The building we call church is empty because the church are living the incarnation in the world. The building we call church is empty because the church are living the resurrection in the world. 
The cross you see is empty because Jesus was the incarnation in the world. The cross you see is empty because Jesus is bringing the resurrection into the world. Today and every day.
Thine be the glory, risen conquering Son.
Endless is the victory, thou o’er death has won.
Paul says the cross of Christ is a stumbling block. He is right. I’ll tell you why.
Because the cross is so… historical. I have no sympathy for people who see it as metaphorical. Clearly the New Testament writers and the early church took it as fact. To write it off as metaphor would be convenient. There’s something attractive about an esoteric mystery religion surrounding a tragic, self-sacrificing mystical prophet. But those nails put a stop to that. Nails bashed into history. History with a face and a date. And a claim to be alive.
But being historical, it’s embarrassingly anomalous. What, he… came back to life? You’re telling me that sounds normal? Oh, ok.
So what does it mean? This is where it does get mysterious. Jesus was god and man – both. He died. He was raised. By… God. Who had died. Well, sort of… And through this he forgives sins. Because he’s the Passover lamb. He’s a Jewish sacrifice. And the Jewish high priest. He’s what?
The resurrection is really hard. It’s a stumbling block to intellect, to rationality, to wanting to appear like you’ve still got your head screwed on. The cross and the resurrection together make earthy and real what could otherwise be – and sadly, often is – a floaty-mystery religion.
The resurrection is like a splinter in your palm that keeps you uncomfortable. Like a stone in your shoe as you walk down the catwalk of sanity. The resurrection provokes and irritates.
The gloom of Good Friday and Easter Saturday I can understand. We can all identify with pain, loss and hopelessness. But the celebration of Easter Sunday? The hope of Resurrection Day? Well, hopelessness can be real forever, lived in forever, without much effort. But hope? Hope is intentional. Hope always risks being dashed. Living with hope – just hope – is exhausting, as a deliberate , intentional and daily choice in a world of crescendoing hopelessness.
In the Hunger Games, President Snow, in charge of subjugating and oppressing his people, says he cannot let his people have hope:
President Snow: Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, alot is dangerous. This fact is fine, as long as it’s contained.
Seneca Crane: So…
President Snow: So, contain it.
The reason he doesn’t want the people to have hope is because hope is dangerous. Hope drives out fear. And he wants people to be afraid. God doesn’t want us to be afraid. God’s hope, rooted in God’s love, drives out fear.
And we’re back to the resurrection. Hope was contained for 2 days. Hope was dashed for what seemed like it would be a lifetime. Fear was most definitely in control. And then…
Still a stumbling block. Sometimes I struggle to believe it. But it has not lost its power. Because if it really is true… it changes everything.
The resurrection – counter-cultural, anti-rational, rooted in history and bursting with hope. If only we could let him breathe outside the tomb.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It makes things nobody can foresee seem blindingly obvious. Like watching a repeat of a penalty shoot-out, it’s obvious which way the keeper should dive when you’ve seen the end.
I’ve been trying to get into the minds of Jesus’ disciples as we’ve been reading through the final days, and trying to imagine what they were feeling without the advantage of hindsight. They knew – knew! – the Messiah couldn’t die because God wouldn’t let that happen, and certainly not like a common criminal. So they would have always thought Jesus had a plan, another plan, a better plan. As the hours passed from the final supper to the garden and the arrest and their hopes for this plan b began to fail… what was going through their minds?
And then I was reading a book this afternoon and there was a chapter which brought to mind something of the conversations the disciples would have been having after Jesus resurrection. You know, that really awkward bit after the Mary’s have said they’ve seen Jesus, and then Peter says the same… but they can’t make the pieces fit together. Would you?! I imagine these conversations where they argue – ARGUE!! – using words the NIV certainly wouldn’t translate.
I was reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I know, I’m a few years late in discovering it’s actually a really good story! In chapter 22, entitled The Deathly Hallows, Harry is beginning to piece together the story; he has discovered new information and that enables him to begin reinterpreting what he already knew. Stories from the past, prophecies they never knew existed because you wouldn’t until you have hindsight.
Like the disciples, poring through the Scriptures (our Old Testament) and seeing references to the details of Jesus’ life that they couldn’t have known before. Being brave enough to think their thoughts out loud, thoughts they knew sounded ridiculous and like they were trying to force Jesus into a story… what if… what if…
What if Jesus is the Messiah, what if when he talked about being raised in 3 days he actually meant it… what it the temple he talked about was his body… what if he has brought the resurrection forward to now… what if he is the one the prophets talked about… what if he is the suffering servant from Isaiah… maybe this is the new covenant from Jeremiah…
Thomas, what do you think?
