The power of the resurrection

 

Sunday 18^th 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.