Signed by the Spirit

1 John 3:16-24; Acts 4:5-12; John 10:11-18

An individual tells the story about how she acquired the artifact that is in front of her. It’s been in the family for several generations, was a gift of some prominent person, was bought for a pittance at a yard sale, or was rescued from the trash. The stories in themselves are always interesting. Then the appraiser asks, “Do you know what you have here?” “Not really.” Then appraiser goes on to talk about the item, either augmenting the provenance provided or questioning the handed-down details. You already know what I’m talking about. It’s “Antiques Road Show.”

What always fascinates me is the knowledge and skill of the appraisers in identifying seemingly unidentifiable pieces. “See this mark here? This is the hallmark of an artist from a particular place and time.” “This number indicates that it was made between 1931 and 1933.” And even if there isn’t a signature or hallmark, there may be a particular detail about the piece which is a dead giveaway to the knowing eye.

Some individual items may by double signed. This is particularly true of porcelain pieces. There may be the mark of the company that produced the piece as well as a mark of the person who painted it, for example.

We are artifacts. We bear the mark of our maker. The creation stories of Genesis chapters 1 and 2 tell us that. “God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them” (Genesis 1:27). Also, “the Lord God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life” (Genesis 2:7). Humanity didn’t just happen. We bear God’s creating imprint, God’s mold mark, God’s signature.

We are valued by God because God created us. All of the scriptures of the older testament witness to humanity’s ongoing, often fractious, relationship with God. God wrestles with our urge to ignore our origins. God struggles with our desire to obliterate God’s artist markings on us. We think that God’s signature on us devalues us in the larger social economy of the world around us. The reality is that trying to ignore or deny our creator and rub out God’s marks on us is a far greater devaluing of our worth.

Human worth was affirmed when God sent the Son, the bearer of God’s purest image, to be a flesh and blood human being like the rest of humanity, marked with God’s creativity. Everything that the Son, Jesus the Nazarene, did added value to humanity.

How can that be? Think about any stocks or mutual funds we have shares in. Most of them do produce income. For that we are thankful. But as the market goes up, the value of the shares increase. That’s unrealized gain until we cash in the investment. Or if the value goes down, that’s unrealized loss when we sell the investment.

You and I are shares in creation. Under God’s guidance, we increase in value. Under our own leadership we decrease in value. Given free rein, we could devalue ourselves to practically nothing, and our debt to God would exceed our asset value. In everyday terms, that’s bankruptcy.

Continuing the investment imagery, God sent the prophets to act as independent directors to guide us back to increasing value. Most of the time we paid no heed. Finally God sent the Son to take what we had so devalued and reset our value and bring us back to solvency and growing value.

That’s an imperfect image – all images that we try to concoct about God’s activity will never fully describe with complete accuracy God’s love, God’s care, God’s passion for the humanity which God created. Right there I am in danger of over-stating, exaggerating, inflating human value, which in investment terms would be equivalent to junk bonds. And that’s certainly not the case.

We have value which is determined by God. How do we know? John reminds us that “Jesus laid down his life for us.” Through Jesus, God has invested his entire Son so that we might come into the full value that God intends for us. Every investment is supposed to have a return. And the return on investment that God is looking for is that we love our brothers and sisters with the same kind of commitment that Jesus gave.

Jesus gave up his life – for us. That’s radical. Also not expected of every believer. If it were, there wouldn’t be any believers, would there? John goes on to put into perspective for average believers what laying down our lives might mean. “[I]f a person has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need and that person doesn’t care—how can the love of God remain in him? Little children, let’s not love with words or speech but with action and truth.”

These verses give an example of how believers can lay down their lives for others—to help those in need with their worldly goods. Seldom will believers be called upon to experience martyrdom for another, even though Christians are being martyred by ISIS and Boko Haram, and being imprisoned and threatened with death in other nations.

However, every day believers will face needy people whom they ought to be willing to help if they have the resources to do so; most people have more than they need. This parallels James’ teaching: Believers should be willing to help a brother or sister in need. Believers should respond to God’s love for them by loving others, putting others’ needs before their ownership of the world’s goods. (James 2:14-17)

John says that talk is cheap and mere word or speech are worthless unsubstantiated claims. Faith which is not accompanied by love for others is worthless. Anyone can claim to have faith, but if his or her lifestyle remains selfish and worldly, then what good are the words and speeches?

