Resurrection with the Cross and Rabbi

Of course, that is not the part of the sto­ry that moti­vates me. I am not seek­ing to be abused and betrayed, let down by my best friends and hunt­ed by those in pow­er. I may rec­og­nize the neces­si­ty of suf­fer­ing, but by no means do I seek it out. I think most of us grav­i­tate towards the tri­umphant vic­to­ry and joy of Jesus\’ resurrection

    <p><strong>Tags:</strong>

        <a href=\"http://www.diigo.com/user/martinkelley/Quaker\" rel=\"tag\">Quaker</a>

        <a href=\"http://www.diigo.com/user/martinkelley/blog\" rel=\"tag\">blog</a>

6 thoughts on “Resurrection with the Cross and Rabbi

  1. Pen­te­cost, don’t for­get Pen­te­cost. I won­der why there are wor­ries about teach­ing East­er and we keep for­get­ting to teach about a group of fol­low­ers wait­ing and sud­den­ly inspired by the Spirit.

    1.  dear Meg,
      thank you for this wel­come lift­ing up.  It has giv­en me anoth­er per­spec­tive to add to the “pieces” of the mystery.
      Nicole

  2. The ear­li­est writ­ten under­stand­ing of what “res­ur­rec­tion” was about: that this was God’s vin­di­ca­tion of Jesus as among the right­eous, even the first among them to be raised from death– ie affirm­ing that this was a case of mar­tyr­dom in sup­port of God’s will– and that “God’s will” was as Jesus had said.

    Also, giv­en that there’d been no pri­or notion of res­ur­rec­tion as an attribute of “The Mes­si­ah”, it is odd to have the bulk of ear­ly Chris­tians lay­ing so much stress on the res­ur­rec­tion as a sign that Jesus was God’s choice for that role. It did become, of course, a neces­si­ty after Jesus’ death: Only a live and embod­ied per­son would be able to car­ry out the func­tions of a Mes­si­ah, ie rul­ing Israel.

    So all of these things, as you say, are best seen as ele­ments of a coher­ent whole.

    1. The Pas­sion nar­ra­tive is the ear­ly Chris­tians’ attempt to make sense of the fact that their beloved Rab­bi was exe­cut­ed by the Romans, that he was con­demned to a death reserved for rebel­lious slaves and insur­rec­tion­ists. The time­line fur­nished by the Gospels indi­cate that Jesus’ arrest and exe­cu­tion fol­lowed upon his cleans­ing of the Tem­ple. Hence, a dan­ger­ous upstart, a nui­sance to the author­i­ties. The Res­ur­rec­tion tra­di­tion is ear­ly Chris­tians’ con­vic­tion that the Rab­bi was still with them, was still present in their midst, and that they in turn should put his teach­ings into prac­tice. Tol­stoy said it best in The King­dom of Heav­en is With­in You: “The ful­fill­ment of [Christ’s] doc­trine lies in a con­tin­u­al progress toward the attain­ment of a high­er truth, and in the grow­ing real­iza­tion of that truth with­in one’s self, by means of an ever-increasing love; as well as a more keen real­iza­tion of the king­dom of God in the world around us.”

  3. It is also pos­si­ble that we hold up these dif­fer­ent aspects of Jesus’ life dur­ing dif­fer­ent chap­ters in our own. Part of the deep appeal of Scrip­ture is that it is so rich and com­plex. Jesus’ life too is rich and com­plex and we can meet Him where ever we are in our own walk. When I suf­fer, I can try and enter in to Jesus’ time in Geth­semene, or per­haps I will choose to seek him as Shep­herd, long­ing to feel his com­fort­ing pres­ence. i do not find that Jesus in all three aspects all at once is how I relate to Him. Rather, in all his aspects, no mat­ter where I am spir­i­tu­al­ly, emo­tion­al­ly or phys­i­cal­ly, some aspect of Jesus is avail­able to me. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Comments on Quaker Ranter Daily