Tag Archives: Resurrection

Reflections on Discipleship – Swallowed up

My job at the moment is developing discipleship in one Anglican diocese, so as you can imagine I do quite a bit of thinking about what discipleship is, what it means, and what it looks like. Here are some random thoughts, gleaned from my reflection on the Bible and current thinking …

 

Two conversations this week got me thinking about death. My Mum, who is 92, was asked by the doctor in her residential home if she wanted to be resuscitated if she was to have a heart attack, and she wanted to talk it over. And another friend, as part of an emergency response team in the diocese, was invited into a local school after the tragic death of a young and well-loved teacher. He found that a dog-collar really did give him a status and a role within the shocked and grieving community.

 Gravestone

This got me thinking about why it is that the church is welcomed (at least most of the time) when death comes close. I can remember Robert Runcie, when he was Archbishop of Canterbury, being interviewed on the telly, and being asked in a somewhat hostile manner why the church would insist on poking its nose into funerals. His answer was that in 95% of cases during his ministry Christian ministers were actively welcomed and invited, and that people genuinely did want to be able to talk about death and dying. Whilst this figure may have decreased over the years, specifically atheist funerals are still almost insignificant in their numbers. So what is it about Christians and death?

 

I think that we are one of the few groups in society comfortable with thinking about it. Clergy encounter it on a weekly, if not daily basis, and we all did those exercises while we were training when we were forced to confront the feelings and fears we had about our own death. But more than that, the gospel and our discipleship refuse to let us collude with the embarrassed silence of much of society, and speak of death comfortably. I can remember my boss, the former Bishop of Monmouth, saying when facing a quadruple heart by-pass that ‘there are a lot worse things can happen to Christians than death’. And wise clergy will, as part of their teaching ministry, have helped their congregation members to look death square in the face so that it loses some of its terror.

 

So with that background I was struck by a verse from my daily Bible reading this week. 2 Corinthians 5 is headed in my Bible ‘Awaiting the new body’, and verse 4 tells us that while mortal life is about groaning and being burdened, all this will one day be ‘swallowed up by life’. This phrase is a fascinating reversal of usual language where it is death, or the grave, which ‘swallow up’ life. But for Paul the opposite is true: the miserable half-life we now exist in will one day be swallowed up by real life, life lived to the full, life free from groaning. Furthermore, says Paul, this new real life is the very purpose of our existence, and the Holy Spirit is the deposit which guarantees the full payment to come.

 

While disciples of Jesus are not those who despise and hate the things of this world in favour of the next, they do have a better sense of perspective than those for whom this life is all there is. Apparently an atheist’s gravestone bore the inscription ‘All dressed up and nowhere to go’. Disciples know exactly where they’re going, and it is a matter of great anticipation and joy.

“Lyne Kirk gravestone” by Jonathan Oldenbuck – Own work. Licensed under GFDL via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lyne_Kirk_gravestone.JPG#/media/File:Lyne_Kirk_gravestone.JPG

 

OT Lectionary Apr 5th Easter Sunday Isaiah 25:6-9

 Reflections on the oft-neglected OT lectionary passages

Those among my dear readers who have undergone any academic training will probably have had to answer this essay question: ‘1 Corinthians 15:4 states that Christ “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures”. Which scriptures, exactly?’

This is an interesting question: Paul, along with our liturgical creeds, clearly saw the resurrection as have been predicted in some way in the OT, although it is not easy to see exactly where. So our solitary OT lectionary passage for Easter Day (not counting the Psalm, of course) doesn’t directly address the resurrection per se, but it does talk in symbolic language about what some of the results of resurrection might be, whether or not it directly expected the physical resurrection from death of an individual.

It’s worth noting first that Isaiah’s scene is played out on a mountain, while Jesus is crucified on Skull Hill. In the OT mountains are often places of encounter with God, and most clearly the place of law. The cross becomes the place where earth and heaven meet, but the place of law becomes the place of grace.

Isaiah begins here, as he so often does, with food. Whatever event he is looking towards, it is set around a laden table, with people celebrating joyfully with the finest of fare, something of a contrast with the austerity of the Last Supper. It is also a feast open, he tells us, to all peoples. The resurrection of Jesus, our lectionary compilers are clearly trying to tell us, is for celebration and nourishment, and all are welcome, not just ‘PLU’s (People Like Us).

