Tag: resurrection

John 20:1-18 – Resurrection of the Lord

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

Empty tomb

 

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.  So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.  Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.  He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in.  Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb.  He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head.  The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen.  Finally, the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside.  He saw and believed.  (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying.  As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”  At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

“Woman,” he said, “why are you crying?  Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have carried him, and I will get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).

Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father.  Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news:  “I have seen the Lord!”  and she told them that he had said these things to her.

Although Peter and John have a role in this story about Christ’s resurrection, the main character is Mary Magdalene.  This is significant and symbolic of the fact that it was Mary who experienced one of the most profound and deep changes of life due to the ministry of Jesus.  Mary had been an immoral woman and spiritually enslaved to the machinations of seven demons.  It was Jesus who thoroughly delivered her from her personal hell.  Mary was forever thankful to him for changing her life, and so, she followed Jesus and supported him in any way she could.  Mary was at the foot of the cross when Jesus died.  While other disciples were keeping their distance out of fear, Mary was bold in standing with the other women for all to see that they were completely devoted to Jesus.  Mary never turned her back on Jesus.  It was Mary who was there on the Sunday morning of Christ’s resurrection.  Whereas the other followers were nowhere to be found, Mary came to the grave, still with a heart given to Jesus and grieving over his death.

Because Mary had been given a new chance at life, she was deeply thankful and everything she had belonged to Jesus.  Mary Magdalene was forgiven much, and, so she loved much.  Here she is, after her Lord’s crucifixion, death, and burial, at the grave of Jesus.  Mary came to the tomb on Easter Sunday still living in a Good Friday world – grieving, sad, and discouraged.  She soon discovered, however, that Christ is risen!

In the midst of your days of disappointment, loss, or sadness, how have you been surprised by joy and the presence of the risen Christ?  How has your grief been turned to gratitude?  Have you seen the risen Lord?

One day, 33 years ago, I was down sick with the flu and in bed.  I barely remember my wife coming into the bedroom after a doctor’s appointment upset and crying.  She was trying to rouse me with a mix of good and bad news.  Mary had gone to the doctor thinking that she probably had picked up my flu.  Instead, the doctor gave her the news that she was pregnant with our first child.  But there was more….

After the examination the doctor had reason to believe that our little baby might be in the wrong place – that she was not where she should be and may very well be in the fallopian tube and not the womb.  So, here I am – barely able to move getting out of bed – driving my wife to the hospital for an ultrasound with such a range of emotions within me that all I can do is weep, feeling, much like Mary Magdalene, that my Lord has been taken away from me.  It just felt like I didn’t know where Jesus was at that moment and why I was going through this surreal craziness.

I will never forget the words and even the tone of voice of the ultrasound technician as we anxiously stared at a screen we didn’t understand.  The technician said, “She is right where she is supposed to be!”  The tears turned to complete joy.  And the words were prophetic.  There was no way that the technician could know at six weeks in the womb that we were having a little girl, yet she referred to the peanut within my wife as “she.”  And we immediately knew what her name was:  “Sarah,” which is the Hebrew name for “Princess.”  God had graced us with a precious gift of royalty, coming from the grace of King Jesus.

I want us to know this morning, on this great Day of Resurrection, that we are right where we are supposed to be.  It might seem out of place spending so much time at home; not working in ways we’re used to, or even working at all; wondering where God is or how the divine fits into this topsy-turvy situation of pandemic and economic instability.  The truth of matter is this:  You are right where you are supposed to be.  God has you precisely where he wants you.  This morning, right now, you are a witness to the resurrection of Jesus.  Along with Mary Magdalene there is the astonished declaration, “I have seen Jesus.”

