INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Year B - Easter Sunday

 

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 an Old Testament selection.  The thrust of Peter's message, however, is the central theme of Easter.

 

The resurrection confirmed for all people and all time that Jesus is Lord, not Caesar, whom the centurion would have called by that title.  The setting in a Gentile officer’s quarters, the assembled audience, mostly Gentiles to whom this Good News was proclaimed, and the linking of gospel and prophecy underline the universality of Peter's message.

 

ISAIAH 25: 6-9.  (Alternate)  The prophet rejoices in God’s future deliverance of Israel from oppression and the rebuilding of Jerusalem as the holy city of God. Although, it is likely that this prophecy was uttered after the return from exile in Babylon in 539 BCE, early Christians found its sentiments, including Paul and John, the seer of Revelation, suitable to celebrate the victory of Easter.

 

PSALM 118:1‑2, 14‑24.  This song of victory may have been composed to celebrate some unknown military triumph.  In later Jewish rituals it served as a special litany for festive occasions.  It was a favourite of Martin Luther which he said had helped him out of grave distress.  It is still appropriate as a hymn of Easter thanksgiving.

 

1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-11.   Paul introduces his remarkable interpretation of the resurrection with a brief survey of some of Jesus’ resurrection appearances, including the one he himself experienced. This event, he claims, is the heart of the gospel he and all the apostles proclaimed and everyone must believe to experience the presence of the living Christ.

 

JOHN 20:1‑18.  The Easter story always leaves us with more questions than answers.  Note who it was that first found the stone rolled away from the tomb.  Matthew also names Mary Magdalene as one of the two women who were the first witnesses to the resurrection.  Doesn't that say something about the importance of women in the early church?  Could Mary Magdalene herself have been the original source for this report?

 

MARK 16:1-8. (Alternate)  Mark ends his gospel leaving his audience with many unanswered questions: What happened after Jesus was buried? Who moved the stone at the entrance of the sepulchre? How was “he raised?” Who was the “young man in white?” How could he “go ahead (of the disciples) into Galilee?” The women who first witnessed the empty tomb could only respond in fear to what they had been told. Quite naturally they fled from the scene. Wouldn’t we all do the same? Are our questions about the resurrection our own way to avoid belief?

 

 

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 the alternate 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 in a Gentile officer’s quarters, the assembled audience, mostly Gentiles to whom this Good News 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 and summoning Peter, listening to Peter's sermon and accepting baptism with all his household, Cornelius symbolizes the distinctive element of the Christian gospel: God intends all people to receive the Holy Spirit and the gift of eternal life on the same basis, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, not through obedience to the law.

 

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’ witness 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 it was those Jewish Christians who 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 contain a prayer for the temple and the whole 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 risen from the dead. Martin Luther, the great German Reformer of the 16th 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? At Easter time in any recent year rockets, bombs and shells were falling indiscriminately on the people of many ethnically diverse European, Asian or African people. Bloody tribal conflicts have plunged the world into brutal struggles for power in nation-states where boundaries had been imposed a century or two ago by former colonial masters. Our memories of war in the 20th century, history's bloodiest, and continuing into the 21st, 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 the following 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)

 

 

1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-11.  From the moment it was first experienced Christians have been trying to understand the meaning of the resurrection. Being one of the foremost voices in the apostolic community, Paul gave all future generations of believers one of the best interpretations of what has been sufficient grounds for faith for many since that time. In these few verses he introduces his belief in the resurrection with a brief survey of some of Jesus’ resurrection appearances, including the one he himself experienced. This event, he claims, is the heart of the gospel he and all the apostles proclaim and everyone must believe to be saved.

 

Most of the instances Paul cited cannot be identified with those reported in the four Gospels and Acts. Yet they share several common features with those other reports. Except for Paul himself, they were granted to those who were already disciples but not all had been called to the apostolic ministry by Christ himself. They also exhibited divergent features which distinguished one appearance from another, although Paul made nothing of this.

 

One of the distinctive experiences Paul reported was “to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive.” Scholars have wondered inconclusively if this is a reference to the Pentecost experience in Acts 2. Unique to Paul’s list, however, is the appearance to James. Only the apocryphal Gospel According to Hebrews makes any reference to this. This was a lost Greek gospel current in the 2nd century and referred to by Clement and Origen (both 2nd century scholars) as well as the historian Eusebius (ca. 260-340). That such an experience did take place for James (brother of Jesus) can be assumed from the well substantiated fact that James became the recognized leader of the Jerusalem church soon afterwards.

 

Paul defended his experience of the resurrection with humility by appealing to the grace of God (vss. 9-10). He admitted that he had persecuted the church and that by grace alone he had been granted an experience of the risen Christ. Typically, he also claimed that he had worked harder than the others in the mission of making the good news of the resurrection known. At the same time, he acknowledged that this too had been the work of God’s grace through him. Finally, he asserted that the reason for his unusual and untimely experience had been so that the Corinthians might come to believe.

