Jason Micheli's Blog, page 11

Euchatastrophe

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In speaking at the Mockingbird Conference in NYC yesterday, I mentioned to the audience that I needed to leave early in order to preach a funeral. The service, I noted, was for a young mother of two in my congregation. Several young preachers in attendance asked if they could listen to how I proclaimed the gospel in the face of a “difficult” death.

Despite my reputation, I tend to do what I’m asked to do.

So here it is:

Isaiah 43, 2 Timothy 4, and John 11 - A Service of Death and Resurrection

Given Laura’s fascination with J.R.R Tolkien, perhaps our watchword for today should come neither from the prophet Isaiah nor the apostle Paul. Given Ruthie’s and David’s Halloween costumes this fall, maybe we should look for an anchoring promise not in Bethany just beyond Jerusalem but in Middle Earth. In the Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo confesses his grief to Gandalf the Grey. Exhausted by inexplicable sadness, Frodo acknowledges a burden we have all borne here this afternoon.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” says Frodo.

“So do I,” Gandalf replies, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide.”

I wish it need not have happened in my time.

I wish I need not be here today.

I wish not one of us were here.

Frodo merely admits to Gandalf what the sister of Lazarus laments to Jesus.

“LORD, if you had been here,” Martha accuses Jesus, “My brother would not have died!” In other words, it need not have happened in my time.

When I first learned of Laura’s sudden, shocking death, I felt chastened by relief that the last service she attended here was not wasted on something other than gospel. Likewise, I do not want to risk anyone leaving here today having not heard the promise called gospel. Not only does the promise matter for all things that matter, it mattered to Laura; jus so, I hope it will matter to you too. Jesus could not be more explicit in handing the promise over to a family and friends not altogether different from you.

“I am the Resurrection and the Life, Jesus says to the sister of Lazarus, who had been dead four days. “I am the Resurrection and the Life, those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die,” Jesus says to the grief-stricken Martha, right before he asks her, almost as an afterthought, “Do you believe this?”

“I am the Resurrection and the Life, even though you will die yet will you live— do you believe this?”

“Will you? Live again? Do you trust this?” Jesus asks Martha.

And Martha, her eyes salty and pink with tears and her voice hoarse with rage, Martha replies, “Yes, yes, I believe.”

But probably— let’s be honest— probably Martha wants to say no.

“No, I do not believe. No, it's too hard to believe. No, it's too easy to believe. It's foolish and silly— it’s not scientific— to believe in Resurrection and Life.”

After all—

By the time Jesus bothers to show up, her beloved is four days dead.

Dead.

And he didn't have to be.

His was an unnecessary death.

When Lazarus first fell ill, Martha had sent word to Jesus, “Your friend whom you love is ill. Do something! Help!” But for whatever reason, the warning was ignored. There was unnecessary and fatal delay.

The Great Physician didn’t show up.

By the time Jesus arrives, it's too late, and by Martha's estimation, it's every bit unnecessary, “I need not have happened in my time!” In other words, it's your fault, Jesus. It's your fault, LORD.

To Jesus' question about the Resurrection, Martha says, “Yes, I believe.”

But— I'm willing to bet she felt like saying no.

Scripture calls it the Enemy for a reason.

It's darn hard to believe in the face of Death.

We don't know the why or the how of Lazarus' death.

We don’t know if he had lived with a chronic condition since childhood. We don’t know if he’d earned a PhD from Temple University. We don’t know if he had a spouse who would mourn an unfinished future. We don’t know if he loved the parents who’d reared him in faith or if he, in turn, made it a priority to nurture his own children in the gospel.

John the Evangelist does not supply us with many details about Lazarus.

We don’t know if he loved to garden and knit and cook.

We don’t know if he listened to podcasts and audio dramas.

We don’t know if he had a little boy who loved Monster Trucks.

All John tells us is that Lazarus has died.

And he didn’t have to be dead.

"Why didn't you do anything, Jesus? Why didn't you stop it,” Martha asks.

And I'm willing to bet she poked Jesus in the chest when she said it, or even slapped him across the face.

“I am the Resurrection and the Life. Do you believe this?” Jesus asks her.

Martha’s mouth says, “Yes.”

But her heart?

“Do you believe it?”

Do you?

Do you?

For all of us who love Laura, we’re all Martha today.

Some of you would say, “Yes, I believe,” but really— if you're honest— the answer is, “No.” For others of you, the answer is no. You don't believe. You don't believe that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life, but God, you want the answer to be yes. You don't want Death to have the last word. Still others of you, you want to have a Martha-like angry word with the LORD. “Why didn't you do anything, Jesus?!”

The yes on Martha's lips, the no on her grief-heavy heart, the righteous anger in her throat and in her eyes— we’re all somewhere in between today.

We're all Martha.

I've presided over enough funerals to know what it feels like, to feel like the answer is, “No. No, I don't believe.”

I do not know all of you here so I can't speak for you.

But I can say that Jesus of Nazareth was one of only hundreds of thousands crucified by Rome, all of whose names are lost to history.

I am convinced that had God not raised him from the dead, we never would have heard of Jesus of Nazareth.

And Laura so believed too.

The first conversation I had with her was over pancakes and sausage at a Fat Tuesday dinner the night before Ash Wednesday. After introducing me to David and Ruth, she said, simply and unabashedly, “Jesus is important to me. Thank you for preaching like he’s important to you too.”

In other words, “Yes, I believe. Yes, he’s the Resurrection and the Life.”

What the Gospel of John intends us to see in this passage is not simply Martha’s family but the life of us all. Recall how when Mary Magdalene comes to the garden tomb on Easter morning to mourn, she mistakes the risen Jesus for the gardener because Resurrection and Life are too good for her to believe.

She mistakes Jesus for the gardener.

Laura tirelessly taught Sunday School and led Children’s Church and volunteered for Vacation Bible School. Laura would catch the connection. Gardener is the job Adam was given by God to do in Eden, which is to say this risen Jesus, he is who we are meant to be. He is who we will become. What God does with him, God will do with us all. His resurrection is but the first fruit of a creation-wide cosmic garden that God is growing.

When Mary Magdalene realizes it's really Jesus, she grabs a hold of him.

And in her hands, she clasps his nail-scarred hands.

Notice, his scars are still there.

In his hands, in his feet, in his side, he still bears his scars.

That is, the life he lived hasn't vanished.

It's been vindicated.

The risen Jesus still is the crucified Jesus.

He is who he was.

That Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener, what Adam was meant to be, that he still bears his scars and his wounds reveals what Christians mean by that word Resurrection.

Namely, this world, this life, it matters.

It matters to Almighty God.

Any kind of thinking or religion or piety or spirituality that suggests our ultimate destination is an evacuation from this world has nothing to do with Christianity, nothing to do with Resurrection.