What that amounts to is a forgery. Back to the “Antiques Road Show” image. Every now and then the appraiser has the decidedly unpleasant task of telling an artifact’s owner that in spite of the great story they have told, the item is not what they thought it was. It might be a forgery or an imitation. It may have great sentimental value, but it has very little value compared to the value it would have if it were what it was supposed to be.

If we fail to love in daily activity, if we only talk the talk of love but don’t walk the walk, we are nothing more than imitation Christians. The problem with imitations is that they reflect badly on the items that are real thing.

We can’t be anything more than imitations if we try to do it on our own. The challenge then is not to do it on our own. John puts it very plainly:

“This is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love each other as he commanded us. The person who keeps his commandments remains in God and God remains in him; and this is how we know that he remains in us, because of the Spirit that he has given to us.”

We can only be real believers when the Spirit has signed us. We already have God’s image, but when we are countersigned by the Spirit our authenticity is assured. We are not imitations. We are the real deal.

We call this the mutual indwelling of Christ and the believer. Jesus’ last discourse in the Gospel of John (chapters 14-17) contains this major theme. “Mutual indwelling” means that Christians abide in him (that is, in God) and that God abides in them. God and the believers live in one another. The presence of the Spirit in each believer’s life makes this possible. The Christian lives in the Spirit, and the Spirit lives in the Christian. The best analogy is a human being’s relationship to air. People must live “in” the air so that the air can come into them.

The Spirit is Christ’s presence in us, enabling us to be the real individuals that God created us to be. The Spirit enables us to love as Christ loved, to eat with sinners, to touch the untouchables, to align ourselves with immigrants and those pushed to the margins of existence, to give voice to the speechless, to bring hope to the hopeless and love to the unloved.

The Spirit authenticates Christ’s love radiating from us in action. We are signed by the Spirit. Thanks be to God.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Talk of the Town

Luke 24:36-48, Acts 3:19-26; 1 John 3:1-7

Jesus was the talk of the town. You have to remember that all this happened before Facebook and Twitter, before Instagram and Pinterest, before Meerkat and Periscope. This was all word of mouth. All of Jerusalem was abuzz about the tragic death of Friday afternoon and the mystery of Sunday morning. And now rumors were recklessly ricocheting all over town. Jesus was alive, so some said.

Luke listed five different sources for these rumors:

• Several women and two men at the tomb (24:1-8)
• The women’s announcement to the eleven disciples (vv. 9-11)
• Peter’s verification of the empty tomb (v. 12)
• Two disciples on the road to Emmaus (vv. 13-32)
• A gathering in Jerusalem (vv. 33-49)

Who can be believed? Nothing seems to make sense. The facts seem contradict each other. Jesus was dead – they saw it, much to their personal agony – yet the tomb was empty. And a couple of folks said that they recognized him. And it wasn’t a doppelgänger, a look-alike, a Jesus impersonator. Once they recognized him, the two realized that he had spoken and taught just as Jesus had done. That couldn’t be duplicated.

The believers in Jerusalem were filled with confusion. Their lives had been thrown into chaos since late on Thursday. Now it was Sunday evening. Emotions were all over the map: anxiety, depression, distrust, doubt, fear, frustration, guilt, grief, mourning, restlessness, suspicion, terror. The one who had brought them all together was dead, and not just dead, but executed by the state on trumped up charges after the fashion of a kangaroo court. And to double the pain and grief, his body was missing. In the midst of the room overflowing with alarm, Jesus appeared.

Everything didn’t calm down. They all didn’t say, “Whew!” wipe their brows, tell Jesus that he really had them going, and ask how he did it. No, it didn’t happen that way. What happened was that their heightened emotions escalated beyond belief. Jesus’ typical greeting, “Peace be with you,” did everything but settle a peaceful calm on the gathering. The disciples were off the charts terrified. Jesus asked them, “Why are you freaking out? It’s me. See my hands and feet. Go ahead, touch me. I’m real.” And as if he had been away on a trip for a few days, he calmly said, “It’s dinnertime. Let’s eat.” That was certainly the Jesus that they had known. He had already broken bread with the Emmaus travelers. Eating was natural with him.

Yet, this was a different Jesus. After his fierce outburst in the Temple precincts about the abusive money trading and the sales of animals for the sacrifices, he had remained silent before both the religious and civil authorities. He always had been so sure of himself, yet raw, earthly, human power had squashed him like a bug. All the leaders – civil and religious – gloated over their success, their triumph. The mob had joined them in their jeers and mockery. They had relished condemning him as a traitor, as a false prophet, as a blasphemer, as an upstart. He offered no defense. And God didn’t either. There was no eleventh hour stay of execution, no last second divine rescue. Was it all a sham, a hoax?