 

Paul subsequently went on to explain that these were spiritual experiences of meeting the risen Christ, but they were not evidence of a physical resurrection. He stated unequivocally in vs. 50 that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” Hence we are wholly justified in regarding the appearances Paul and others describe as experiences of the living Christ in this present world as spiritual and so distinct from the later doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Of course, as Paul so eloquently stated, all depends on faith, which is again a gift of divine grace.

 

After examining six theories of the resurrection of Jesus which he found inadequate, Geza Vermes, professor emeritus of Jewish Studies at Oxford University, came to the conclusion that it can only have been the spiritual experience of the living presence of their living Lord that enabled the first Christians to believe that Jesus had risen. This compelled them to preach, heal and expel demons with “the charismatic potency imparted to them by Jesus during his ministry.” Vermes concluded his analysis of the Gospel narratives of the resurrection and other references to it in the New Testament and in other contemporary Jewish literature with these words:

 

“The conviction in the spiritual presence of the living Jesus accounts for the resurgence of the Jesus movement after the crucifixion. However, it was the supreme doctrinal and organizational skill of Saint Paul that allowed the nascent Christianity to grow into a viable and powerful Resurrection-centred world religion.

 

“Resurrection in the hearts of men may strike a note of empathy even among today’s sceptics and cynics. Whether or not they adhere to a formal creed, a good many men and women of the twenty-first century may be moved and inspired by the mesmerizing presence of the teaching and example of the real Jesus alive in their mind.”  (The Resurrection: History and Myth, Doubleday, 2008.)

 

 

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 in 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 and possibly mental nature of her disease. She was also a woman who had significant relationships with other women, at least one of whom, Joanna, had significant social 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. (Legend has it that she had owned a large olive oil press at Magdala.) 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. In his recent biographical study of Mary Magdalene, Bruce Chilton credits her with being one of the foremost disciples of Jesus and one of the chief voices behind the resurrection tradition in John.

 

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 1st 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 that she instantly recognized surely shows how mutual were the feelings between them. Such speculations were the inspiration for a little known novel by the English clergyman and poet, John Oxenham, The Hidden Years, which described the relationship as an earlier romance between Mary and Jesus which both sublimated to a higher call. This, of course, contrasts with the popular novel by Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code, based on the legend that the Holy Grail consisted of the putative marriage and descendants of Mary Magdalene and Jesus. Both ancient legend and modern novel are fictitious, although an earlier so-called historical study of the legend by Michael Baigent, The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, did attempt give it greater credibility.

      

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. His living presence in the hearts and minds of all believers is the strength and comfort of the church in good times and bad. For the church to lose faith in the resurrection is to lose the power of God to love the world as God loves it.

 

 

MARK 16:1-8. (Alternate)  Mark ends his gospel leaving his audience with many unanswered questions: Why did he end his narrative so abruptly? Did he not know the traditions the other Gospels included? Was he too a skeptic even as he wrote? Or was he interrupted in his task and never returned to finish the story of what happened next? Who moved the stone at the entrance of the sepulchre? How was “he raised?” Who was the “young man in white?” How could he “go ahead (of the disciples) into Galilee?” The women who first witnessed the empty tomb could only respond in fear to what they had been told. Quite naturally they fled from the scene. Wouldn’t we all do the same? Are our questions about the resurrection our own way to avoid belief?

 

Many speculative answers have been given to these questions over the years. As far back as apostolic times people have sincerely doubted that the resurrection actually happened. The latest of these attempts to explain or justify an alternative to the resurrection the book stores a few years ago. It was excerpted and critiqued in Maclean’s, Canada’s national newsmagazine (April 3, 2006). Michael Baigent’s The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up In History (HarperCollins, 2006) may well have stimulated conversations in some congregations, but actually added little to the story or the questions that Mark leaves unanswered. Baigent does note, however, that the account of Jesus’ burial does have a curious anomaly: The Greek text of vss. 15:43 and 45 uses different words, soma and ptoma, in reference to Jesus’ body. He gives considerable weight this anomaly because soma is the Greek word for a living body, while ptoma is the word for a corpse. A final comment in the Maclean’s critique of this book by Brian Bethune hits the mark: “Even for those who deny his divinity, and yearn for a new version of the story, the truth about Jesus is a story of faith.” 

 

Faith is the only way to deal with the brief ending of Mark’s story too. Perhaps that is exactly what Mark intended. A New Testament professor of my acquaintance made the intriguing presumption that “the young man dressed in a white robe” (16:5) was the same young man who ran away naked from the Garden of Gethsemane (14:51-52). His supposition that this may have been was Mark’s own signature has no more validity than Frank Morison’s conjecture that it was the soldiers placed to guard the tomb who moved the stone when some totally unexpected event occurred. (Morison, Frank. Who Moved The Stone? Zondervan, 1958, 1976. Reprint of 1930 edition by Faber and Faber.)

 

As much as we would wish it were not so, faith finds no proof in our idle speculations. We can only say with Paul, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in yours sins. … We are of all people most to be pitied.”

 

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