Tag: Easter

Although “He is Risen” has become the catchcry for Easter Sunday, that is, in fact, not the first step in the process. Before the women, at the tomb, are told “he is risen”, they are first told, “he is not here”.

Actually, I would like to see Easter Sunday become “He Is Not Here Day”. Imagine how that might help to reshape our faith. We would first need to mull over the affirmation that Jesus, the one who was crucified, died, and laid in the tomb, awaiting burial … was no longer there! He is not here. He is risen.

Mark tells the story of the “He Is Not Here” moment, with great skill. Mark’s Gospel offers a curious, seemingly incomplete ending: Jesus, dead on the cross, has been buried in the tomb. The women come to anoint the body, but they discover, to their surprise, that the tomb is empty.

And that is where the story ends. The women come, in grief, as mourners, to say their farewells….but they cannot bring about closure, for the tomb has been opened, and the body which they were to anoint has disappeared. He is not here. He is risen.

Paradoxically, it is only through the discovery of absence that a sense of the ongoing presence of Jesus can be identified. ‘He is not here. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’

Only in absence is the presence realised. Only through the empty tomb, are the women able to begin to perceive of the risen, ongoing presence of Jesus. This is the gift of the Markan account to people of faith.

Of course, the other Evangelists are quite uneasy with this ending, and they each provide some stories of how and where and when the disciples did actually encounter the risen Jesus. Even Mark’s Gospel receives a number of variant endings, offering to resolve the tension through providing accounts of these encounters.

But the story has this simmering tension embedded right at its heart.

He is not here. He is risen.

I would like to think that we could afford a day, or maybe even a week, to ponder this mystery: paradox at the heart of the story of Jesus, and the paradox of the ways that he engages with his followers in their lives.

His absence creates pain; the first challenge of Easter (on this He Is Not Here Day) is, how do we deal with this painful absence?

See also https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/21/the-tomb-is-empty-he-is-not-here-he-is-risen/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/20/a-time-in-between-the-times-a-space-in-no-space/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/easter-in-christian-tradition-and-its-relation-to-jewish-tradition/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/sacrificial-death-and-liberating-life-at-the-heart-of-easter/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/17/the-death-resurrection-and-ascension-of-jesus-in-lukes-orderly-account/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/holy-week-the-week-leading-up-to-easter/

It was the day of Preparation, and the sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments.

On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.

While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”

Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

Luke 23:54-24:12

There are two striking and unfamiliar elements in the story of the empty tomb, which we hear anew each Easter Sunday morning. The first has to do with who is there. And the second has to do with who is NOT there.

Who is there, that early morning, in the tomb where the body of Jesus had been laid, just a few days earlier? Who are the ones who see, and hear, and experience for themselves, the jarring reality of that early morning encounter?

In a society so dominated by males—male priests, male scribes, male teachers of the Law, male heads of each household—is it not striking and jarring that the great news of Easter is entrusted, first of all, and in all its fullness, to a group of women?

Women—who come to perform their traditional female role, of anointing the freshly-interred body.
Women—who come in subservience and devotion, to enact the ritual which has been set aside for them to undertake, as befits their allocated role in society.

Women—who, if the traditional pattern is to be followed, will come, unwind the covering on the body, anoint the body with spices, reroll the covering and replace the body, and reverently leave the tomb.

But these women are unable to carry out the male-determined ritual for the body of the recently deceased. The familiar pattern is interrupted; the servant role is removed; and it is these women to whom the striking news of Easter is given.

It is to these women that the responsibility is given, for declaring that the body of Jesus is no longer gripped by death. It is to these women that the role of being the first, the primary, witnesses, to the interrupting action of God: the one who was dead, Jesus, our Master, is no longer here. The tomb is empty. He is not here. He is risen.

God is now working in ways that challenge, disturb, and overturn the well-worn, familiar, traditional patterns of society. The women cannot carry out the duties and responsibilities that they have long been given. The women, now, are to be witnesses to what God has done. They are to return and tell the men—the apostles, the pillars, the chosen ones—what God has been doing. He is not here. He is risen.