While the leaders were all laughing at how easy it was to get rid of Jesus, God and Jesus were having the last laugh. They were in cahoots against the powers of the world. The leaders were all puffed up, proud of themselves for their great coup to take out Jesus before he could do any more damage to their cozy system. While they were puffing themselves up, God was letting the air out of their sails. It wasn’t about the leaders. It was about God. While the leaders were flaunting their conspiratorial success, God was working behind the scenes, rigging the trap door which would open up under the weight of their pompous pride.

At the beginning of the gospel, Luke tells Theophilus the he wrote the gospel so that his reader could have full confidence in the soundness of the instruction he had received (1:4). Everything that Luke has written in the previous twenty-three chapters has led to this point. God’s plans will not be circumvented. Creation will be redeemed. The apparent tragedy of Jesus’ death is transformed into a new thing. The power of the resurrection is the power to plant the seeds of transformation. The hope of the resurrection is grounded in the experience of the first believers. Closed minds can be opened. Life can be radically different.

Jesus’ ultimate message to those gathered around him is, “Peace be with you.” We are reminded of the words that John recorded. “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I give to you not as the world gives” (John 14:27). The Temple and occupying leaders thought they were bringing peace to the people by removing an upstart, a rabble-rouser, someone they perceived as a charlatan and a threat to order. But it was their order, the Temple’s order, Caesar’s order  that was threatened, not God’s. God’s order will prevail. Jesus gave the believers his peace, so that they could be proper witnesses to God’s work in the world.

Dorothy Soelle, born in Germany in 1929, grew up during the years of Hitler and the Nazi regime. Her writings are theological reflections on coming to grip with the horrors of the concentration camps and life after World War II, realizing that the heritage of Protestant liberalism had failed to stop the war. She challenged the human propensity for wanting to feel safe, to feel secure from any threat. That could only come from God. She noted in her essay “Peace, Not Security,” that “change happens at the level of action that contains risk.”(1) In another essay, Soelle wrote that “because you are strong [in Christ], you can put the neurotic need for security behind you. You do not need to defend your life like a lunatic. For the love of the poor, Jesus says, you can give your life away and spread it around.”(2)

The reason Jesus can be the talk of the town today is the he does the same for us as he did for the early followers. His sudden appearance brought change to their lives as they moved from fright and alarm, to joy mixed with disbelief and puzzlement, and finally, to open and understanding minds and hearts. That marked shift in the core of their beings led them forth to take great risks, witnessing to the risen Christ. Jesus did not bring them security by the world’s definition. They risked everything for him, because all the things from which they had used to seek security he had conquered, that all the things which used to threaten them were groundless. Not even death held any sway any more.

Security is a hard issue for twenty-first century people. You and I lived through the Cold War. We remember the Berlin Airlift, the fear of Russian missiles in Cuba, the domino threat of communism toppling nation after nation. We also remember the anxiety of bus boycotts, race riots, assassinations of key leaders, the fear-fueled breaking of laws by those pledged to uphold them. And our being is eroded by the fears of mass terrorism, economic downturns, uncertain health issues. It’s not just an American thing. The fears and threats are experienced by all human beings, regardless of political affiliation or national identity.

Today’s text challenges us: The more we attempt to make for peace ourselves, the less secure we are. The more we empty ourselves of the need to nail everything down around us, the more we can fill our lives with the peace that the risen Christ graciously offers us. Jesus commissions us to declare the presence and power of God in the midst of tragedy, despair, and death. They are not ultimate. Only God is. And God is about redeeming creation and us. That’s the really talk of the town. Amen.

(1) Dorothy Soelle, “Peace, Not Security,” Essential Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006), 80.
(2) “Jesus’ Death,” Ibid., 127.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Unlock the Doors

John 20:19-31; Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 1:1-2:2

Well, here we are once again. It’s the annual St. Thomas Bash. No, it’s not a party, at least not in the usual sense. It is like school kids making fun of the one student who is different. What were some of those things? Freckles, olive skin, kinky hair, albinism, stuttering, coke bottle glasses, crutches, wrong neighborhood. Whatever the difference was, we weren’t very nice, were we? We didn’t want to open the doors of our lives and let that person in, so we made fun of them in order to keep them out and maintain our identity.

That’s what we do with Thomas. We make fun of his demand to touch the risen Lord before he will believe. The disciples often acted like a bunch of school children, and this was just another one of those situations.