Mary mistakes him for the gardener; therefore, Resurrection means that God has not abandoned the garden that he planted. God didn't send the ghost of Jesus back to the world to say, “Don't worry, after you die, you'll be okay.”

God resurrected Jesus.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ tells us something about what God has planned for the world, what God has planned for us, what God has planned for Laura.

God plans to restore this world. The risen Christ still bears the scars life gave him. Therefore, Resurrection means that God is not interested in throwing out this world and moving on to something else somewhere else. If that were the case, why on earth go to the trouble of raising Jesus' body from the dead. And not just him, but God raised him as the first fruit of God raising us all. God didn't say it's enough for Jesus to come home to heaven now that he's died. No. God raised Jesus from the dead.

Therefore—

Resurrection means this world that God made matters.

Resurrection means this world, this life, our hopes, our longings, our pain, our work, our choices, our relationships, our emotions, our bodies— literally everything, it all matters.

Every Sunday morning where Ruthie said to Elaine or me, “Wait to you see what my Mom has planned for Children’s Church today. You’re going to like it!”

The Easter Sunday Laura brought David forward for the sacrament for the first time.

The camping trip where Ruth responded to a frightening storm by singing the words Laura had taught her at Vacation Bible School, “Even in the stormy weather/When it seems to tough/I will not be afraid…”

All of it— it matters; it matters to God.

The Sunday two Advents ago when Laura responded to the photo I snapped of David in his Christmas Pageant costume by saying, “Even without the costume, he’s my angel.”

These Sundays since Epiphany when Bob has brought the kids here to keep what mattered to Laura mattering— all of it matters.

Falling in love at Frostburg State.

Laboring at Georgetown for cognitive recovery.

Apprenticing the kids into Lord of the Rings fandom.

All of it.

Every bit of it.

All of your loved ones and every bit of your life with them.

It all matters.

It all matters to God.

When folks come to me to plan a funeral for a family member, they always want to tell me how they want the service to be a celebration of life. I hate that language. I hate it because it doesn't lift the language. For one, it compels us to be dishonest. It attempts us to lie and ignore our feelings of grief and confusion. It forces us to ignore the fact that not every part of our lives is a cause for joy.

But for another, I hate that celebration of life language because it doesn't go far enough in the celebration. We're not celebrating a life that's now lost, now past, alive only in our ability to remember it?

No!

The Christian hope is different and better than the ending of Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan.

This funeral is a celebration of Resurrection.

We're not celebrating a life that's now lost, now passed, alive only in our memory of it. We're celebrating a life that God is determined to recover. A life that is now present to God and will be future, will live again. Mary mistakes him for the gardener. He still bears the holes in his hands. Resurrection means God doesn't scrap creation. God doesn’t throw things out. Resurrection means that even if we forsake our life, God does not forsake us. Resurrection means God will reclaim everything, redeem everything, renew everything, heal all.

Belinda Carlisle was right.

She just got the tense of her verbs wrong.

Heaven will be a place on earth, a new earth, a new creation, and nothing will be lost.

Nothing will be forgotten.

No one will be forsaken.

Everything broken will be mended. Every wound will be healed.

As Samwise Gamgee says on Mount Doom in Return of the King, “Every sad thing will come untrue.”

Remember— these nerdy quotes are all for Laura’s sake. But they’re also the gospel. Like Laura, Tolkien was both an accomplished professional and a professing Christian.

Every sad thing will come untrue.

The Future will be what Tolkien called a Euchatastrophe.

And the scars that will remain will do so only to remind us that all of it, all of our lives, are gifts.

Resurrection means that in the End, God gets what God wants. And what God wants is to give the gift anew.

“I am the Resurrection and the Life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Jesus asks.

I realize occasions like this draw all sorts of people from all kinds of places. I can't make assumptions about what you believe or don't believe. But Christians are those people who trust the yes, even when we feel like the answer is no. Christians are the people who dare to live beautiful, complicated lives, lives of forgiveness and mercy and inconvenient love, lives that make no sense if the answer to Jesus's question is not, “Yes.”

Christians are the people who live as though we will live on as Jesus lives on— as the unique and unrepeatable persons we have been since the moment of our conception. Live on, body and soul, glorified as was with Jesus in the garden, the first fruits of the resurrection, able to be seen and touched and held and heard.

Again, Christians are those who believe we are not ghosts in the machine that go back to being ghosts, nor are we mere material that becomes one again with the rest of creation.

Christianity is not spirituality.

Christian hope is particular and personal and unapologetically material.

We are destined for external embodied existence where all the things that made us who we are as one of a kind, divine image-bearers, laughter and courage and generosity and brilliant thoughts and selfless deeds, skin and bones.

All of that will inhabit individual bodies that have something resembling hands and feet and fingerprints and nucleic acids, all made alive again forever, somehow redeemed by the humble power of God's love.

Christians believe that God keeps all the information of us and all the mystery about us and that the God who created everything from nothing knows how to raise all of Laura from death.

That's our hope.

That's what we mean by Jesus being the Resurrection and the Life.

“Do you believe this?”

Funny thing is, even if you don't, it doesn't change what God's going to do.

Because if Resurrection is shorthand for anything, it’s short hand for God being faithful to us.

Each of us.

Every one of us.

All of us.

All of her.

Or as the VBS song Laura taught her children continues, “Even when the dark surrounds me/Everything gettin’ rough/I will not be afraid/Cause there’s a promise He has made/and It’s not a promise He will break.”

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If You Believe He's Risen, Indeed You Better Be Celebrating Constant Communion

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Heads up! I’m speaking at the Mockingbird Conference in NYC on Friday morning. If you’re not able to come, you can check out the livestream: https://mbird.com/event-speakers/jaso...

Third Sunday of Easter — Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)

According to my friend Ryan Burge, three-quarters of mainline clergy report belief in the bodily resurrection of the crucified Jesus (better than I would’ve guessed); meanwhile, nearly all of Roman Catholic priests and Evangelical pastors profess the dogma. The historic black church likewise affirms the Easter alleluia.

However, it is far from clear that preachers know what we’re talking about when we talk about the body of the risen Christ.

The body birthed by the empty tomb is not the same body delivered by the Mother of God.

The news of Easter is not that the crucified corpse of Jesus came back alive. The resurrection is not simply Jesus’ life starting up again. After Jesus offers the disciples the wounds in his hands and his feet, the disciples reciprocate by offering him hospitality. They give him some broiled fish to eat, which he does. Nevertheless, though the Risen Jesus is not a ghost neither is as he was before he died, for when he leaves them Jesus does not walk off into the distance. Presumably, he leaves in the manner in which he came— he vanishes. An odd body indeed.

