Theme for Easter day
Death, nothingness, life again. Easter is upon us! We
join the women who mournfully and dutifully walked through their dark fear and
grief to prepare Jesus’ body for the year where the body and all that represented
fell away to leave just bones. Bones all knew would rise again on the last day
clothed with a new body. We join in their shock at the loss of the body, at
their surprise to find the “two
men, light cascading over them”[1]
and the good news they proclaim. How do we respond to this proclamation? With the
women, trusting and believing; with the male disciples, disbelieving these
foolish women; or with Peter, doubting, yet running to see for himself?
Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians encounters and entirely
different response. He is writing to people who found the resurrection superfluous.
They believed their bodies held them captive, and that when they died their
soul was freed and went to be with God for eternity. Who needs a future resurrection?
No need for a last day or to pay any attention to this world. It is all about
eternity with God. There a lot of people who hold this line today.
Paul’s response
is that our bodies do not hold us captive, but are part of our essence and our
ability to express ourselves. There is no future in God that does not include
our bodies. Why was Paul so hot on this? William Loader suggests that “Paul
cites all this evidence for the resurrection of Jesus because he wants to
assert that Christian hope envisages an embodied, fully human existence. Human
existence and human community are to be taken seriously both for the future and
for the present, unlike at Corinth.”[2]
For Paul Good Friday and Easter were not just about my private faith and Jesus dying
for my sins, but was about the redemption of the whole cosmos. Jesus death and
resurrection is about all humanity, and life in God was not an event that
happened after death, but starts now, in this life. This physical world is God’s
world. Jesus death and resurrection restores all in God.
So again,
how do we respond to the good news from the two men who spoke to the women at
the empty tomb? Peter ran to an empty
tomb. Where do we look for the risen Christ?
[1]
Scripture quotations from THE MESSAGE. Copyright ©
by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
[2] http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/
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