Thomas could have been jealous that everyone else got to see Jesus and he didn’t. Or maybe Thomas was an intuitive learner. Perhaps he liked to study things to discern the implications before making a decision or commitment. He’s called “the Twin.” Maybe he wasn’t really a twin but someone who looked at things from all angles, so that going into things, he was of two minds.

The other ten disciples and the women were all high on the news they were telling Thomas that Jesus had risen. Thomas was trying to process that information. Were all of them drunk on something? Were they hallucinating? Thomas was trying to assess the truth of what they were telling him. He wasn’t denying what they were telling him, he just wanted a reference point from which to judge their news.

In many ways, Thomas represents the majority of people with whom the former disciples, now apostles, come in contact with as the church blossomed and grew in the weeks and years following Jesus’ resurrection and the Day of Pentecost. In last analysis, Thomas was anything but a doubter. He went on to travel to India and evangelize the Jewish diaspora community there to form the Mar Thoma Church, one of the oldest Christian communities.

The discerning side of Thomas counter-balances the parts of the church which have always been drawn to powerful preachers and charismatic leaders. We see this reflected in Paul's letters – particularly the letters to Corinth, and Paul’s attempts to instruct them in the struggle they face in discerning which of the preachers and leaders available to them were really faithful to Christ's way of leading (1 Corinthians 1:10-13). Paul also noted that they had a tendency to focus on the spectacular gifts to the detriment to the fullness of the Spirit and of kingdom-living among them.

The community of faith always struggles to be faithful to the way of God and of Christ, and is always tempted to seek alternate, worldly ways of being successful, surviving, having an impact, accomplishing (rather than being) the mission. The account of Thomas helps to shape that on-going struggle with faithfulness.

This is not a new struggle. It is reflected in the Gospel stories of the disciples struggling to understand and accept the way of the cross (Mark 8:31-33, 9:30-32), asking Jesus to give them to seats of power (Mark 10:35-40), asking if now is the time for the kingdom to be inaugurated (Mark 13:3-4), etc.  A skilled propagandist would have left these stories out. However, they speak of the human condition. They were included because it was a way of instructing the early church in faithful discernment about the true and faithful way to go about their business to proclaiming the Good News of the Savior who triumphs over sin and death, rather than fighting against the powers and principalities of a world ruled by oppressive regimes, hate, distrust, greed, and fear.

Seventy years ago this past week the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was martyred for his activity against one such oppressive regime that, like every other oppressive regime, thought that there were no allegiances greater than that which it demanded. Yet the Barmen Declaration, of which Bonhoeffer was one of the principle authors, clearly states,

“Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God’s revelation.” (1)

Bonhoeffer is reported to have said that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. That seems odd, yet it makes sense. The oppressive regimes of the world are always certain. There can be no deviation from the established line of thought. Certainty creates dependency. As long as all the established structures and ideologies hold, everything is fine. Everyone can depend on that. Not only for stasis, but also for interpretation. Only what the head honcho says is true. Only the leader’s world view is valid. Followers are dependent on the leader for what they are allowed to think and do.

Faith on the other hand is trust. Faith was never meant to be an affirmation of some frail, static body of beliefs, cast in stone and incapable of surviving a collision with empirical evidence. Our faith is dynamic and vibrant. It is not an intellectual exercise.

Faith is a fire that burns within us, fueled by God’s grace. We must tend the fire or be left in the cold ashes of indifference. That means asking questions, posing conundrums, wrestling with inconsistencies and uncertainties.

Constant fidelity is the ideal of faith. But few of us achieve it. We are human. We get tired. We get distracted. We are sinners. We serve our pride and our appetites. We stray from our faith. We may even deny it. But faith is not our creation. We did not will it into being, anymore than we willed ourselves into being.(2)

Faith means unlocking the doors, not locking them and bolting them fast against the world. The church is full of locked doors that are images of certainty rather than faith. The church cringes behind these doors because it is afraid of the world. These doors make it difficult if not impossible for the outside world to come in and experience the grace of believing in Christ.

What are these doors? Some of these doors are ritual, archaic or arcane language, a limited number of acceptable musical genres and instrumentations, a hierarchy of leadership, a mentality of letting the professionals do all the work, a voyeuristic consumerism of being entertained, well-built walls of individual privatism, an arm’s length fear of getting involved so just throw money at issues and keep one’s hands clean.