As Peter Brunner writes:

“The risen Jesus’ life does not continue on from his death…that he is not merely returned to life is shown by the discontinuity of his risen existence with his incarnate existence.”

Bible editors typically label Acts 9.1-20, “Paul's conversion, baptism, and preaching.” Preachers focus upon Saul in this scripture at the expense of an extraordinary revelation the risen Christ unveils to him— a claim critical to the logic of the future apostle’s epistles. Armed with arrest warrants, the Pharisee among Pharisees prowls the diaspora for followers of the risen Jesus. Saul aims to rendition members of the Way to a black site in Jerusalem.

Nearing Damascus, the risen Jesus assaults Saul and speaks a strange word, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me ?”

The locution is theologically decisive.

The bodies Saul has bound and beaten on account of blasphemy constitute the body of Jesus.

This no mere metaphor nor is it a figure of speech. In this utterance, the crucified-and-risen Jesus identifies the community of disciples—those men and women whom Saul pursues—not merely with himself, but as himself.

The church is not merely the people about whom Jesus cares.

The church is the people in whom he is present.

The church is not the Jesus Memorial Society!

We are his risen body?!

You are the me of whom Jesus speaks when he says to Saul, “Why do you persecute me?”

Perhaps this is an immodest claim that stretches all credulity, but it is nevertheless not a pious exaggeration. And again, the point is religiously decisive. If we take the Word at his word, then we must say that to strike the church is to strike Jesus Christ. And this is not because the church reminds Jesus of himself. It is not because Jesus is sentimentally bound to his Bride. It is because she is, in time and space, the embodiment of his risen person.

That Jesus of Nazareth ate and drank with sinners scandalized the begrudgers in Galilee. That the crucified Jesus chooses sinners as his risen body only exacerbates the opprobrium. This is the ecclesial scandal of the Damascus encounter and it is the oft-neglected content of the Easter gospel. The crucified is risen from death and is bodily present in the community he has called forth.

Christ is risen.

Indeed he is risen in this mundane manner.

Critics often charge that Mary’s boy came announcing the Kingdom of God but instead the church is what arrived. But according to Jesus in the Book of Acts, the church is rather the prolongation of the incarnation in history—not as a replacement for Jesus, but as the very form in which his risen life is available.

“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”Nowhere is Christ’s posit more unavoidably clear than in the eucharist.

After all, the reason the apostle Paul can warn the church at Corinth that they eat and drink judgment upon themselves at the eucharistic table is because the risen Jesus— the Judge— IS PRESENT THERE!

As Robert Jenson elaborates:

“Although Paul clearly thinks of the LORD as in some sense visibly located in a heaven spatially related to the rest of creation, the only body of Christ to which Paul ever actually refers is not an entity in heaven but the eucharist’s loaf and cup and the church assembled around them…

The teaching itself is a proposition and not a trope…We are the body of Christ, according to Paul, in that we have been “baptized into” it. And what we have been baptized into is simply “Christ.” Again we are one body in that we do something that can equivalently be described as “sharing in the body of Christ” and partaking “of the one bread.” In the complex of these passages, there is no way to construe “body” as a simile or other trope that does not make a mush of Paul’s arguments…

The church, according to Paul, is the risen body of Christ. She is this because the bread and cup in the congregation’s midst is the very same body of Christ. Paul’s first statement on the matter does not extend quite to this equation. “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” But Paul then applies this doctrine to the behavior of the Corinthian congregation: because the Corinthians eat and drink disrespectfully of one another, they fail to “discern” the body of Christ.

We want to ask which body Paul has in mind, the bread about which he has just reported the dominical words or the congregation that is in fact the offended entity and which he has just earlier called Christ’s body.

Paul’s text makes sense only when we grasp that he means both. At once. And he would reject our question as meaningless.”

He means both.

“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute the loaf and the cup?”

Just so—

It is precisely at the table, in the broken bread and poured-out cup, that the church is most truly herself, because it is there that the risen Christ is most truly himself for her.

The eucharist does not symbolize Christ.

The eucharist— bread and wine and gathered believers— is Christ.

Christ given.

Christ speaking.

Christ binding his people into the unity that is his risen body.

Thus—

To persecute the church is to persecute Jesus because the church, gathered in Word and Sacrament, is not only the witness to the resurrection but she is its medium. Saul’s violence against the disciples is violence against Christ because the church is the site in which Christ’s presence persists. This is not because Christ is absent and remembered, but because he is risen and active, shaping a people who speak his words, enact his sacraments, and await his return.

The church is not only called to be like Christ; she is where Christ happens.

The surveys report nearly all preachers affirm Christ’s bodily resurrection, yet the scriptures suggest their Easter alleluia is not persuasive if it is not occasioned by the edible promise, “This is my body, given for you.”

Biblically speaking, Christians cannot profess “Christ is risen indeed!” if they do not simultaneously gather around their resurrected LORD as bread and wine.

If the Word’s word to Saul on the road to Damascus is reliable, then every resurrection utterance is invalidated by a table devoid of loaf and cup.

Or as John Wesley might put it, no confession of Christ’s bodily resurrection is credible apart from constant communion.

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Fishers of Men Again

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Hi Friends,

I don’t want to jam up your inbox so here’s several messages in one package.

Substack recently informed me that I’m #51 on the Faith and Spirituality Leaderboard (It goes up and down). That an End Times prophecy charlatan is parked in the One Spot is kibble for the Old Adam in me. As an Enneagram 8, my first thought was, “I’ve got to overtake this a@# clown.”

To that end, and if you’re so inclined, Substack has set up a deal. Become a paid subscriber before the end of May, and you’ll get 25% off. It’s cheaper than everything but Tubi so no complaints— don’t make me play the Cancer Card.

Here’s the link.

A few other housekeeping items:

I will be on Substack Live two times today1:

Will Willimon, Tony Robinson, and I will be talking about Fleming Rutledge’s work (for a project) at 2:00 EST. Join us here.

Rabbi Joseph, Ken Jones, and I will convene at 3:30 EST. We hope to make this a regular gig with the three of us. Join us here.

I just returned from a few days in the Twin Cities as a part of the Making Meaning Project with Ryan Burge and Tony Jones. A half dozen of us reviewed the data last week. The project is funded by a Templeton grant and has collected the largest trove of data on the Nones heretofore surveyed. Look for future posts and if you have questions, let me know.

Sneak Peak: The Nones are not who you think.

And: The folks who say they’re Spiritual But Not Religious aren’t either.

Now for the post with the most:

John 21.1-19

It is a marvel of our forgetfulness that we imagine the church was birthed in Paschal triumph.