Do Not Hold On To Me - He Qi
“Do Not Hold On to Me,” by He Qi, 2013. Jesus and Mary Magdalene

Let Mary Magdalene’s experience be of encouragement to you.  Mary had been given a new life and was transformed by the Lord.  Yet, on Easter Sunday she did not immediately get what the heck was going on.  Jesus rising from death was not anywhere on her radar.  The empty tomb and the angels did not immediately lead her to faith – not until she saw Jesus, and even then, she did not recognize him.  Only when Jesus called her name did Mary recognize him and respond, believing it was her Lord.  And Jesus is still calling out names.  He is calling your name.  Jesus had said to his disciples that the sheep listen to the shepherd’s voice; he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out (John 10:3-4).  One little word can change our lives forever:  our name.

Easter opens a whole new world for us, as it did for Mary – a future of announcing good news and proclaiming resurrection.  There is a simple reason why the grave clothes were left in the tomb just lying there – they were not needed anymore!  We no longer need the grave clothes of discouragement, defeat, and despair.  We no longer need to weep and wonder, because Christ is risen!  He has called our name and we hear his voice.

The 20th century Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, said that what brings people to worship God – not just on Easter, but any day – is an unspoken question clinging to our minds and hearts:  Is it true?  Is it true that God lives?  Is it true that Jesus is alive?  Could it be true that I can live a new life in Christ?  Is it true that I can rebuild my life?  Is it all true?  Mary Magdalene approached the tomb and found that it was true.

All over the world, this very day, followers of Jesus are testifying that this is all real:  Christ is risen, and there is new life in Jesus our Lord.  Right now, believers across the globe are worshiping the risen Lord because they declare along with us, “I have seen the Lord!”

God has always been in the business of changing lives.  British author A. N. Wilson, used to be known for his scathing attacks on Christianity and proclaimed the death of God… celebrated Easter in 2009 at a church with a group of other church members, proclaiming that that the story of the Jesus of the Gospels is the only story that makes sense out of life and its challenges. Wilson said, “My own return to faith has surprised none more than myself …. My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known—not the famous, not saints, but friends and relations who have lived, and faced death, in light of the resurrection story, and in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.”

The moment Jesus calls a person’s name, the power of the resurrection is enabled—the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.  See what you consider as immovable slabs of stone in your life—maybe it’s bitterness, insecurity, fear, self-doubt or cynicism. Those immense rocks can be rolled away. To know Jesus is to know the power of the resurrection.  We don’t need to merely hear testimonies of changed lives like Mary Magdalene’s; we can experience new life ourselves.

There is one word, one name, which has forever changed the world: “Jesus.”  And Jesus wants to change the world by uttering one simple word, one name:  your name, so that you can exclaim with great joy, “I have seen the Lord!”

Mighty God, as Christ burst forth from the grave, may new life explode from us and show itself in acts of love and healing to a hurting world.  May your ever-living Son, Jesus our Lord, keep our hearts rejoicing and grant us peace this day and always in resurrection power.  Amen.

Click Christ the Lord Is Risen Today by the Northland Church choir and sing aloud to the One has conquered death!

Matthew 22:23-33 – The God of Life

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year A1 Comment

sunrays

That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”

Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching. (NIV)

The first century Sadducees learned the hard way.  Trying to discredit Jesus in public is a bad idea. Somehow, probably in a back room and drinking too much wine, they came up with a story that was designed to show once and for all that Jesus was nothing but some hayseed yokel from the bumpkin village of Nazareth who believed in a crazy notion like resurrection.  They wanted a once-for-all public showdown that Jesus was a backward hick, not worth the time of day.  So they concocted a bizarre hypothetical story meant to discredit the supernatural.  They went to the Old Testament to point out the law that if a man dies without having children, the brother must marry the widow and so keep the legacy and land of the dead man in his family.  By conjecturing that if this were to happen seven times over, whose wife would she be among all the brothers at this supposed resurrection? As they were snickering to themselves believing that they had demonstrated the absurdity of resurrection, Jesus turned the tables on the Sadducees.

Jesus bluntly stated that the Sadducees were the ones with an absurd story.  Their whole notion of what the resurrection is and what’s important about it was lost on them.  Jesus said they were biblically illiterate – they don’t know the Scriptures.  And, furthermore, since they don’t really know the Law, they really know nothing of God’s power.  This was a major dig on a group of people who prided themselves on being an educated elite.