It is the women, and not the men, as expected, who are the ones to break the news: He is not here. He is risen. It is the women who become the first evangelists, the first to proclaim the good news of God. It is the women who become apostles, even to the apostles, the men waiting in the city, unaware of what has occurred at the tomb, and unacquainted with what God has been doing through Jesus. He is not here. He is risen.

If the first striking feature of this story is, who IS there; then the second arresting aspect, is who is NOT there. This is a story about Jesus, in which Jesus does not appear. This is an account of the most dramatic and significant moment in the whole narrative about Jesus—but there is no Jesus to be seen!  

No Jesus to be touched! No Jesus with whom to talk! No Jesus to stand, centre-stage, as demonstration of the realities of how God is now at work.

So here is the conundrum: this is the precise moment in the story when God acts in a new and surprising way. This is the pivot point upon which the whole of the narrative turns.

 

And yet, at the heart of the story, there is—nothing!   No central character. No resurrected Jesus, shining forth God’s glory for all to see. No dramatic, booming voice from the heavens, declaring the risen Jesus as the Lord of all.

All that we have, are the words of the young men: He is not here. He is risen.

There is nothing, but a startling absence, precisely at the moment when we expect a dramatic presence.

In my mind, this paradoxical turnaround is highly significant, hugely important. At the centre of our faith, there is an enticing invitation—to explore, to ponder, to imagine, to wonder. There is no clear, black-and white, unequivocal proof. There is no definitive dogmatic assertion, no unquestionable, unambiguous deed, no unarguable proclamation—no resurrected Jesus standing in the tomb. There are simply the women, stunned; and the two men, explaining: He is not here. He is risen.

faith.

See also https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/easter-in-christian-tradition-and-its-relation-to-jewish-tradition/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/sacrificial-death-and-liberating-life-at-the-heart-of-easter/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/on-the-threshold-in-a-liminal-space/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/17/the-death-resurrection-and-ascension-of-jesus-in-lukes-orderly-account/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/holy-week-the-week-leading-up-to-easter/

Today is Easter Saturday. Today is a time in-between the times, a space in no-space.

Easter Saturday is a liminal space. The word liminal comes from the Latin word līmen, which means “a threshold”. Technically, that is the place that marks off one space from another. Its origin was the strip of wood or stone at the bottom of a doorway, which was crossed in entering a house or room.

The thresh is the place where one treads as one enters a room. So the threshold, is where you put your foot as you walk into a new room or new place.

Anthropologists define liminality as “the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a ritual”. It is the moment when participants no longer hold their preritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. During a rite’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold” between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which completing the rite establishes.

(See https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/on-the-threshold-in-a-liminal-space/)

So Easter Saturday is a liminal space, a time in-between the times, a space in no-space, in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

What has gone before today?

Good Friday is a day of despair and darkness. It tells a story of death and burial. It gains its focus from the blows of the hammer, striking the nails, the stab of the spear, piercing the flesh, the silence of entombment, burying the body. We are consumed by the simmering emotions fuelled by the trauma, the disaster, the despair.

What will come after today?

Easter Sunday is a day of joy and light. It tells a story of new life and renewed hope. It begins quietly, in the gloom, at the empty tomb, but bursts forth into stories of amazed encounter, of recognising the stranger as the Lord, of sharing at table with the risen One. We will be swept up into the raging emotions of excitement and discovery, of hope-filled joy and all the best brought to fruition.

Yet this is all ahead of us. Today, we sit, in the quiet, in the shadows, in the time of waiting, of not knowing, of not seeing and not hearing … a time in-between the times, a space in no-space. There is nothing of significance that takes place today. The day is a void and empty, a day of non-meaning, of non-being.

We sit. We wait. We pray. We hope. In the silence, we sit with God. In the darkness, we sit with the empty tomb. On this Saturday, the day in between Friday and Sunday, we look back at what was lost … and we yearn for what is yet to be.