The tomb was empty but the first Easter alleluia was not full-throated. The women ran from his grave, terrified by the angel’s news, never to share the resurrection word. The disciples on the road to Emmaus— having witnessed the death of God, decide to return home. The gospel’s chief apostle began his vocation “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord,” hardly an auspicious start to the faith. Meanwhile the conclusion to the Gospel of John reminds us the church was born in failure. After everything — after healings and exorcisms, after the raising of Lazarus, after the foot-washing and the ghastly death — the disciples are back in the boat. They’ve gone fishing. They’ve returned to the nets they laid down “immediately” upon Christ’s call.

When the world turns out not to be what you hoped, you do what you know.

You go “fishing.”

You survive.

Stanley Hauerwas writes, "The church is not the place of safety but the place of risk." They go fishing not because they are wicked, but because they are unimaginative.

The unimaginative Peter who brought a sword with him to the Garden of Gethsemane— so much for following the Prince of Peace— is the same pedestrian Peter who responds to the Death-shattering news of resurrection by attempting to resume his former life.

Just like us.

Unlike us, the risen Christ does not shame them for this failure of imagination.

Jesus does something far worse than scold, own, or troll them.

He calls them again.

He catches them, so to speak, again.

Indeed he must call the called anew.

If the Father had not raised him from the dead, then every moment he spent with the disciples was merely a lesson in godforsakeness.

As Wolfhart Pannenberg writes:

“The divine confirmation of Jesus in the Easter event extends also to his earthly ministry and on this basis to his proclamation of the divine rule and of its coming with himself. The implied claim of Jesus for his own person— namely, that the future of God is present in and by him— no longer seems to be human arrogance in the light of the Easter event. The resurrection of Jesus now gives confirmation that already in his earthly ministry he acted on the Father’s authority… the confirmatory thrust of the resurrection is that the Easter event has retroactive force…it confirmed not only his message and work but Jesus himself.”

The empty tomb casts everything that led to the cross in Easter light.

To word of Golgotha, Peter had recoiled. And Jesus had replied, “Get behind me, Satan!” Just so— of course— the risen Jesus had to call Peter all over again.

A surprise from my pilgrimage to the Holy Land a few years ago— Capernaum was an incredibly tiny village on the Sea of Galilee. The shore where Jesus of Nazareth called them to follow him was in shouting distance of the home of Peter’s mother-in-law. Likewise, the place where the risen Jesus summons them to follow him once again is the very spot on the beach where Mary’s boy had first invited them to become “fishers of men.”

Just as in the beginning, when he had called them from their nets, so now he calls them again — but this time after they know full well what following him means. Which is to say: they no longer have the excuse of ignorance.

The American church loves a second chance. We are a people addicted to second chances because we think grace means getting to do what we were doing before, but with a clean conscience.

Jesus doesn’t offer Peter a second chance.

He offers him death.

"When you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."

You thought the gospel was your ticket to living your best life now?

Welcome to the kingdom!

Here’s your cross.

Easter is not the escape from Jesus’ cruciform life.

Easter is its vindication.

As Robert Jenson puts it, “The gospel is not that we can have life without death, but that death is not the final word.” Peter’s restoration is not psychological therapy. Jesus doesn't sit Peter down and say, "You need to forgive yourself." He doesn't tell Peter that it’s okay, that everybody makes mistakes. He simply asks him, "Do you love me?" And because Peter is still Peter, all raw nerve and compulsive speech, he says yes— but notice how the yes becomes more painful with each asking.

Love is not a feeling.

It is not a sincerity test.

It is being conscripted into a life that is no longer your own.

"Feed my sheep." "Tend my lambs." "Feed my sheep." That is, take responsibility for a people you did not choose and would not choose, a people who will devour you as you try to feed them, a people prone to wandering, wolves, and lostness.

Ministry is not heroism. Ministry is not therapy. Ministry is not managerial efficiency.

Ministry is the slow martyrdom of tending to people who have no idea how to want what God wants for them.

And that, in case you missed it, is not a job description just for pastors. It is the vocation of the whole church. To love the world— and especially the very people who betray you, misunderstand you, and bore you— because Christ has fed us first.

Jesus’ breakfast on the beach is not sentimental. It is a foretaste of the Eucharist: a meal that gives life precisely because it costs life. Every time Christians so gather, we are not celebrating ourselves. We are rehearsing our death. "This is my body, broken for you." "This is my blood, poured out for you." And if you dare eat and drink, you are signing up for that life.

Peter’s restoration by Jesus on the beach (“Feed my lambs”) is exactly why John’s gospel does not include the Last Supper.

This is that.

Jesus says to Peter— and to us— not “Be successful.” Not “Fix the church.” He says, simply, “Follow me.” Follow me— into the company of the unlovable. Follow me— into the foolishness of feeding sheep who bite. Follow me— into death.

Resurrection is not an escape from death. Resurrection is God's refusal to let death have the final word. Which means we who follow the risen Christ must be a people who have already died to the lies of this world— the lies of safety, of success, of self-fulfillment — so that we can become a people made strange, a people made free, a people who know what love costs.

It’s no wonder we prefer to go fishing.

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We’ll be transitioning to Substack Live for the pods too, FYI.

The Big Relief: The Urgency of Grace for a Worn-Out World

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Hi Friends,

Here is a recent conversation with my friend David Zahl about his new book The Big Relief— get it now!

I’ve already used this book in my preaching, the highest praise a preacher can give a book. And, as I say in the recording, Mockingbird provided me the Big Relief at a time in my life I desperately needed it.

Dave is the founder and director of Mockingbird Ministries, editor-in-chief of the popular Mockingbird website (www.mbird.com), and cohost of The Mockingcast. He and his family live in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he also serves on the staff of Christ Episcopal Church.

Show Notes

Summary

In this conversation, Teer Hardy, Jason Micheli, and Dave Zahl explore the themes of grace, vulnerability, and the impact of technology on youth. They discuss Zoll's new book, 'The Big Relief,' which addresses the urgency of grace in a worn-out world. The discussion delves into personal reflections on writing, the importance of authenticity in preaching, and the challenges faced by young people today. The conversation also highlights the mission of Mockingbird as a community that fosters grace and understanding in a diverse audience.

Takeaways

Grace is essential for a worn-out world.

Vulnerability in writing leads to authenticity.

Imputation is a key concept in understanding grace.

Surrender is a hopeful act in the face of control.

Technology has a profound impact on youth's mental health.

Mockingbird serves as a platform for grace in everyday life.

Personal experiences shape our understanding of grace.

The importance of community in spiritual growth.

Emotional health is crucial in ministry and writing.

The journey of writing is often painful but necessary.

Sound Bites

"The urgency of grace for a worn out world."

"The grace of God is big, it's the big relief."

"The last time I cried was this morning."

