Life in Danger
It
seems to me that this week we begin our journey into danger – our journey to
the cross. As we begin this journey I wonder what we/I think this is all about?
What does it mean for Jesus to die for my/our sins?
Too
often this gets reduced to “so that I/we can get into heaven”. But is that
really all this is about?
N.T.
Wright in “The Day the Revolution Began” suggests that this understanding of the
cross is a pagan understanding that has nothing to do with the Biblical
understanding. Jesus, the gospel writers and Paul, he says, were all about the
renewal of the earth and renewal of the people of God as image bearers.
In
this Sundays gospel reading (John 11:1-45) Jesus says that he is the
resurrection and the life. Too often we drop “life” out of this and just read “resurrection”
as refereeing to something happening later after we die. But this is all about
now. Mary, Martha and Lazarus are invited to live life now in God’s image. And
so are we.
Howard
Wallace offers us these thoughts.
“Today’s gospel reading, the
story of the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-45), has obvious and clear parallels
to the Ezekiel passage. …. Together, they challenge our thinking about the full
significance of resurrection in Jesus Christ. Resurrection is not simply a
matter of being raised from the dead, and in Lazarus’ case it is a unique case
for presumably Lazarus would have died again at some later time. Resurrection
is not simply concerned with the ‘after life’ but with the raising of broken
spirits, of bodies as good as dead, of hearts that lack strength and courage,
of communities that are fractured, of relationships that have waned or become
fractious, of peoples who have lost hope etc. While Ezekiel’s vision may not
have direct connection to resurrection in the way we might normally see it, it
does remind us that the resurrection that is in Jesus Christ and the risen life
in him reaches to this side of the grave too giving new life and hope where
there has been only ‘dry bones’ in the past.”[1]
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