Thomas was not afraid of getting his hands dirty or risking involvement or questioning certainty. Like the father of the sick son who said to Jesus, “I have faith; help my lack of faith” (Mark 9:24), Thomas wanted the free gift of faith deepened and strengthened.

So we come to the Lord's Table with nothing in order to receive everything. We come doubting, discerning, seeking, acknowledging the power of Christ and his Spirit in our own lives and in the life of the world around us. We come, to unlock and open the doors of fear, dependency, certainty so that we may experience a gracious God whose ideas about life in its fullness always far outstrip our ability to imagine or understand. We come, having faith, and needing help for our lack of faith. We come to touch eternity through the commonest of elements – bread and grape juice. However we are, we come as individuals to become community, to be community, to proclaim a risen Savior.

Alleluia! Thanks be to God.

(1) “Barmen Declaration,” Book of Confessions, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), (Louisville, KY: Office of the General Assembly, 2014).
(2) David Sellery, “Speaking to the Soul: Touching Faith,” http://episcopalcafe.com, April 7, 2015.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Where's Jesus?

Mark 16:1-8; Acts 10:34-43; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

You heard the words, the sentences of the Gospel. Jesus doesn’t appear. Mark’s gospel ends and the risen Jesus is not there. 

If you were reading along, you will have noticed that Mark’s gospel appears to continue. But everything after verse eight is bracketed off. There’s a footnote that says what follows doesn’t appear in the oldest manuscripts. The added endings are questionable, most likely added to sync Mark’s account with the other three gospels and Paul’s 1 Corinthians account.

So where is Jesus? Mark does not have any story about the risen Lord appearing to anybody at any time. All we have is an empty tomb, a young man with a message, and some frightened, tight-lipped women.

Where’s Jesus?

If you remember Star Trek, Captain Kirk was always entering data into the captain’s log, giving the star date and coordinates. That’s a chronological story. Mark is not a logbook of the three year ministry of Jesus. Neither he nor his gospel writing colleagues were doing that. Mark’s gospel is not a live-streaming, chronological story with an OMG, “Oh my God,” at the end. 

Mark compiled the gospel some thirty years after the resurrection as he reflected on all that he and others remembered. He told the story knowing the end and he told how the story got to the end. Our Good Friday liturgy this year looked at the Marcan account and showed that the crucifixion wasn’t a spur of the moment happening but the inevitable outcome of Jesus’ ministry from its start.

Mark wrote from the very beginning with the resurrection in mind: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, God’s Son....[who] came into Galilee announcing God’s good news, saying, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom!” (Mark 1:1, 15). The gospel starts with resurrection and ends with resurrection.

Dr. David Wiley suggests that while there are no resurrection appearances at the end of the gospel, Mark has not omitted them. He carefully included them, albeit disguised, at key points in the gospel. You and I do not easily see this because we read the gospel like a logbook. Wiley states, 

“It is a story that begins at the end, and ends at the beginning. It is an account from a master storyteller, who believes, in its entirety, in the resurrection of Jesus, and who uses his great writing skills to tell the story of Jesus’ resurrection in a unique, compelling, and extremely powerful way.”(1)

Mark’s key for the resurrection of Jesus is the message of the young man waiting in the open tomb: “Go tell his disciples, especially Peter, that he is going ahead of you into Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you” (16:7). Dr. Wiley suggests that Mark may not have been saying go to the literal region of Galilee where Jesus had his ministry but rather “go back to the Galilee where you first met Jesus — in the gospel that you are reading! Go back to the beginning of the gospel. Read it again. There you will see him! There you will see the risen Christ!”(2)

Physically, the region of Galilee was at the edge of things. It was at the intersection of the acceptable Jewish world and the unacceptable Gentile world. The city of Capernaum, where Jesus lived, was more worldly and Greek than Jewish, set apart from the institutional and ideological religious center of Jerusalem. Galilee represented the doorway to the nations. 

Mark reports Jesus saying in chapter 13's “Little Apocalypse,” “First, the good news must be proclaimed to all the nations” (13:10). Jesus’ ministry didn’t start at the atrophied heart of the faith, but at the edge, in Galilee (1:14). From the edge of old faith practices the gospel must go out before it can return.

So, where is the risen Jesus?