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All Shall Be Saved…Because the Church has Painted It

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“Whoever knows the mystery of the cross and the tomb knows the logoi of all creatures. And whoever has been initiated in the ineffable power of the resurrection knows the purpose for which God originally made all things.”

— St Maximus the Confessor

A former journalist in my congregation approached me after worship to thank me for my sermon on Easter Sunday. Over the years, she told me, she had interviewed scores of biblical scholars hustling popular level books aimed at making a buck by stoking suspicion about a key item of creedal Christianity. You know the sort of which she spoke. Books like Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth posit Jesus as secret political seditionist. Seasonal pieces in National Geographic reliably deconstruct the dogma concerning the virginity of the Mother of God. Just this week Christianity Today featured a piece suggesting Christ was not nailed to the tree but strung from it with rope (snore).

Notice— In every instance the contrary take takes the historic truth to lie somewhere behind the testimony of scripture.

The former journalist in my parish has lost patience with what she now takes to be cynical (or self-interested) evasions of the straightforward claim of the gospel. Either the crucified was raised from the corruption in the tomb— an event in history— or he whom Rome killed remained dead.

True or false, the gospel purports to be news .

“Doubting” Thomas is right.

One pole of the gospel event will always necessarily be the assertion, “Jesus is risen.” If this is not the case, Christianity’s personal or social utility is beside the point; worse, it’s based on a fiction. The Christian kerygma is neither religious myth nor meaning-making experience; it is gospel.

To my parishioner’s expression of gratitude, I replied:

“That’s the problem with capitalism. The market incentivizes suspicion. Once you realize there’s a profit motive to raise doubts about faith, you should be more skeptical of popular scholars’ skepticism.”

Would an hermeneutic of suspicion be in vogue were it not for the marketplace?

To no small extent, the popular publishing industry has reduced proclamation to a whimper, and seminary often only further disempowers future preachers. They do so by ceding all authority to historical-critical study of the biblical passages. In fact, it is an odd sort of fundamentalist biblicism that supposes Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the lone texts by which we can interrogate the veracity of the Easter alleluia. Why should believers accept that the history behind the biblical texts is the actual objective truth?

As the theologian Peter Brunner insists:

Faith has its own access to history, and to history precisely in the common notion, to what actually happened.

It is an odd sort of fundamentalist biblicism that supposes Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the lone texts by which we can interrogate the veracity of the Easter alleluia.

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When Pope Francis Gave Me Jesus

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The sun was so strong the day I met the man formerly known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio my recollection locates it in the spring. Instead it was Indian summer. The recurrence of my cancer this December has occasioned a number of unhappy connections to my first bout ten years ago. A happy, surreal one— seeing the fat and happy grin on the face of Pope Francis as he placed the communion host in my hand.

A friend successfully advocated for a man wrongfully convicted of a cop-killing. For winning Dewayne’s release from death row in Texas, Brian became a hero to Catholic Charities. He secured tickets from them for the Papal Mass at the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. Forget the National Cathedral, the Basilica is by far DC’s most astonishing sacred space— it was the site of my wife’s graduation from law school and my youngest son’s graduation from high school. No senior valedictorian would dare quoting Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go underneath a giant mosaic of Christ the Pantocrator.

I began 2015 with emergency surgery; I’d been carrying around a tumor in my intestine the size of all the Chronicles of Narnia. Doctors gave me little time to recover from surgery before beginning a regimen of chemotherapy now considered too medieval to inflict on patients. By September 2015, each successive round of chemotherapy left me far weaker and more spent.

I was at my nadir when I attended the mass.

My suit barely fit me. My head was foggy. My chest itched at the spot they had installed a port. I had a chemo pump attached to me as I went through security. I thought I might pass out from the sun, several elderly attendees did, one onto my lap. The ground is level in more places than the foot of the cross: Michael Steele, the former Maryland Governor and GOP Chair, sat next to me. We exchanged pleasantries and names of mutual acquaintances and I thought of Paul’s great erasure in his Epistle to the Galatians, “There is now neither Jew nor Greek…”

When it came time to receive the Eucharist (the cup was withheld…despite what Stanley Hauerwas likes to argue, the Reformation was a good work of God), the instructions in the program invited us to walk towards the nearest purple umbrella. In a masterstroke of staggering efficiency, the sun umbrellas had suddenly appeared like poppies in a field.

At that point in my treatment, the odds looked about even that it was curtains for me. Plus, I figured, if I was going to violate protocol and sneak up to a table not normally my own, then I’d be damned if I was going to settle for a seminarian from Catholic University of America.

I was going to get the bread of heaven from the Big Guy himself.

So I played the cancer card.

Using my chemo pump as an ostentatious prop, I cut the line.

Jorge’s grin as he placed the host in my hand suggested he knew my trespass. To keep the joke running, I now keep the ticket from that day in my copy of the (Lutheran) theologian Gerhard Forde’s book Where God Meets Man.

It is ironic.

The church ruptured, West from East, in the Great Schism nearly a millennia ago, creating the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Prior to the divorce, as the creeds suggest, there was simply one holy and universal church. Among other items in dispute, the divide largely came down to the West’s insistence that the Bishop of Rome is the bishop among bishops. The bishop at the heart of Byzantium had an opinion on this assertion. Whatever else one might say about Pope Francis (and First Things, predictably, has leapt at the opportunity to speak ill of the dead), had his predecessors so conducted themselves Christ’s body might not have fractured in 1054.

Typically, Catholics do not invite their separated brothers and sisters to the Lord’s Table. The sacrament is a sign of unity in Christ, after all, and Christ’s body is not presently united. To gather at the table when we are in fact divided is to make a mockery of Christ. At least so goes the logic and I can empathize if not agree with it. It’s certainly preferable to a quasi pagan sentiment like, “Everyone’s welcome.” But receiving Jesus from Pope Francis and hearing the Latinized words I normally offer to outstretched hands, it struck me that Christ’s church is far more one body than we dare to believe. There are now, it seems to me, too many institutional incentives to keep the franchises from merging.

I had to hurry from the mass back to my car to exchange the emptied bag of chemo for a new one. I drove home that evening with poison in my system and— if the gospel is true— Jesus in my belly. The connections between me and the woman with the issue of blood are too many to deny. And I’ve now lived too long past the odds to bother with “sophisticated” embarrassment over a word like Providence.

Miracle even.

The media extols Pope Francis with the secular categories it has deemed acceptable for the public square— inclusion, justice, poverty. Leave it to the media to make a Roman Catholic Pontiff sound like a Mainline Protestant Liberal. Conservatives meanwhile mansplain that the chemist from Argentina was somehow not the intellectual peer to Benedict or John Paul. Films like the Two Popes and Conclave suggest all genuine theological disagreement is but a front in our culture war, a message the Vice President, a recent convert to Catholicism, seems to have taken to heart.