See also

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/easter-in-christian-tradition-and-its-relation-to-jewish-tradition/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/sacrificial-death-and-liberating-life-at-the-heart-of-easter/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/17/the-death-resurrection-and-ascension-of-jesus-in-lukes-orderly-account/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/holy-week-the-week-leading-up-to-easter/

Easter celebrates the day when Jesus Christ rose from the dead. The biblical witness is that this took place on the third day, in a sequence which ran crucifixion, death and burial (first day)…at rest in the tomb (second day)…the discovery of the empty tomb and subsequent appearances of Jesus, risen from the dead (on the third day).

So the earliest tradition about Jesus claims: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve” (1 Cor 15:3b-5).

Already in this earliest affirmation about the events of Easter, an explicit link is drawn with the traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures. There is debate as to which specific scriptures are in view (and the links needs to be made by interpretive argument, rather than standing as self-evident); but the connection with Jewish traditions is claimed from the earliest period.

It is in celebration of the resurrection of Jesus that the day he rose came to be known as Easter Sunday. According to some of the New Testament accounts, this resurrection occurred soon after the Jewish festival of Passover. The last meal of Jesus—in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke—took place at the feast of unleavened bread, the Passover eve Seder, when the liberation from slavery in Egypt was remembered by Jews. This was the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan.

These gospels claim that Jesus blessed the bread and broke it, and then related the broken bread to his body, which was to be broken or given for the sake of the world. He also blessed the wine and gave to those at table with him, indicating that the symbolism of the wine in relation to the covenant—the agreement sealed at Sinai, according to Israelite tradition—was now also to be related to his mission.

In one version of this last meal, his words link “the fruit of the vine” with the promise of the coming kingdom of God, but then he goes on to link it with “the new covenant in my blood”. In another version, the more unlikely claim—unlikely because it would be quite unlike what an ancient Jew would have thought or said—was that Jesus said “this wine is my blood of the covenant”.  Whatever he said, these versions agree that this meal was a Passover meal. Jesus died the next day, on the fifteenth of Nisan.

It is important note, however, that the contents of this meal and the precise order of those contents can not be known with certainty; the Seder meal which Jews today celebrate each Passover is derived from medieval practices, so we cannot know for certain what transpired at the last meal,of Jesus and his followers. And Christians should not attempt to hold a Seder meal on Maundy Thursday; as well as being anachronistic, this practice actually claims and “Christianises” a ritual which is important to Jewish people.

Not all Gospels see the date of the last meal this way, however. The fourth Gospel, attributed to John, actually places the death of Jesus on the cross at the precise time that the lambs are being slain in preparation for the evening meal—that is, on the fourteenth of Nisan. In this version, Jesus dies on the fourteenth of Nisan, a day before the other versions claim. What was historically more feasible is hard to say. We just don’t know.

What is clear, however, is that embedded in the earliest stages of the evolving Christian tradition, is the notion that what took place in the death of Jesus was intricately linked with the Jewish Passover. Standing behind this claim is the inevitable unspoken text, with supercessionist undertones, which I might paraphrase as something like:

“what you celebrate, we celebrate too; what you remember as taking place, we recall as having occurred in a way that was more powerful, more significant, than what you remember; yes, God, at Passover, saved his people from slavery in Egypt; but we celebrate that God, in Jesus, saved all people who believe in Jesus from slavery to sin; his death on our behalf inaugurated a new covenant, by which God set people free to a new form of life, symbolized in the resurrection.”

As is often the case, indications of Christian triumphalism and supercessionism can be heard at the edges of the Easter story. The Christian faith emerged from the Jewish faith—but this does not mean that it ended the Jewish faith, that Christians superceded Jews as God’s chosen people, or any such assertion.

Easter is a time when Christians come closest to offending Jews with these kinds of claims. We need to take care not to pass these supercessionist ideas on when we preach at Easter. Indeed, we need to ensure that we value Jewish people, as people of living faith today, and relate to them with openness and honesty as our brothers and sisters in faith.

See also https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/sacrificial-death-and-liberating-life-at-the-heart-of-easter/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/17/the-death-resurrection-and-ascension-of-jesus-in-lukes-orderly-account/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/holy-week-the-week-leading-up-to-easter/

Luke writes his Gospel with purpose, as he indicates in introducing his work (Luke 1:1-4). He describes his book as “an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us”, written to a person named “lover of God” (in Greek, Theophilus). The book was written so that Theophilus might “know the certainty concerning the things about which you have been instructed”.