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.Pictures
When Harry began to piece the story together he was met with scepticism, but he had to stick it out. Trust. It seemed unbelievable. When the disciples began to piece the story together they were met with scepticism, but they had to stick it out. Trust. It seems unbelievable. When we begin to piece the story together… it must seem unbelievable.
To me, it does. If it ever isn’t, we’re missing something. But hindsight shows us that Jesus did have a plan, that there is an ending. Sometimes you have to die to get there.
But thankfully it’s Jesus, not a stone, that brings resurrection. Hallowed be your death. And your life.
In the first Provocative Resurrection post, I looked at how the resurrection happened, is real; the resurrection cannot just be a metaphor for ‘things working out’, but has to be an actual, real thing. And how Jesus’ first apprentices didn’t get it, and how we really can’t blame them. Who would get it?
So if we believe that Jesus knew he was going to be very much dead and then very much alive, what does that mean? Was it just a super-Lazarus-miracle-resuscitation trick, or something more?
Something more, something much more. Because Jesus wasn’t resuscitated, he was resurrected; he wasn’t just raised to life, but raised to new life. Because this Jesus who was very dead and then very alive wasn’t a normal human, but was God. So in a way, God was alive. Then God was dead. Then God was alive.
During Comic Relief this year there was an amazing telly programme called Comic Relief: Famous, Rich and in the Slums. Basically some people off the telly lived for a few days in the Kibera slum in Kenya, one of the worst places to live that humans have created and made their kind live in. This programme showed us what it is like to intentionally live somewhere you do not need to. For a few days. Jesus’ life shows us that it is in God’s character to do the same. Forever. The incarnation is what we call that, that God came to live among us. The resurrection takes the incarnation one step further.
Like the celebrities, God wanted to change the environment, to change the way people lived. Unlike Lenny Henry, who was able to make a huge difference to one family at little real personal cost, God took that filth and rubbish upon himself, at great personal cost; and yet it did not overcome him, he overcame it. He made possible real change. The provocative resurrection shows us that God steps into the crap we make ourselves live in and is able to transform it.
But isn’t that just a metaphor, a spiritualisation? Does the resurrection mean anything real for people in suffering? Yes. Because it shows us that this world matters. That we do not seek to avoid this world and its pains in order to escape to the next. The resurrection happened here, the new life happened here. Here matters. Matter matters.
But. People suffer. We suffer. We think of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. And countless other things. Can anything real and meaningful be said of God in the midst of that sort of disaster. Nick Baines wrote this:
Christian hope is not derived from a fantasy of personal happiness or security, but rooted in the person of a God who doesn’t spare himself and drives the people who bear his name (and have been grasped by him) away from their own securities and into places of vulnerability. We are not called into the light, but to shed light in the dark places: the distinction matters.
The question of suffering is a big one. But as Nick later writes, we have no right to be spared cancer or hurricane. In our culture we do all we can to eradicate pain and suffering, desperate to control our lives and all influences on them; if we do not choose it, we think it is bad. If things go wrong, God must be absent.
God is not absent. Christians are not called to retreat from pain. God has not given up on this world. The cross is placed right in the middle of the pain of the world, geographically and spiritually. The resurrection challenges and provokes us not to spiritualise our faith, but to earth it; not to make it all about ‘up there’ and avoid the ‘down here’. God came here, chose here, lived here, died here and rose again here.
We must be a part of bringing that resurrection life to people here, both spiritually as people come to know the resurrected Jesus for themselves, and practically in an Isaiah 58 kind of way, as we serve those in the world who live in places desperate for light, any light.
The resurrection is true. The resurrection speaks hope into a world that often seems hopeless. And whilst there is no easy answer to the question of suffering, the question is a lot different when asked to the God of incarnation and resurrection.
Our faith is not a philosophy or a set of ideas, it is not a path of spirituality or a rule of life. It is not something thought up by someone on a rainy Tuesday. It is based on a historical event, something called the ‘scandal of particularity’; at a particular time and place something happened that defines everything. That something is resurrection.
We don’t say Christ has died, Christ was buried, Christ has since disappeared. We don’t say Christ has died, Christ metaphorically rose and Christ occasionally appears in our imaginations. No, we say Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Is, is IS! Christ rose and is still risen, resurrected with a capital R.
So what does that mean? Here’s man of the moment Rob Bell with his take on it:
Jesus was provocative in his life, and provocative in his death. A good Jewish leader with claims to be the Messiah does not overturn tables and drive out sacrificial animals from the Temple. In our Lent Course last night I overturned some chairs as an example, even in front of a Church Warden. That is the point – he did it in front of people who would care.
A good Jewish leader with claims to be the Messiah does not talk of the destruction of the Temple, not least followed by a claim to rebuild it in 3 days. The churchwardens, treasurers and pastors all respond with incredulity – it has taken us 46 years to build this!! Do you know how many jumble sales, barn dances and sponsored organ sacrifices we have had to raise this money?! The Temple is where God dwells, and Jesus speaks of its destruction… and its being raised.