While the people feast a ‘shroud’ is removed from them. This might refer to the shroud of death which, like taxes, is inevitable for all, or it might be an introductory phrase which is spelt out in the next few verses as he promises the defeat of death, misery and disgrace, negative elements as much of a threat to all of us today as they were in Isaiah’s time and ever since. The resurrection of Jesus promises us not just freedom from the sting and fear of death, but also the possibility of forgiveness for the shamefaced, healing for the sick and joy for the downcast.

File:Empty Tomb 2046 (498329409).jpg

Isaiah ends by noting that whatever it is that God is doing, it has been long-awaited. It shows the other side of the coin from all those desperate ‘How long?’ cries which ring through the OT and down the ages. For so long, it seems, God has chosen, for whatever reasons, not, apparently, to do very much. But now he has stirred himself: he is on the move, his purposes are being worked out, and his salvation is there for the asking.

Our response to all this? As it will be on Easter Sunday in our churches, rejoicing is the only appropriate way to celebrate this mighty act of God.

OT Lectionary 27th April Easter 2 Ex 14:10-31, 15:20-21

‘Sing to the Lord,
for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
he has hurled into the sea.’

Let’s be honest: it does go against the grain a bit to celebrate death. We’re all jolly glad that the poor enslaved Israelites have managed to escape from that nasty Pharaoh, but was it really necessary to end the business with a mass drowning? In the past victories in battle were celebrated with great jubilation. But nowadays we’ve reached perhaps more enlightened times when we understand that warfare actually has no victors: the whole business is destructive too all concerned, and the slaughter of those whom we perceive to be our enemies, along no doubt with some ‘collateral damage’ to innocent bystanders, is hardly something to make a song and dance about. So what are we to make of today’s OT, where we see the death of the Egyptians as a necessary concomitant of the liberation of Israel, and an outbreak of jubilant praise by Miriam and the girls.

 

File:Figures Pharaoh and His Host Drowned in the Red Sea (parted right).jpg

Indeed this is a problem for other parts of the OT. In 40 years’ time the Israelites are going to arrive finally at the Land promised to them by God, and they are going to be instructed to wipe out all the inhabitants unmercifully. The fact that they fail to do so, and are therefore nicer than God is, is going to get them into all kinds of trouble, according to the OT storytellers. So how do we cope with the destruction of enemies in the Scriptures, and what might it all mean for us today?

I think there are two approaches we might make to this problem, the individual and the spiritual. First of all it seems to be a natural law that whenever there are winners there are also losers. Egypt had so frequently and so deliberately hardened its corporate heart against God, who had given them so many opportunities to obey him, that they had forced themselves into a position where the only way for Israel to win her liberation was through their defeat. Pharaoh could at any point have compromised or even just given in, but he refused to do so, and the nation bore the consequences. (Of course the fate of individual soldiers who were ‘just obeying orders’ is of no interest to the OT writers who were untainted by enlightenment individualism and always thought ‘corporate’.) I think there’s something here about both the power of national leadership to affect the well-being (or otherwise) of the whole nation, and the responsibility of people to make sure they’re on the right side. Actions have consequences, and to align ourselves with evil means that we pay the piper sooner or later. Egypt paid that price, and after giving them so many chances to change their position of fixed opposition to him, God can hardly be blamed for punishing them. Indeed he reaches the point where we’re told he ‘hardens Pharaoh’s heart’, realising this is going nowhere so let’s just get it over with. The same is true of the genocide at the time of the conquest: the Bible’s take on this is that it wasn’t that Israel was holy, but that the Canaanite nations were so offensive to God and richly deserved their come-uppance (Deut 9:5). Where we place ourselves, the way we live, to whom we are aligned, matters. No excuses.

But secondly the choice of this reading during Easter suggests the link with cross and resurrection. Again there can be no victory without someone else’s defeat, and John’s gospel particularly makes the point that Christ’s death on the cross was also the crowning of a victorious king, with the powers of darkness defeated, until that final day when they will be destroyed. Evil isn’t just human: behind it are the spiritual forces of darkness in the spiritual realms, and on them God will have no mercy. So to celebrate our salvation through the cross is at the same time to celebrate the defeat of all that is evil, and of those who have given their lives to perpetuating it. So maybe we should get those tambourines out after all, as long as we remember to pray for those unwittingly caught up in the pursuit of evil: ‘Father forgive them, because they don’t understand what they’re doing’.