Wiley suggests that Mark prefigures the resurrection morning with how he describes Jesus’ setting off from Capernaum to spread his ministry:

“Early in the morning, well before sunrise, Jesus rose and went to a deserted place where he could be alone in prayer. Simon and those with him tracked him down. When they found him, they told him, ‘Everyone’s looking for you!’ ” (1:35-37)

The ministry starts “early in the morning, well before sunrise,” on the day after the Sabbath. The resurrection story begins, “When the Sabbath was over,...very early on the first day of the week.” Further Mark, in reporting in the ministry start that “Jesus rose,” uses the same verb as Jesus would use in his three announcements about his coming death and resurrection. At dawn Jesus was missing, just as he was in Easter and Simon and others looked for him on both occasions. Ministry began in Galilee. It begins again in Galilee after the resurrection. That’s what Jesus came to do.(3)

Where’s the risen Jesus?

Mark records a number of miracle stories. All but three have to do with healing diseases of body or spirit in others. Dr. Wiley claims that the three non-healing miracles are Mark’s cleverly disguised accounts of Jesus’ resurrection appearances.

Those three miracle stories are Jesus’ stilling the storm (Mark 4:35-41), his walking on the water (Mark 6:47-52), and the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-8). Each of these stories tells something about Jesus.

Before stilling the storm, Jesus had spent the entire day teaching about the Kingdom of God. Then at nightfall he had the disciples set sail for “the other side of the lake” (4:35). Nightfall was when Jesus was buried. The fierceness of the storm represents the chaos that erupts as the world rejects God’s kingdom in its midst – the crucifixion. While the sea was crashing in Jesus slept, just as he slept in death as the world reeled from his presence. In awful fear the disciples “woke” Jesus, which is the same word the young man in the tomb uses when he says, “He has been raised” (16:6). Jesus asked the disciples, “Why are you frightened?” and the young man soothes, “Do not be afraid.” “Overcome with awe, [the disciples] said to each other, ‘Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him?” (4:41). Mark knows. He is the risen Lord.

Mark’s second hidden resurrection appearance is Jesus’ walking on the water. This also happened after a full day of teaching and the feeding of the 5,000. Again it is nightfall. Jesus sends the disciples away across the lake while he goes into seclusion to pray. As the disciples struggled against an adverse wind – just as the Kingdom struggles against an adverse world – Jesus comes to them. They perceive him as dead – a ghost – and they scream. Jesus calms them and gets in the boat. The disciples are “so baffled they are beside themselves” because they hadn’t understood about the loaves. The progression mirrors the last hours with Jesus: the supper in the upper room, the praying in the garden, the soothing, “Don’t be afraid.” The words of resurrection announcement.

Mark’s third hidden resurrection appearance is Jesus’ transfiguration. It follows on the heals of Peter’s bravado in saying that Jesus was “the Christ” (8:29), just as the resurrection follows closely on Peter’s denial of Jesus. Again, the disciples who saw Jesus transfigured were confused about its meaning. They were never confused about the healing miracles, only the miracles that revealed Christ’s glory (resurrection glory). 

All this seems speculative. And we don’t usually think of Mark doing theology at the same level as John. Yet it gets us thinking. Resurrection happens. And not just at the end of the story. Whether the disciples realized it or not, they experienced resurrection before it happened. Which means that we also experience resurrection in ways that disguise tombs and calming, matter-of-fact announcing messengers. Resurrection may be the good news of Easter, but it is also the good news of otherwise ordinary days.

The point of resurrection is not for Jesus to ascend to the throne in Jerusalem, but to go back to Galilee – back to the beginning, back home, back to the fringe, back to the portal into the rest of the world, and back the place of daily, ordinary life. The point of the resurrection is that with the risen Jesus we go back to Galilee with new (or at least newly affirmed and witnessed) power and authority to cast out a whole host of demonic ideas, heal the sick in faith and spirit, and create new communities of life for those pushed to the margins beyond community. All that is the mission of the church.

Easter is not a day that sends us into heavenly rapture and a longing for and assurance of release at the end of life from the limitations of this world. Easter is a day – more than any other day – that sends us back into the world, back to Earth, back to this life, back to the people and life of the world with an even more powerful and authoritative message of the redemption of all the world.

How will each one of us live the resurrection for the world to see? How will we put resurrection into the ordinary parts of our lives that interact with people for whom resurrection is not yet a reality?

Where’s Jesus? Just look around you at the faces of those who share his resurrection with you. Jesus is here. We are the resurrection. 

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

(1) David E. Wiley III, Why Mark? The Politics of Resurrection in the First Gospel (Lima, Ohio: C.S.S. Publishing, 2015), p. 7.

(2) Ibid., p. 41.

(3) ibid., p. 43.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 

Copyright 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.