Resurrection, Jesus said, isn’t anything like they described.  Resurrection isn’t a restoration of the same life we have here and now; it’s a different life altogether – a new life!  To prove what he said, Jesus had a simple yet profound statement:  I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.  Not “I was” but “I am.”  God is God of living people, of life, not of corpses and cadavers, not even of zombies.

The whole point of resurrection is new life – not a resuscitated life, not a reconstituted life, but a new life altogether.  The terms ‘death’ and ‘life’ in Scripture are relational terms.  Death is separation from others; life is a connection with people.  Life, in the Bible, literally means ‘to step into,’ and death means ‘to step away from.’  So, then, in order to be a fully alive human being we step into God by loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and, by loving my neighbor as myself.  Life means meaningful and loving connections with both God and other people.

toddler in white hoodie during daytime
Photo by Negative Space on Pexels.com

God is not just the God of the past (he saved me) or the future (I’m going to heaven); he is the God of the present, of this moment.  He exists now and is with us.  And what he wants from us is to choose life, that is, to step into relationships, to lean into others, and not choose death by stepping away and withdrawing out of guilt, shame, or fear.

When we distance ourselves from God and others, it is a way of death.  We then become in need of a new life.  Everyone experiences conflict and/or anxiety in relationships at various times.  The person who goes the way of death withdraws emotionally from God and other people and may even eventually just cut themselves off from others completely.  I’m not referring to a literal physical hermit who’s in the woods by himself with only a grizzly bear for a friend.  I’m talking about someone who is out of touch with others by through superficial talk and never dealing with anything unpleasant or uncomfortable.  Entire groups of people can act this way, as well, by dealing with their anxiety by refusing to interact on a meaningful level.  Such persons or groups tend to practice avoiding others through being emotionally distant; their prayer requests seldom go beyond skin deep and rarely, if ever, traffic in feelings.

Another way of separation, of death, is the practice of under-functioning and over-functioning in relationships.  Individuals who under-function refuse to take responsibility for their own emotions and behavior – they keep looking for someone else to blame their problems on and/or for someone to fix their situation.  Under-functioning people believe someone else will give, others will serve, and better people than them will do the world a service.  Into this situation enters the over-functioning person.  They are all too glad to accept responsibility for other people’s emotions and shortcomings.  When there’s a job to be done, everyone loves the over-functioning person.  Over-functioning individuals believe they know the right way to do things and they get results.  They talk more than listen, give advice freely, and take responsibility for the feelings and choices of others.  In a family, the under-functioning person relies on triangle relationships (that is, dealing indirectly with someone through another person) in which the over-functioning person handles all the heavy relational work.  Both under-functioning and over-functioning are ways of death because it is a stepping away from what is really going on inside of us; it is avoiding the shadows of my own heart and focusing on someone else’s heart.

We all need life.  We are hard-wired for community, family, and relationships.  We need a God who raises the dead and gives new life.  Stepping into relationships and choosing life means we courageously talk about what we truly think and feel and clearly communicate our limits and boundaries with each other.  Stepping into relationships and having life means we take responsibility for our own ideas and decisions and don’t coerce or manipulate others into doing the hard work of relationship for us.  It means we make decisions based on what is best for everyone, and not what simply is my personal preference.

Jesus
“I AM the resurrection and the life.”

God is the God of life.  Resurrection is both real and necessary.  Jesus said in John 11:25 – “I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”  Experiencing the power of God in our lives means to eschew the path of the Sadducees in the way they dealt with Jesus.  Instead, we have the privilege and the opportunity to step into a real, life-giving relationship with Jesus through reading and discovering our bibles and talking about what we find in it.  We pray, not because we are supposed to, but because it is the means of a living relationship and vital connection with God.