The author of the Gospel has a clear agenda. He writes this work only “after investigating everything carefully from the very first”, and he underlines the claim that this is “an orderly account” by repeating the phrase (v.1, v.3). The term he uses (taxis, in Greek), was the term used to describe the schematic ordering of works of literature and public orations, in the ancient Greek-speaking world. From this ancient Greek word we get the term taxonomy, the branch of science concerned with classification. (See https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/an-orderly-account-a-quick-guide-to-luke-and-acts/)

When we read Luke’s account of the passion and resurrection of Jesus, and compare this with the version given in Mark’s Gospel, we can see how Luke re-organises and schematises his material. He follows Mark’s account of Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem quite closely, but there are some significant variations in his version.

Luke’s description of when Jesus enters Jerusalem and goes to the Temple forecourt (Luke 19:45-48) is more succinct than in Mark’s account (Mark 11:15-19). The focus is more on the scripture that Jesus cites (Isa 56:7 and Jer 7:11) and less on a fulsome description of the actions that Jesus carries out in the Temple (Luke 19:45, cf. Mark 11:15-16). Luke omits the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree (Mark 11:20-25) as he enters the city.

Luke follows Mark with the string of incidents in which Jesus debates the authorities instructs his disciples (Luke 20:1–21:7). This Gospel has already recounted Jesus’ teaching about the greatest commandment in introducing the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-28), so it omits the scene found in Mark 12:28-34.

Luke also follows Mark with the scene in which Jesus instructs his disciples about the coming times (Luke 21:8-38). Jesus has given another version of his eschatological teachings in an earlier chapter (Luke 17:22-37), as this aspect of his teaching is of central significance. This “eschatological discourse” of Luke 21 represents the bedrock of apocalyptic teaching which Jesus gave his earliest followers, although Luke refines some aspects when compared with Mark 13.

The Lukan prediction of coming persecution is fairly similar to Mark’s report, but Mark’s description of “the desolating sacrilege” (Mark 13:14-20) transforms into a specific narration of the fate that lies in store for Jerusalem (Luke 21:20-24). Luke was writing after these events had taken place (in the year 70 CE), so he places words on the lips of Jesus which clearly reflect these events.

Luke omits some of the later material in this section (some of it has already appeared in chapter 17), and adds a brief conclusion to this block of teaching, emphasising the need to “be alert at all times” (Luke 21:34-36), as well as a narrative conclusion (Luke 21:37-38), drawn from the earlier Markan account.

Luke omits the story of the woman who anointed Jesus while they were at table together (Mark 14:3-9), as he has already recounted this incident much earlier (Luke 7:36-50). Jesus shares a last supper with his disciples, which is set as a Passover meal (Luke 22:7), as it is also in Mark 14:12 and Matthew 26:17, but not in John, since the Passover lamb is not slaughtered in that Gospel until Jesus is actually hanging on the cross (see John 19:14, 41).

At this meal, Jesus speaks about two cups—one before the meal (22:17) and one after the bread had been broken (22:20). An actual Passover meal would most likely have had four cups (as is evident in later Jewish tradition), not just one or two cups. Luke’s account of the words spoken by Jesus differ in subtle ways from the version found in Mark and Matthew. Luke’s word over the bread includes the instruction to “do this in remembrance of me” (22:19), which appears also in the 1 Cor 11 version.

Luke frames the meal as an expression of eschatological hope, beginning with his statement, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God” (22:16), and ending with “I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (22:29-30).

Also at this meal, Jesus gives the disciples some final teachings, which are expanded in Luke’s account. Of particular note is the inclusion of the dispute about greatness (22:24-30), which Luke has moved out of the time of his public activity as he travelled in Galilee (Mark 10:35-45). This has the effect of highlighting the mixed nature of the disciples who recline at table with Jesus: not only the one who betrayed him (22:21) alongside the one who will deny him (22:31-34), but also those who still do not grasp the nature of Jesus’s message (22:24-26).