No-one understood.
John 2.22 has this wonderful line in which we are told the disciples understood what Jesus meant only after he was raised from the dead. When he is more explicit in Mark 9.32 about being killed and being raised after 3 days, the disciples still do not understand. And are afraid to ask. And when he is raised, Luke tells us that the women ran from the tomb to tell the disciples, who didn’t believe them because their words seemed like nonsense, an idle tale, made-up wish-fulfilment.
In our Lent Course called The Provocative Resurrection we will be exploring the resurrection in more detail; what it meant for Jesus life before and after the event; what it means for us, in our life before and after our own resurrection. Because we do not believe Jesus is and was and will be the only one to experience resurrection. Every funeral I pray about our ‘sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life’; not our sure and certain hope of drifting vaguely on a cloud somewhere having tea with our granny.
Jesus was provocative. His life was provocative, and his death was provocative. But it does not end there. His resurrection was provocative, daring death and all the powers of darkness to have a go and declaring the gates of hell will not prevail against… us. Which doesn’t mean they bang on our gates; it means we bang on theirs.
Let’s go provoke.
I lay there in the dark, and I closed my eyes,
You saved me the day you came alive.
I was sad that that Delirious? didn’t make it to Easter no.1 this year, though 4th was an excellent showing, despite my reservations about the campaign. But I wish it was this song we were all downloading. This is my Easter song. This is my resurrection song. This is my faith song. This is my prayer. It is raw, it is loud, it is deep, is cries out from the deepest places, it is a psalm, and it speaks to all who have known dark places.
Is it about Jesus? Is it about Peter? Mary? Is it about us? Is it about the darkness and death of Easter Saturday and the crazy unexpected journey to the life of Easter Sunday? Is it a cry of hope or a cry of pain, is it a memory of Jesus alive or a hope that he will be? Is it ‘Christian’? Who knows and who cares.
There is no word in the Hebrew Scriptures for religion.
There is no word in the Hebrew Scriptures for spiritual.
There is only life, under God.
What I do know is that it is incarnate within the music industry and not invading it.
I know it is by the Foo Fighters.
It is Come Alive.
Listen, feel it, pray it.
Then, watch this – Rob Bell on the resurrection, and what it actually means that Jesus came alive. Watch here via vimeo or below on You Tube:
………………………………………
There is the exciting, the dramatic, the wonderful. There is the tragic, the desperate, the dangerous. Then there is the in-between. The mundane. The ordinary. Which is probably what happens to most of us, most of the time. Maybe it is what we do with the mundane that defines how we lives our lives. One thing we can do with the mundane, the imperfect, the ordinary, is to pretend it is something more. Because after all, the mundane is a bit… mundane.
Spot the hype?
The X Factor is a great example. It turns a pretty mundane singing contest into something dramatic, over-powering, so stuffed full of hype and bright lights, loud music, choreographed cheering, enthusiastic voice-overs and scripted fall-outs between the judges that it appears to be exciting – and, if you like that sort of thing, actually becomes exciting. Is exciting.
Appearing on the X Factor and performing his new single “Bodies” was Robbie Williams. I like Robbie – he is on my list of interesting people to have dinner with. The over-hyped introduction seemed pointless because he needs no hype. He is cheeky, vulnerable and likeable, a born performer, and at his best definitely has the X factor so many crave.
So what is his new single about then? Called “Bodies”, the memorable riff is the unexpected variations of questioning whether Jesus really died for me. The song itself at first seems to be a version of the X Factor skill, making the mundane seem fantastic; in Robbie’s case, make something that is meaningless seem to be profound. However, looking at it further, there is actually something deep there, something of meaning that isn’t actually unexpected, coming as it does from the tortured soul of Robbie.
The X factor
The bridge contains the key: “All we’ve ever wanted/Is to look good naked/Hope that someone can take it/God save me rejection/From my reflection/I want perfection.” The song journals his quest for purity, for peace, for a return to a “garden of Eden” or Buddhist-enlightenment-lite idealism where everything is good.