In such a time as this, we all need life – relationships that support one another and buoy each other’s values and spirituality.  Life is meant to be lived together in a sense of solidarity and camaraderie – with love as the glue which binds us as humanity.  Collective hardship becomes a sacred opportunity to experience life.  Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)

May your experience of God be abundant and satisfying.  Amen.

Ezekiel 37:1-14 – “Speaking to Dry Bones”

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year A2 Comments

Welcome, friends!  May you discover fresh hope and encouragement today.  Click the video below as we meet virtually and in spirit with one another.

I pray that your experience of God will become full, sustained, and fresh through this dry season of Lent and of the world’s predicament.  Click “Come Alive” (Dry Bones) sung by Lauren Daigle and speak to the dry bones in your valley.  Grace to you now and always.  Amen.

Speaking to Dry Bones

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.  He [God] asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”  –Ezekiel 37:2-3

Ezekiel dry bones
Ezekiel and the Valley of Dry Bones by Richard McBee

Folks around the world are quickly developing a new common language, becoming familiar with and using terms like social distancing, quarantine, shelter at home, and abundance of caution.  Our collective situation may easily create anxiety, and, so, parch our souls and leave our spirits dry.

There is, however, a God who can breathe new life into us and move us to renewed ways of thought and emotion.  The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel’s vision is a promise and a hope of resurrection, of revival.  No matter what our situation or who we are, we are all a displaced people – cast out of Eden and in need of restoration.  We, along with the ancient Israelites for whom he addressed, are in exile and long to return to our true home with God.  Along with St. Augustine we declare:

St Augustine quote

There are dry bones lying around – parched places in need of being reinvigorated.  Maybe you are experiencing the dry bones of hopelessness and despondency.  Maybe you are in a dark night of the soul where all of life seems like one shadowy oblivious hole.  Maybe you are wondering if God is really listening or is there at all because of the dry bones around you.  One thing for sure: Everything is upside-down right now; it is different.  At the first of the year, we didn’t see these current circumstances happening to us.  And, yet, these difficult times have much to teach us.

Let me share with you a “dry bones” experience from my own life.  Fifteen years-ago me and my family were in a car accident.  I was traveling on a highway in rural Iowa, and a small car on a gravel road blew through the stop sign without even slowing down.  There was nothing I could do.  I plowed into the rear quarter panel of the oncoming car, and it literally spun like a top off the highway and came to a stop.  Both the driver and his passenger were not injured.

Two of my three daughters were in the very back seat of our minivan (which I had just bought only a month before) with my wife and dog as front seat passengers.  The minivan was totaled.  My girls were not harmed.  However, my wife tore her shoulder’s rotator cuff protecting the dog and had an agonizing surgery to repair it.  My lower back was injured, yet, not in a way which surgery could repair it.  To this day I live with a kind of constant low-level aggravation of my spine.  Most days it’s not bad, maybe one or two on the pain scale.  On a bad day, I can barely walk across the room and need a cane to get around.

I have played the scene of the accident in my mind hundreds of times.  I have thought time and again about what I could have done to prevent it.  Honestly, there was no way to avoid it.  I thought about the fact that if we just would have left a minute earlier or a minute later from my parents’ house from where we were visiting, all would be fine.  Yet, I know that kind of thinking is a fool’s errand.  I have pondered every possible scenario in my head and have gotten nowhere.

It also took me awhile to forgive the young man who was driving the other car.  He changed my life, and not in a good way.  Although his insurance took care of everything and he was sorrowful about the incident, I was understandably angry for a long time.  I did, over time, come to the point of forgiving him.

Through the years I have learned to live with the limitations imposed on me.  I have now accepted the low-level aggravation of my back as part of my life.  On occasion, I sometimes can’t help but think of how my life would be today if I hadn’t been in that stupid accident.

About five years ago I was doing my usual routine morning prayers.  And God brought the accident to my mind.  I said to God, “Lord, we’ve been through this accident hundreds of times together.  I don’t want to think about it anymore.  Why are you bringing this up now?”

