Monday, April 01, 2013

Resurrection 101 - It is Written...





What a roller-coaster those last few days must have been for the disciples. 

They watched Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, heal a blind man’s eyes and a rich man’s heart; they saw Mary pour a fortune’s worth of perfume over Jesus, they danced and skipped around the donkey-riding Jesus during the spontaneous parade as He entered Jerusalem.  They were flabbergasted when He created an uproar in the Temple market and mystified over the withered fig tree. 

Then, there was the Passover meal, difficult to understand words and even more difficult to understand actions. Like Jesus, Master, Lord washing their stinky feet!  And after that everything becomes a blur, a tailspin of happenings - Judas’ kiss that led to Jesus’ arrest, the torture, the betrayals, the cross, the burial… the grief, and now, the empty tomb!  

Can you imagine living through all these moment by moment?!!!

 I get tired just thinking about it.

The disciples, of course, didn’t have the slightest idea how eternally significant the wild ride they experienced over the past couple of weeks was. At the time, it was just a bunch of disjointed pieces of a very confusing puzzle. Often, I feel exactly the same way about my own life! Something happens, and it's already over before I can ask,

What was that all about?!!!

But, when the resurrected Christ comes to them, He takes them back to something that is old and familiar. Something that has been with them all along, what disciples knew and heard since childhood… he takes them back to the Holy Scriptures, and He makes the old and familiar words fresh and bursting with new life and meaning. He takes them back to what was written and explains the significance of the words penned long ago by Moses and Isaiah, by Zechariah and David and connects the dots for them then and there. 

Connects the dots for us, here and now.

It is written… and now it is fulfilled.

There is something incredibly humble and powerful when the eternal, living, breathing, creative Word of God who spoke the worlds into existence and who has just defeated Satan chooses to remind His friends, to re-utter and reaffirm, expound and explain what was written long ago.

And so, from the dusty old pages of an ancient book, the written Word of God lives and breathes again…

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