If we look at four of the other passages on the list for today, we find four different things we could do, 4 different ways to respond to resurrection.
First, we look to Paul, because he gives us our earliest response. Paul went from one who arrested Christians, to one who became probably the most important Christian missionary. It changed who he was, what he did, how he lived. He experienced a total transformation! That’s one response to resurrection.
Second, we look at the Gospel of Mark. It ends with the women finding an angel in the tomb and no Jesus. The angel told the women to go and tell the disciples that Jesus would meet them in Galilee. But they ran in terror and said nothing. That may surprise us, but it fits with the rest of the people around Jesus who, in Mark, fail miserably. But then, I have a guess as to why it was written that way. I think the author wanted the people who would read the gospel to be comforted.
In the 70s, around the time Mark was written, Jerusalem was under siege. Ultimately, Rome took the city, slaughtered people and destroyed the Temple. When times are that hard, people are not trying to be good disciples; they’re just trying to survive! So reading about the failures of the disciples in the 30s might have been comforting to the people living in the 70s. It’s ok to fail, because resurrection doesn’t depend on you. Resurrection doesn’t fail when we fail. That’s another response to resurrection.
Third, we look to the book of Acts. By the time Acts is written, the church has developed more structure. They’re making rules. They’re making decision about what the church should believe. They’re also saying why they have the right to make these decisions. In Acts 10, we read,
Acts 10:39-42 reads: We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.
The authors of Acts are saying, “We are the right leaders because the baton has been passed to us.”
Others, outside of the church structure, were saying other things about Jesus and resurrection. There are other writings that were not included in the bible that talk about Jesus and God in different ways; these were important writings to many people. But, as time went on, those folks lost influence, weren’t as organized, and gradually disappeared from the institutional church. So the church’s way of responding to resurrection was to protect it, to make it solid, to make it permanent by putting it into a church structure and a belief structure. That’s another response to resurrection.
Fourth, we look at the Gospel of John. It begins with the words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” Jesus was that word. In John, Jesus’ birth is not at Bethlehem, but at the beginning of time itself. Jesus is cosmic. But he is also intimately connected to us.
After his death, Mary Magdalene stands outside the tomb, crying because she thinks someone has taken his body. Jesus stands next to her and simply says her name, “Mary.” She cries out, “Teacher!” Then he tells her not to hold on to him. She must have turned, and in her joy, has grabbed onto him somehow. If she was crying before, what must she be doing now? What must she be feeling now? This is an intimate, emotional scene. And then Mary goes to the disciples and announces, “I have seen the Lord!” I imagine that Mary Magdalene brings all her humanity, all her experiences, all her emotions to bear when she is found by the cosmic, risen Jesus. She’s totally human. That’s another response to resurrection.
There are lots of ways to respond to resurrection.
- We can let ourselves be utterly changed, like Paul.
- We can know that resurrection does not fail when we fail, like the people in Mark.
- We can work to protect resurrection, to keep it safe and the same, like the people in Acts.
- Or we can imagine that the one that we love is mysteriously standing in front of us again, if only for a moment, and alive – and we can feel it.
Each of us will find our own way to respond to resurrection. It may even be different on different days or at different times in our lives. That’s ok. But somehow, let resurrection find you. Let it change your life. And then help it to change the world.
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