A Protestant, I will let others who know better parse the departed Pope’s legacy. Like the formerly blind man interrogated by the begrudgers in the Gospel of John, all I know is that he gave me Jesus.

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Part Two on the Pastor’s Table Podcast

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The Pastor’s Table Podcast from Northern Seminary recently invited me to be their guest. Here is the second part of our conversation:

Is the Church more than a symbol?

In Part 2, Jason Micheli returns to explore what it means to preach the gospel when life itself feels fragile. He shares how cancer reshaped his theology, why the Church must reclaim its sacramental identity, and how sermons should declare—not just instruct.

🎙️ In This Episode:

The theology of the cross vs. theology of glory

Why every sermon should offer a promise, not just a takeaway

Learning to trust the Church when healing doesn’t come

The sacred weirdness of taking Christian tradition seriously

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Christus Victor!

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Here is the most recent conversation on Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion.

Summary

This conversation delves into the themes presented in Fleming Rutledge's book, focusing on the concepts of apocalyptic and eschatology, the nature of Christ's victory, and the implications for the church and individual believers. The discussion highlights the importance of understanding apocalyptic language, the cosmic battle between good and evil, and the transformative power of the gospel in the context of human agency and divine action.

Takeaways

Apocalyptic themes reveal a cosmic battle between good and evil.

Eschatology is often misinterpreted as a linear timeline of events.

The resurrection is a pivotal apocalyptic event.

Human agency plays a significant role in the apocalyptic narrative.

Misinterpretations of apocalyptic language can lead to harmful ideologies.

The church must engage actively in the battle against sin and evil.

God's wrath is an expression of love aimed at restoration.

Apocalyptic events are personal and transformative, not just catastrophic.

The gospel has the power to change lives and communities.

Understanding apocalyptic themes can help dismantle illusions of separation.

Titles

Unraveling Apocalyptic Themes

The Cosmic Battle: Christus Victor Explained

Sound Bites

"I'm just trying to untangle my life."

"The victory is His."

"There is a war for love."

The Little Word Which Contains the World

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Acts 10.34-43

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed!

In a deed, the Father with their Spirit raised Jesus up from death.

What more am I to say?

This little word contains the whole world.

This little word— we call it the gospel— matters for all things that matter.

What else can I possibly say but to repeat it again?

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed!

In a deed. In history. In time and space and place. At concrete coordinates on a map: approximately31°47′1.87″N 35°13′47.92″E. There and then, the Almighty God of the multiverse vindicated Pilate’s victim by raising him from the tomb.

How can I possibly come tagging along after this little word and add words of my own?

I suppose I could say what Jesus poses to Martha just before he summons her dead brother from the grave. Martha’s brother Lazarus has been dead for four days. Jesus should be holding his nose so near the tomb. Instead, before he summons Lazarus from death, Jesus says to his sister Martha, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me, even though he dies, yet shall he live…Do you believe this?”

The question is contained in the Bible because the question is not meant for Martha alone.

Do you believe this?

I could add Christ’s question to this little word that contains the world.

Maybe I must.

After all, in the climactic chapter to his Epistle to the Corinthians the apostle Paul puts the stakes as bluntly as possible. “if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is in vain…if all we have is this life only, then we are of all people the most to be pitied.” Or as the theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg paraphrased Paul near the end of the last century, “If the event of Easter did not take place, then all discussion of its meaning is a waste of time.” In which case, if the answer to Christ’s question is “No, no we don’t really believe it” then I should spare you both the sermon and the sacrament.

Instead I simply should hand over the benediction, “I bless you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in peace.”

Only—

I cannot bless you in the Triune NAME.

If it is not actual that God has raised Jesus from the dead, then we know not who the true God is; hence, I cannot bless you under his proper name. In fact, I cannot even truthfully bless you with a generic commendation like “Vaya con Dios” Because if God is not whoever raised Jesus from the dead, if God is not whoever committed that act, in deed, then I do not know if having “God be with you” would be good news of any sort at all. Indeed, given the many gods on offer in our culture, having any of them with you is likely bad news indeed.

In which case, it might be safest for all of us if I but say, “Good afternoon. Goodbye.”

But, but, but— before you go!

Even if I do not deliver a benediction, we all should offer a confession to God (whatever may be his true name). Because of course, if the Father has not raised Mary’s boy from the dead and if Mary’s boy is therefore not simultaneously the Father’s only Son, then we are all misrepresenting God. With the very first verse of “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” all of us have violated the first and most crucial commandment.

As far as the Living God is concerned, there is no more offensive idol to worship than a dead man. As Paul writes in that same passage to Corinth, “If Christ has not been raised, you are still in your sins.” Not only is talking about the metaphorical meaning of Easter a waste of time, you are wasting your time.

To repent.

And turn to the true God (whomever it may be).

And one last item before you leave!

If Easter is untrue, in addition to a confession, we also should extend an apology.

To little Eloise.

We were all just accomplices to her baptism. We did not dedicate her like Baby Simba in the Lion King. We baptized her into Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. But if the little word on the end of that string is not true, then all that remains is suffering and death and life has no meaning other than its own refutation.

In which case, we should teach Eloise to eat, drink, and be nihilistic— because, LOL, nothing else matters.

If Easter isn’t, we should not have baptized her.

If God has not repudiated the rejection of Jesus, if God has not contradicted the condemnation of Christ with an empty tomb, then all we have done is wash Eloise in stale water and saddle her with a call and commission that leads no further than Calvary and its cross.

“I am the Resurrection and the Life,” Jesus poses to Martha, “Do you believe this?”

On Holy Saturday six years ago, the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof conducted an interview with the president of Union Theological Seminary, Serene Jones.

Kristof expressed his admiration for Jesus the Teacher, saying to Serene Jones, “For someone like myself, who is drawn to Jesus’ teaching but doesn’t believe in the resurrection, what am I? Am I a Christian?”

And the seminary president elaborated:

“For me, the message of Easter is that love is stronger than life or death. That’s a much more awesome claim than that they put Jesus in the tomb and three days later he wasn’t there. For Christians for whom the resurrection becomes a sort of obsession, that seems to me to be a pretty wobbly faith. What if tomorrow someone found the body of Jesus still in the tomb?

Would that then mean that Christianity was a lie?”

Serene Jones was roundly rebuked by church leaders for her interview.

Because, of course, yes!

Yes, it would be a lie!

What makes Christianity distinct from all other faiths is that Christianity is potentially falsifiable. Habeas corpus applies not only to Kilmar Garcia but to Jesus of Nazareth too. If someone produces the body, we are all wasting our time.