There is also the enigmatic and tantalising word about travelling with a purse, and a bag—and a sword (22:35-36). Only Luke reports this saying, which ends with Jesus’ apparent acceptance of the fact that his disciples carry swords: “Look, her are two swords.” “It is enough.” (22:38)

Then follows Jesus’ prayer, betrayal and arrest on the Mount of Olives. Luke shapes the scene on the garden so that it replicates the testing of Jesus at the start of his ministry (4:1-13), framing his account with the key phrase “pray that you may not come into the time of trial” (22:40, 46). The Lukan narrative continues, reporting how Jesus is denied by Peter (22:54-62), then taunted and interrogated by Jewish authorities (22:63-71).

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is brought to trial before Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea (23:2-5) as well as Herod, the Jewish client king of Judea (23:6-16), and then back to Pilate to be sentenced (23:17-25). Luke’s Pilate especially emphasises that Jesus is innocent, stating this three times (23:4, 14, 22). This feeds into Luke’s overall apologetic enterprise, developing a rationale for the place of this faith movement within the Roman Empire.

Then follows the account of Jesus’ crucifixion and death (23:26–49), which largely follows Mark’s account. Significant Lukan additions include the women wailing for Jesus as he walks to his death (23:27-31) and a longer interaction between Jesus and the criminals crucified alongside him, including the memorable phrase, “today you will be with me in Paradise” (23:43).

At the moment of his death, however, Jesus does not cry in despair (“why have you forsaken me?”, as in Mark 15:34) but shows firm confidence in God (“into your hands I commend my spirit”, Luke 23:46).

Jesus is buried in a tomb by Joseph, a “good and righteous man” (23:50–56); this tomb is subsequently found to be empty, in fulfillment of the promise of resurrection (24:1–12).

Luke has a scene at the empty tomb quite similar to that in Mark 16. He includes the interaction between the women, who have encountered the empty tomb and have come to believe that Jesus is risen, and the male followers of Jesus, who refuse to believe the “idle tale” of the women (Luke 24:10-11). This is consistent with the Lukan efforts to show that women were integral to the core group of those who followed Jesus (Luke 8:1-3).

Luke omits any reference to the risen Jesus appearing to his followers in Galilee (Mark 16:7; Matt 28:16–20; John 21:1–14); Jesus appears only on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus (24:13–32, a narrative found only in Luke) and in Jerusalem itself (24:33– 49, a scene which is similar to John 20:19–29). In the empty tomb, the angelic instruction to the women is not for them to go to Galilee, as in Mark’s version, but to stay in Jerusalem and recall the earlier words of Jesus when they were in Galilee (Luke 24:6-7).

This focus on Jerusalem serves two purposes. It fulfils the prophetic traditions about the eschatological role of Jerusalem (that is, the role it will play at the end of time). By locating the origins of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem, Luke establishes that the movement of Jesus’ disciples remains in continuity with Judaism. This will be an important motif in the second volume that Luke writes, the Acts of the Apostles.

Luke alone reports the ascension of Jesus into heaven (24:50–53); this pivotal event is repeated at the start of the second volume (Acts 1:6–11). Also crucial is Luke’s version of the commission which the risen Jesus gives as a parting word to his disciples: repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, “beginning from Jerusalem” (24:47).

Another version of this commission introduces the second volume (Acts 1:8): “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This verse sets out the programme for the rest of this volume. Immediately after this, Jesus ascends into heaven (Acts 1:9-11). This is the pivot from the earthly period of Jesus into the time when the movement of those who followed Jesus in that time will begin to form the customs and practices that led to the creation of the church.

Luke thus presents the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus as both the climax to his earthly life and the foundation for the time of the church.

The featured image is the Altarpiece of the Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ in the Church of Sant Joan de les Abadesses (created 1341 – 1342), which has been exhibited in the Museu Episcopal de Vic in Barcelona since 1889; see https://www.museuepiscopalvic.com/en/colleccions/gothic/altarpiece-of-the-passion-death-resurrection-and-ascension-of-christ-mev-576

See also https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/sacrificial-death-and-liberating-life-at-the-heart-of-easter/

https://johntsquires.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/an-orderly-account-a-quick-guide-to-luke-and-acts/i