INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS:

ACTS 10:34-43. Peter's sermon to the household of Cornelius, the Roman centurion in Caesarea, may seem a strange lesson to be read instead of a traditional Old Testament selection. The thrust of Peter's message, however, is the central theme of Easter. The resurrection of Jesus confirmed for all people and for all time that he is Lord of all (vs. 38). The setting, the people to whom it was proclaimed, and the linking of gospel and prophecy underline the universality of Peter's message.

Though Peter is the spokesperson and his sermon as succinct a summary of the gospel as Acts provides, Cornelius occupies the centre stage in this story. As an “upright and god-fearing” Gentile “well-spoken of by the whole Jewish nation” (vs. 22), he bridges the gap between Judaism and Christianity. He represents the new reality that the Christian gospel introduced and yet maintained the rooting of the new in the seed-bed of the old. By seeking out Peter, listening to Peter’s sermon and accepting of baptism with all his household, Cornelius symbolizes the distinctive element of the Christian gospel: God intends Gentiles to receive the Holy Spirit and the gift of eternal life on the same basis as Jews, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, not through obedience to the Law of Moses.

The Spirit, however, is no mere supporting actor in this drama. The story adds yet another piece of accumulating evidence that the book is really about “The Acts of the Spirit,” rather than “The Acts of the Apostles.” Peter had already had a revelation in his dream in Joppa as to what the Spirit was doing through the apostles witnessing to what they had seen and heard (vss.9-23). Now his fellow Jews were astonished that the Spirit came on the household of Cornelius while Peter was still speaking (vs. 45). Presumably those Jews administered the rite of baptism to the assembled congregation on whom the Spirit fell in such dramatic fashion (vs. 47).

There is also a secondary purpose to this story: to show that Peter established the universality of the new faith before Paul began his Gentile mission. In fact, 11:1-18 goes on to tell how Peter had to withstand the opposition of the Jerusalem church by repeating all over again the story of his dream in Joppa, his summons to Caesarea, and the gift of the Spirit to the household of Cornelius. The end result was that the Jerusalem church, still regarded as the centre of apostolic authority, gave official recognition to the new outreach among the Gentiles (11:18).

At the heart of this outreach ministry was the resurrection story as the essential ingredient of faith for people of every age.

PSALM 118:1-2, 14-24. This song of victory may have been composed to celebrate some unknown military triumph. It has been suggested that it referred to the lifting of the siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib of Assyria in 701 BCE during the reign of Hezekiah. (2 Kings 18-19) Vss. 17-18 any also refer to Hezekiah’s illness as told in 2 Kings 20. In later Jewish rituals it served as a special litany on festive occasions. According to the Mishnah, this psalm was especially appropriate for Succoth, the harvest thanksgiving festival. Vss. 19-24 are a prayer for the temple. The psalm ends with a striking benediction reiterating the praise of vs. 1.

All these prior uses make it appropriate as a hymn of Easter thanksgiving. Obviously the apostolic church found in it plenty to remind them of the joy they felt on realizing that Christ had indeed been raised from the dead. Martin Luther, the great German Reformer of the 16^th century, said it had frequently helped him out of grave distress.

Another ambivalent concern remains for the spiritually sensitive. Why should a military victory or recovery from illness be considered as metaphors for the resurrection? During the past decade, as Easter celebrations were being prepared, rockets, bombs and shells were falling indiscriminately on the people of an ethnically diverse European nation like Serbia. Bloody tribal conflicts plunged several parts of Africa into brutal struggles for power in nation-states with boundaries imposed by former colonial masters. Small bands of terrorists and mighty national armies have

engaged in bloody conflicts in the name of God, religious traditions and mistaken perceptions of the freedom, peace and justice God requires of all peoples. Our memories of war in the 20^thcentury, history’s bloodiest, do not lead us to conclude that victory for any faction or alliance can be assured. Diseases once thought to be conquered are returning with renewed immunity to antibiotic drugs. Yet from the time of Paul until now, Christian hymnody has seen the resurrection as a victory. (Rom. 8: 35; 1 Cor. 15:54-55; Eph. 4:8; “The strife is o’er, the battle done;” “Christ is in triumph now ascended.”)

From time immemorial the greatest enemy of humanity has been death itself. Throughout the Old Testament, the Hebrew tradition could reach no further beyond this life than a hopeless, shadowy existence in Sheol. The great hope which Christian faith introduced is nothing short of the overcoming of death and the gift of eternal life in fellowship with God and Christ Jesus.

Amid the ruins of World War II, the British historian, Arnold Toynbee penned these eloquent words at the end of his summary of the universal human search for a saviour:

“At the final ordeal of death, few, even of these would-be saviour gods, have dared to put their title to the test by plunging into the icy river. And now, as we stand and gaze with our eyes fixed on the farther shore, a single figure rises from the flood and straightway fills the whole horizon. There is the Saviour; ‘and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand; he shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied.’ (Isa. 53:10-11)

COLOSSIANS 3:1-4. Paul's words open to us another dimension of Easter. It is not only a celebration of Jesus' resurrection, but also of our having been raised with Christ.