This is the premise of every apostolic sermon in the Book of Acts, including Peter’s sermon to the Gentiles in Acts 10. Peter does not preach to them a religious message but an historical record. Or as Paul preaches later in Acts to a pagan king, “These things did not happen in a corner.”

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed!

In a deed.

If not in a deed, how else do you account for the preacher in this passage?

Peter thrice denied Jesus. Peter abandoned Jesus to his cross. Sometime on Holy Saturday Peter snuck away to resume his fishing business— that’s how cowardly and unimaginative was Peter.

But after Easter, Peter ventures all the way to Rome armed with only this little word. Peter would not have boldly accepted his own cross— he was crucified upside down in the year 64 AD— if all he believed about Christ’s death was what Captain Kirk says of Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, “He’s not really dead as long as we remember him.”

Maybe that’s good enough for a seminary president, but no! It’s not good enough for me, and it’s certainly not good enough for the Martys. The saints did not die for sentimentality.

Besides, the resurrection riddle only begins with Peter.

Jesus’ trial and execution wholly disenchanted and scattered his followers, on this both scripture and extra-biblical sources agree. A mere few days later, those same sources concur, a community of first commandment-obeying Jews had formed who believed Jesus lived as Israel’s LORD.

The question is unavoidable for believer and unbeliever alike.

What happened to make the difference?

“What if tomorrow someone found the body of Jesus still in the tomb? Would that then mean that Christianity was a lie?”

Yes.

Yes, it would.

The Romans understood the stakes of this little word better than many Christians today. The story the Romans put out was just what Mary Magdalene first thought upon encountering the empty tomb; someone stole his body. In fact, Pontius Pilate turned his little patch of the empire upside down in an attempt to find the dead body by which he could discredit the nascent movement. As Wolfhart Pannenberg comments, “The message of the resurrection that the disciples brought back to Jerusalem could not have a survived a single hour if the body could have been shown to be in the tomb.” And it’s not as if his tomb was in a Galilee far far away. I have been to Jerusalem and the Old City. It is a small, compact place. On a quiet day, you could have heard the nails being hammered into his flesh from the place where the cock crowed three times.

The distance from his cross to his tomb is shorter still.

This makes it all the more remarkable that there is no trace of any contention against Christians that the body was still in the tomb. There is no ancient argument— at all— that his body remained buried. We have ancient correspondence between Roman proconsuls ridiculing the very first Christians. We have the Jewish trial record for the prosecution of the apostle James, charged with blasphemy for worshipping the Risen Jesus as LORD. We know precisely where was the home in Capernaum of the mother-in-law of the apostle Peter. “These things did not happen in a corner.” Yet there is not a single record of Jew or Gentile contending that the body remained in the tomb. As Pannenberg notes, “The force of this fact is often underestimated.”

And do not forget.

If it was a lie, if God had not raised Jesus from the dead, then this little word is the last message his followers would have elected to concoct. The point of crucifixion was not the pain and the suffering but the shame and degradation. In crucifixion, Rome sought to render its victims less than human, to nail them into oblivion.

Jesus is nailed to a tree for sedition.

Jesus is crucified for pretending to be the messiah.

Consider the alleged lie.

If you were a member of a tiny insurrectionist movement whose leader just suffered a mode of execution so ghastly that polite Romans would not utter the name of it and if you were in hiding lest the same fate befall you, it would not occur to you to burst forth into public with this little word. You’d deny you ever knew him, lock yourself behind closed doors, and shutter the windows, which is exactly what John says the disciples do.

Only to an insane person would it occur to proclaim:

“The crucified is really alive! And therefore, the perceived threat to Pilate and the chief priests remain! And actually, it’s much worse now because not even the Bad Guys’ biggest weapon— Death— defeated him!”

This is not what you would think to announce.

Other than an a priori determination not to believe in the resurrection, there is no evidential basis for its denial.

As the theologian Robert Jenson presses this point:

“Here is where this alleged piece of news either grabs you or it does not. If it does grab you, if you believe Jesus was raised Christians will attribute this to the work of the Holy Spirit.”

This is true charismatic Christianity.

If you but desire to believe he is risen indeed, then the Holy Spirit has alighted upon you.

In his Letter to the Corinthians, Paul names over five hundred people encountered by the no-longer-dead Jesus. I cannot name that many names, but I can name a few only one whom is named Jason.

Diane was a member of my first congregation in New Jersey. The first funeral I ever preached was for Diane’s father. A Phillies fan, he came home from work one afternoon, went down to the basement, and, resorting to the deer rifle he’d used in the Pine Barrens, he remained in the basement until the police came to retrieve him. In that meantime, the Risen Jesus came to his daughter, Diane.

“He was standing in the kitchen, on the linoleum floor, in front of the microwave and toaster oven. I don’t know how I knew it was him, because he didn’t say anything at first, but I knew he wanted to comfort me for some reason. Jesus wanted to comfort me, and here I was embarrassed by all the dirty dishes in the sink.”

I laughed a nervous little laugh.

“And then he said to me— not with words exactly,” Diane told me, “He said, “All is forgiven, your Father and you both. Do not be afraid. Everything is going to be okay.”

“But…” I fumbled to find the thread, “But how do you know it was Jesus talking to you?”

She put her hands on her hips like I was the personification of institutional failure.

“Well, you tell me, preacher— does that not sound like something Jesus would say?”

Rome crucified approximately one hundred and fifty thousand victims across its vast empire, all of whose names are lost to history. Save one. I am convinced that we would not know the name of Jesus if God had not raised him from the dead.

But what is good about this news is not the fact of the empty grave. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in Discipleship, “The resurrection is not the solution to the problem of death.” Or as Pannenberg puts the same point, “In this event of Easter the appearance and possibility of eternal life is not the issue.” That is, more important than the truth of the empty tomb is the announcement of who occupies it no longer.

The subject of the sentence makes it good news: “Jesus is risen!”

Vladimir Putin has stolen twenty-thousand children from Ukraine. If the Easter message was “Vladimir is back from the dead!” Easter would not be a happy occasion. Indeed eternity would be a torment. The gospel is good news precisely because— only because— it is Jesus who now lives. A man with a history. A man who invited us to address his Father as our Father. A man who befriended outcasts, ate and drank and partied with sinners and showed them all to the front of the kingdom line. A man who wept for his friend Lazarus and went all the way to death to raise up a grieving father’s little girl. A man who insisted his Father is every bit the resemblance of the father ready to rejoice over the return of his lost son. The vacancy in the grave is the vindication of its particular former occupant. And the specific person who is indeed risen lived a life that the New Testament can sum up as sheer love.

The good news in “Jesus is risen!” is Jesus.

Jesus is what is gospel in the gospel, “Christ is risen!”