In the first verse he has seen the good things, and they have been taken away. In the second verse he is enjoying “living like a deity”, and he is not sure if it is anything to do with Jesus or not. The chorus refers to the Bodhi tree, sacred in Buddhism as the tree of enlightenment that the Buddha sat under. Then comes the bridge, about wanting to look good naked. I think Robbie has always wanted to be accepted for who he is; he has that need we all have for unconditional acceptance. He wants perfection; he wants his reflection to be perfect. Not ordinary. Not mundane. But perfect. His reference to Jesus dying for him is about that – he doesn’t feel healed, perfect, restored, so what was Jesus’ death all about?
compost of transforming life
Did Jesus die for him? I would say: of course he did. He would love to take and transform Robbie’s life – and ours – turning the mundane and ordinary, the painful and the tragic into something that is good, perfect – in religious language, sanctified. That does indeed come through Jesus death, and his resurrection. Not that we live like a deity; not that we reach some sort of divine enlightenment under a Bodhi tree; not that we become a part of God. But that we have the Spirit of God living in us, who transforms our lives like the gardeners compost, turning the dead and decaying into fresh, new life. Not raptured, as he sings in verse three, but transformed. That happens only as we also sacrifice, as we take up our cross and follow Jesus. In the Bible, it is called dying to self. It cannot come simply by wishing it to be true, but by earthy, sacrificial living. Then we can show off our beautiful new transformed and renewed bodies. In the power of the Spirit, that is true life.
Let’s hope this goes to number one – profound questions like these, mysterious as they are, should feature more often in our mundane and ordinary music charts.
blame the goat
I am always at it. Blame the goat! You know, that thing we do when we make judgements about people, and always say ‘them’ – that imaginary ‘they’, the third person I remember learning in French that always seemed to be entirely irregular. What third person? Well, there’s you, there’s me and there’s ‘them’, ‘the other’. The goat. And they are always to blame.
When society appears to be falling apart (has it ever not seemed like that?! ask an older person about the war…), we are so quick to blame ‘them’. Whether it is politicians, single-parents, terrorists, religious fundamentalists, Chelsea fans… the dodgy family a few doors down, the farmers, foreigners…Sometimes we can all get a bit Daily Mail and point the finger of blame. Goats, the lot of ‘em.
We like having someone to blame. It makes us feel secure. The problem is labelled and dealt with. Maybe not solved, but there is a door to lay blame at. And it’s not mine. So we can make scapegoats of social workers if there is an abuse going on that wasn’t acted on as we would like, even if life and family intervention is a whole lot more complicated than that allows for; we can blame ‘Muslim terrorists’ for wanting to destroy our way of life, especially if that means we don’t have to hold a mirror to ourselves and ask why. We can pin the whole blame for Lockerbie on one man, who is now dying of cancer, as if he alone was responsible; we can blame ‘the bankers’ whilst forgetting perhaps it was us who enjoyed the easy credit as much as they allowed it.
The thing is though, with the Jewish-Christian lens we look through, it is much harder for us to point at others and say ‘them’. Instead, we point at ourselves and say ‘we’. Someone once (annoyingly, to be honest) said that when you point one finger at someone, three fingers point back at you. Probably annoying cos I was the one pointing. Anyway… If I am a part of society, and society is producing terrorists, then I am partly to blame. If I am a part of society, and society is producing overweight, under-active teenagers having too much sex (is than an oxymoron?), then I am partly to blame. If I am a part of society and society is producing paedophiles and perpetrators of abuse, then I am partly to blame.
Ouch.
But… but… it’s not me, I didn’t do it, I am a good person, how can it be me? How, indeed. Well, we each may not feel we contribute to things we disapprove of, but we are a part of it, simply by being there. To say otherwise would be to be a grain of sand on the beach and deny you were part of the beach, or a raindrop splashing in a puddle and claiming to be from a different storm. The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, whether a literal account of real people or a allegory laden with meaning, points us to this. As humans, we are together, one – we all looked longingly at the tree, we all offered the fruit, we all ate. So there is no them, only us.
Does that make us feel hopeless, or hopeful? Hopeful (I hope) because God does not cruise earth searching for individuals to rescue like some kind of cosmic kerb-crawler, but he drives a huge ocean liner (mixed metaphor!) so full of space and grace and says to us all, as you all share the guilt so you can also all share the grace, you can all be redeemed, you can all come aboard. This is wonderful stuff! Though to many will seem unnecessary, because still theyf blaming other people and feeling better about ourselves. we (oops) will cling to the life-raft o
But we no longer need the scapegoat, which comes from Leviticus 16, when an actual goat took on the sins of the community and was sent to its death. And we no longer need to shoulder them ourselves either. Because God as Jesus came to take that burden from us, to painfully and wholly free us from the guilt our human nature ties us to. But, interestingly and so importantly, not then to remove us from the society of which we are a guilty-but-free part, but sends us back there to disrupt and irritate the guilt, to be light in the dark, flowers in the desert, love in the blame, a peaceful voice amidst the finger-pointing in anger.To be part of the story of the redeeming of creation that his resurrection began.
So the challenge to them us is to live as us, not us and them, however painful and illogical it seems. We are them. They are us. Live deeply and be free. Most of all, free the goat.
(p.s. be part of freeing the goat without needing to keep checking my blog, by clicking on the new ‘subscribe via email’ link on the right- it will let you know when there’s a new post to read so you don’t have to keep checking)
The Beatitude
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