Week 14: Who will roll the stone away?

 

It is not easy to know what to expect of Jesus. Whether He will do something or He won’t? When He and His disciples were invited to the wedding at Cana of Galilee, they all went. No body had a clue as to what will transpire there before the evening was gone, except Jesus. No, not even His mother Mary, though she had an inkling that her son was no ordinary person; yes, she had been told that before His birth, and Anna and Simeon had uttered some strange words when Jesus was taken to the temple as a baby for purification rites, but since then everything has been pretty normal barring that singular incident at the Temple when He was twelve.

But I am not writing here about Jesus’s first miracle (in case you are interested, please click First: Hi Mary! So glad your son’s come too! – Judah’s Jottings). The point I wish to drive home here is the difficulty we have in believing. Even after being eyewitnesses to many a miracle performed by Jesus, the disciples struggled when He told them to give bread to 5000+ who came to hear His discourse.

And when His life’s journey was coming to an end, He began to sprinkle his talks with references to His death and resurrection. Reactions varied from outright denouncement ( Matthew 16:22):“Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee” to seemingly practical questions (John14:5): “Thomas said to Him  “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” to quest for glory seating (Mark 10:37) They (James and John) said to Him, “Grant us that we may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on Your left, in Your glory” , to disbelief and just plain grief.

To be sure, self-resurrection (see John 10:18 “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again). was unheard of. It simply ought to be the most extraordinary event in the human history. Cross Walk calls it (and I quote) “The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the undeniable centering point of Christianity, the defining doctrine of our faith, and the most audacious claim in the history of the world.”

And it was.

It is left to Paul to put resurrection in context with his customary clinical precision: “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:13-17 ESV).

OMG, now do you see the point of Christ’s resurrection?

If you do and believe, you will be able to confess with church congregations everywhere that:

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord.
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried.
the third day he rose from the dead.
he ascended into heaven,
and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.”

If not Madam / Sir, the Bible says: your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.

Not a good place to be, what?

But thank God, if on this resurrection day we are able to join the mighty throng of believers the world over and say:

Christ is risen!

to the resounding affirmative echo of

He has risen indeed!