have no power, but the simple act of opposing bullying or malicious gossip can make us a target of those who are filled with hate. We may never know what our words, spoken at the right time, can change in our world, but we do know that we are required to speak for the broken-hearted; to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind; and to set the oppressed free.
Sometimes, following this simple practice will rile those who see only their own needs, who are frightened and angry and armed. We need to be courageous in the face of opposition. And it is only this core belief ? that death is not the end of us; that God will bless us and our work, even though we may not see what the seeds we planted grew into ? that can keep us working for the banishment of the chaos that is ever lurking at the edges of civilization, waiting for an opportunity to ravage the work of God.
