Sunday
18th April – Easter 3
Acts 3:
12-19. In this
speech given to the witnesses to the healing of a lame man, Peter attributes
the healing to the name of Jesus whom he calls “the author of Life” and places
Jesus firmly within the Jewish revelation. Jesus is the glorious servant of the
God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is the author of life alone that has the
power and authority to give, sustain and restore fullness of life.
1 John 3:
1-7. John here
appears to contradict himself with purporting to uphold the sinlessness of
believers when he had already said in chapter 1 verse 8. “Those who say they
have no sin deceive themselves”. You could say that what we have is the reality
of the situation clashing headlong with the aspiration that we are all
automatically perfected. But then of course, Paul manages to meld those two
contradictory thoughts together by saying that while we all sin, our
righteousness is “reckoned to us” by God – declared righteous even when we are
not as Paul says in Romans 4.
Luke
24:36-48. Luke is
not interested in Paul’s assertions of “spiritual bodies” (1 Corinthians 15:4)
and asserts in accordance with classic Jewish thought that the resurrection is
very physical. Our whole created selves are raised in a very physical new
earth. That juxtaposition only serves to deepen the mystery of the
resurrection. The risen Jesus of course subsequently does vanish. Trust that
the author of life cannot die, and in whatever form we are raised – we are
risen indeed.
The resurrection. Human language struggles to describe it and human thought to grasp it.
It is not
simply a physical event, as if Jesus came back to life to live until he died a
natural death.
Nor is it a
simply a spiritual or psychological event, as a ghost or simply alive in his
disciple’s memories. It is of a completely new and different order of things
The effect
of which is to really know that after death our loved ones are alive in some
new order of being. For what happened to Jesus is what happens to us all.
Our own
human experiences of death are no less strange or indescribable than that of
Jesus’ disciples.
I remember after
Alexandra, my first wife died, I was woken by the sound of Alex calling my name
– I heard her distinctly - from the next room and I got up and answered the
call.
Now Louise
will doubtless tell you, as a doctor, that such occurrences are surprisingly
commonplace, but that doesn’t diminish the power of the event. It is how that
event touches you.
I remember
also being fixated with the sight of a Heron on the river Tees that ran by the
vicarage as being somehow representative of her and being set free. That too
was quite a powerful experience. People who have lost loved ones will re-count
their own stories of otherwise odd, seemingly silly events that they dare not
tell many people in case they get laughed at. The power lies in the meaning you
attach to these things – it is as if, the person, or God himself, is trying to
contact you, to comfort you, conveying the message that the person is alive but
unseen.
Another unexpected
gift of the death of a loved one is a much greater compassion, a knowledge that
you didn’t have before. You have touched something fundamental about the
universe and out of that experience can come a kind of personal resurrection –
a re-birth of your own soul. True
resurrection is not simply what happens when you die, it is the fundamental
nature of life itself.
Of course I
did many funerals before Alex died and I’m sure I was competent but afterwards
there was a different quality to those encounters. I could really speak to
people about death because I could speak out of personal knowledge and there is
no substitute for that..
The power of
the resurrection is an energy, like wind blowing, or water running or light
shining that can transform the consciousness of people.
It is the
power of transforming love, lifting up, raising up, making things new and this
power the disciples felt in the here and now. And we can too.
If someone
asks, did the resurrection really happen on the third day?
We answer
yes.
First the
Spirit of God raised Jesus and communicated that fact to the disciples.
Then, the
new reality dawns and a tremendous surge of spiritual transformative energy is
released into the world and the Disciples were born again with the energy of
Jesus flowing through them.
The truth of
the resurrection is lived by believers transformed by the power of Christ’s
victory over death.
There is
nothing to be gained by arguing over how the gospels don’t agree with each
other or Paul may contradict Luke or vice versa.
Something
wonderful happened that was, as we see almost indescribable. Our loved ones are
alive. We will meet again and until that time we live in the power of the
resurrection now.
No comments:
Post a Comment