Behind this brief passage are two powerful elements of the apostolic tradition, one of which Paul himself developed. First is the metaphor of baptism by immersion as a symbolic experience of dying and being raised with Christ. (Rom. 6:3-4; Col.2:12) The second is the narrative of the ascension of the risen Christ to the right hand of God. (Luke 24:51; Acts 1:9)

As a former Pharisee, Paul was familiar with that tradition’s expectation that when the Messiah came, the dead would rise from their graves to share the Messiah’s glory. The ancient cemetery spread across the western flank of the Mount of Olives is so placed that all Jews buried there will be ready for the messianic resurrection. Today, ultra-orthodox Jews make sure that every bone and piece of flesh from the victims of massacres are carefully gathered and meticulously buried to await that glorious day.

Paul had transferred his Pharisaic convictions to his post-conversion experience of the resurrection of Jesus. The difference, however, lay in the effect of his dramatic meeting the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. (Acts 9:3-9; Gal. 1:13-16; Phil. 3:7-11) How Paul’s conversion and subsequent spiritual discipline had transformed his life gave personal authority to his counsel in this passage in Colossians. Resurrection for those who had come to know and put their trust in the risen Christ was not a striving for self-righteous moral perfection, nor a far-off perfect and eternal life. For Paul life had become a daily walk in the presence of the living Christ who was still very much alive in this mortal realm. This had life-changing spiritual and ethical dimensions that Paul himself had discovered and now urged the Colossians to enter into. As vs. 4 implies, Christ *is* his life now and could be so for the Colossians.

In his commentary on Colossians, Eduard Schweizer points out that “already in the early church (this passage) is interpreted by means of the distinction between a spiritual resurrection that has already occurred but is not yet visible and a resurrection of the body or the flesh, apportioned to everyone.... On this view, the first resurrection is at an early stage understood in particular as an awakening to an ethically new way of life.” [Schweizer, Eduard. *The Letter to the Colossians: A Commentary.* Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1982. p. 287.]

More than an unprecedented demonstration of divine power, the resurrection shows that Christ now lives in those open to receive forgiveness of sin and the gift of life than bridges death. For that person, life is not a matter of conforming to external rules, but of being transformed daily in our thinking, our ethics and our actions.

JOHN 20:1-18. Like Matthew, John also names Mary Magdalene as one of the women who first witnessed to the resurrection. In John, however, Mary plays a sole and primary role. This says something about the importance place of women in the early church. In Jewish culture, no woman was ever allowed to be a witness.

But why Mary and not one of the other women? According to the tradition reported Mark 16:9 and Luke 8:2, Mary had been healed of some unspecified sickness described in both instances as “seven demons,” which only indicated the seriousness of her disease. She was also a woman who had significant relationships with other women, at least one of whom, Joanna, had some stature as the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward. She may also have had some independent financial resources to share with the fellowship of disciples, for she accompanied them from Galilee to Jerusalem. Her devotion to Jesus found expression in practical service to the company (Luke 8:1-3; Mark 15:41). She was present at the crucifixion and came early to the tomb.

All of this points to the probability that Mary’s devotion went beyond friendship to a deeper, more intimate love. She was not the prostitute identified in Luke 7:36-50, even though immediately after telling that woman’s story, Luke formally introduced Mary into his narrative. Her love for Jesus, however, was an expression of that kind of love of which Jesus spoke in John 15:12-17. Throughout that passage John explicitly used the word which is the cognate verb of *agapé.*

Is it not likely, therefore, that in writing for his own community at the end of the 1^st century, John would tell this tender story about this woman whose love brought her to the tomb where she became the first witness to the resurrection? Note, however, that her first reaction was astonishment and probably also fear which caused her to rush back to tell Peter and “the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved” (*’ephilei* in this instance) that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb. (20:1-2)

The rest of the story about Jesus meeting and identifying himself to Mary in a special way which she instantly recognized surely shows that the feelings between them were mutual. Such speculations in the early 20^th century were the inspiration for a little known novel, *The Hidden Years,* by the English clergyman and poet, John Oxenham, which described the relationship as an earlier romance between Mary and Jesus which both felt inspired to sublimate to a higher call. A very recent fictional thriller, *The Da Vinci Code* by Dan Brown, makes the marriage of Jesus and Mary an important aspect of its plot.

The Easter story leaves all of us with more questions than answers. Even Jesus' most intimate disciples, Peter and John, did not understand the full significance of what they had seen. In vss. 17-18, Mary was given the commission of telling the disciples the meaning of what had happened that morning when a new day dawned for all of them and for us: Jesus had not only been raised from the dead, he is now and forever shall be sovereign Lord and God.

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