I’m not sure I really wanted an answer, but God brought it up because he knew I was finally ready to get his perspective on the accident.  Out of the hundreds of times I went over that accident in my mind, the one perspective I never took was that of the young man – the other driver.  God invited me to take a distinct viewpoint from the other driver.  So, I did.  I know that intersection like the back of my hand, so it wasn’t a hard exercise.

I imagined putting myself in the driver’s seat of his car.  I’m driving down the gravel road not paying attention to the fact that a stop sign is coming up.  I blow through the sign onto the highway and right in front of a minivan who slams on the brakes just enough to crush the rear quarter panel.  I spin out like a top and come to rest only a few feet from a huge Iowa grain elevator….

grain elevator

For the first time in my life I finally understood from a very different perspective.  God had a divine appointment for me that day.  You see, if I had not come along just when I did, that young man and his girlfriend would have blown through the stop sign and struck the grain elevator.  The impact would have killed them both instantly.

Suddenly, my attitude changed 180 degrees.  Previously, I had always thought about myself and my family.  I always considered my hardship and my change of life.  Now, I saw that God sent his servant to save two lives that day.  Had I not struck the young man’s car, causing him to spin and come to a rest unharmed, two people would have died.

From that time forward, every time my back acts up and effects how my life is lived, I’m reminded that it is a very small price to pay for the lives of two human beings.  God had me speak to the dry bones; and, the result was a revival of new thoughts and emotions.  This was such a dramatic change of thought and heart for me that it felt like a resurrection.

The biblical meaning of “repentance” is literally to have a change of mind – to see a different perspective.  The Bible invites us to view our lives with new lenses.  Our hurts and our pains, our sorrows and our sufferings, our changes and our limitations, are all part of something much bigger that God is doing in the world.  We are not always privy to his plans and purposes.  And, yet, God’s Word challenges us to take a perspective of the world, of humanity, and of ourselves that is counter to how we often think and feel.

It is a very small thing, right now in the admonitions to stay at home, to remain where we are.  Taking a mere one-sided view from my own perspective will bring frustration.  To see it from another angle as a temporary inconvenience, even with some permanent effects, which will save lives is a divine viewpoint.  To put it another way: We are speaking to dry bones.

Stay Home Save Lives

We might think and feel that we will be able to pursue God better without danger or hardship – that somehow difficulty is not to be part of the Christian life.  The dry bones exist, however, as an opportunity for God to give life.  That’s why Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s reaction to his exile in a Soviet labor camp in Siberia was to bless it, because it was there that, he said:

“I discovered that the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.”

God not only gives life; he restores life.  And this is an important truth to know and remember in the inevitable dry times of our lives.  God is not only a helper; he reanimates us from spiritual rigor mortis to lively resurrection through breathing on us.  And he does this for a reason.  Jesus came to his disciples after his resurrection and said, ‘“Peace be with you!  As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’  And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:20-21).  In other words, God resuscitates us for a purpose, so that we might be a blessing to the world.  Faith is not only a possession to keep, but a gift to give.  We glorify God in loving one another and loving the world as Jesus did.  God could have resurrected the bones without Ezekiel’s being a part of it.  Instead, the LORD used Ezekiel and had him participate in the revival by speaking to the bones.

Such a challenge to speak to the dry bones may seem overwhelming to us.  What do you do when your life is upended, even shattered – when such a profound change comes to you that it is impossible for your life to be as it was?  The questions and commands of God seemed totally absurd to Ezekiel, speaking to dead dry bones.  Maybe we ought to operate more in the realm of the absurd than in the realm of the safe routine.  Maybe we ought to expect our faith to be exercised and look for God to breathe new life into the dead and decaying.  To believe that something, someone, or even myself can change is to have internalized this amazing story of dry bones living again.

Our self-imposed graves cannot hold us because God is among us.  What we need more than anything in this world and in the church is a genuine heaven-sent, Spirit-breathed, glorious reanimation in which God sends his grace and raises the dead.