The good news is not a common noun: eternal life.

The good news is a proper name: Jesus.

Indeed because he lives, unlike the promises we make to one another, none of his promises are bounded by death. They are now unconditional; therefore, by his authority, every promise I can make to you on the basis of his words and work are unconditional.

Paul names over five hundred names.

I can’t name that many of you, but I do know many of you.

One of you is wandering in the wilderness of an unresolved divorce. In the name of the Jesus Christ, I promise you. There is hope for the future.

A couple among you here constantly fret they have not done enough— or perhaps done too much— for their troubled son. Jesus is risen; just so, I promise you. Every sad thing will come untrue.

Another set of parents here have a daughter recently admitted to a mental health hospital. I promise you. The LORD is with her. How can I be so certain? Because the one who said so is not dead.

I cannot name five hundred, but I do know more than a few of you.

One of you, just this year, had no choice but to commit a violent act. I promise you. Your ledger is as black as his tomb is empty. Your sins are forgiven.

Another of you was an agent-in-charge thirty years ago at the site of the bombing in Oklahoma City. Just yesterday you told me how you’re haunted by the memories still. I promise. You will be freed.

Someone else here must persistently justify his politics to others. I promise you. You are justified by faith because the one who gave his life as an act of faith to the Father is risen.

One family here lives in fear of their immigration status. Several families here anxiously await the future of their federal employment. I promise all of you. The poor will be lifted up. Strangers will be welcomed. The present evil age will end. How do I know? Because the one who so preached, lives. I promise you. Everything will be okay. And I can make that promise even as someone who self-administers chemotherapy twice a day.

There are not five hundred but there are more than a few of you who still mourn the loss of husbands you lost over a year ago, another who lost a wife too young and much too suddenly, another a son— Neil, another who grieves a father whose long life is nevertheless a sorrow.

I can promise you— without condition, no ifs ands or buts— not because the after life is natural or automatic but because Jesus is risen. Because he lives, so shall you live again with them.

One believer online with us this morning struggles with bipolar and one with addiction, another grieves for her alcoholic son and another rages at the injustices faced by the inmates to whom she ministers in prison. Still others with us online struggle with the diminishment of old age. I can promise you. Everything broken will be mended.

One day—

Every tear will be wiped from every eye.

Every prodigal will come home.

There will be no more mourning, no more crying— pain will be no more.

The persecuted will own the keys to the kingdom.

The peacemakers will be called sons and daughters of God.

The merciful will inherit everything.

Justice will roll down like many waters.
And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Swords will be beaten into plough shares.

Wolves and lambs will feast with one another not on another.

Lions will eat straw.

And the Serpent— the Accuser, the Devil, the voice in the back of your head— will be no more.

I promise you.

How can I make such a promise?

How can I promise you what only God can promise?

Because:

Christ is risen.

Common nouns— the after life, eternity, light at the end of the tunnel— can’t make you any promises.

The hereafter can’t say, “All your sins are forgiven.”

I’ve known several people who’ve seen the light at the end of the tunnel, but, thus far, that light hasn’t managed to say anything to a single one of them.

Heaven may be a “place” but it can’t make you a promise.

But I can.

And you can.

Because Jesus is risen indeed.

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The Tomb Becomes Empty As The Temple Was Empty

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This painting is "The Dead Christ" (1875) by Vasili Ivanovich Surikov, a Russian realist painter known for his historical scenes and dramatic use of light and composition. The image depicts Christ's lifeless body after the Crucifixion, rendered with raw emotional intensity and anatomical realism, emphasizing the human suffering of the subject.

At some point after three in the afternoon on Good Friday, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus lay to rest the body of the dead Jesus in a newly hewn garden tomb. The corpse of Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim would have appeared similar to how Surikov depicts it in “The Dead Christ.”

From Friday afternoon onward, Jesus is every bit as dead as one day you will be dead.

He is finished.

But at some point— like Marty McFly’s family in the photograph— as Holy Saturday turns to the third day, the tomb no longer looks the way Surikov paints it. Whither the corpse of Christ? Does it disappear only to reappear, as with the breaking of bread on the road to Emmaus? Does the dead Jesus, as it were, “wake up,” roll away the stone, and walk out of the tomb like the astonished Lazarus in his grave clothes? Or is the body of the dead Jesus transfigured?

The Gospel of John provides a clue in his resurrection account; the passage assigned for Easter Sunday functions also as a story for Holy Saturday, making Easter more mysterious than simply a merciful surprise.

If you read John’s Gospel closely, the tomb is not empty.

It is full.

Notice the detail John gives you.

First, Mary faces the tomb and addresses the angels, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Next, verse fourteen, John tells you that Mary turns. Her back is to the tomb now. And Mary “sees” Jesus but she doesn’t recognize him as Jesus. Supposing him to be the gardener, she says to the man in front of her, “Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

And then— pay attention, John reports in verse sixteen that Jesus says to her, “Mary.”

And Mary turns, John says.

She turns in the direction of his voice.

She turns towards the tomb so that her back is again to the man she took for the gardener. Mary’s facing the tomb when she says, “Rabboni! Teacher!” She’s talking to the tomb. And it’s from that same direction that the voice of the Risen Christ corrects her, “Do not cling to me.”

Mary’s facing the tomb when she says, “Rabboni! Teacher!”

But again, notice— John hasn’t said a word about Mary grasping anyone. Rather, she’s facing the tomb and addressing him as “Teacher,” and he replies, “Do not cling to me.”Which is to say, “I am not who you have known me to be. I am more than you have known me to be. I am free of even your memories of me.”

And then Mary turns again and she runs. And she tells the disciples, no longer calling him “my lord” but “The LORD.”

The LORD.

That is, she identifies the Risen Jesus with the LORD who dwelt invisibly in the Temple, the God whose presence looked like absence.

Thus, just as the resurrection requires Christians to rework our assumptions of what constitutes a “body,” our definition of the empty tomb must be more nuanced.

As Robert Jenson concludes his chapter “Resurrection:”

“The organism that was Jesus’ availability— that was his body— until he was killed would have as a corpse continued to be an availability of this person, of the kind that tombs and bodies of the dead always are. It would have been precisely a relic; such as the saints of all religions have. Something other sacrament and church would have located the LORD for us, would have provided a direction for devotion; and that devotion wold have been to a saint, and so would have been something other than faith and obedience to a living LORD.

The tomb, we may therefore cautiously judge, had to be empty after the Resurrection for the Resurrection to be what it is. We can, of course, say nothing at all about what anyone would have seen who was in the tomb between the burial and the first appearances.

If the tomb marked by the Church of Holy Sepulcher is indeed where Christ lay, then it is empty not by inadvertence but as the Temple of Israel was empty.”

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