I was thinking about the resurection and how most of my life it has meant very little to me in some ways. Growing up it was like Jesus died for your sins now you can have relationship with him if you pray a prayer of forgiveness. Then because Jesus rose again you can go to heaven someday. Resurection is about so much more......
NT Wright is one of my favorite thinkers/theologians/authors/brits and he had some amazing thoughts on the subject this year. He is referring to that fact that Jesus shows himself to Mary and then she goes to tell the disciples that Jesus is alive.
And who is it that carries this stupendous message, this primal announcement of new creation, this heraldic proclamation of the king of kings and his imminent enthronement? It is Mary from Magdala. ….But the real shock is not Mary’s character. It is her gender. This is perhaps the most astonishing thing about the resurrection narratives, granted the universal beliefs of the time in the unreliability of women in a lawcourt or almost anywhere else. It is one of the things which absolutely guarantees that the early Christians did not invent these stories. They would never, ever, ever have invented the idea that it was a woman – a woman with a known background of emotional instability, but the main point is that it was a woman – to whom had been entrusted the earth-shattering message that Jesus was alive again….. It is Mary: not Peter, not John, not James the brother of the Lord, but Mary, who becomes the apostle to the apostles, the primary Christian witness, the first Christian evangelist. This is so striking, so unexpected, so embarrassing to some early Christians
Something has happened in the renewal of creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus which has the result, as one of its multiple spin-offs, that whereas before Jesus only ever sent out men, now – now of all moments! – he sends out a woman. And though the church has often struggled – to put it mildly – with the idea of women being called to genuine apostolic ministry, the record is clear and unambiguous. And let me just say that one of the great ironies of that silly book The Da Vinci Code is that, in seeking to elevate Mary Magdalene, all it does is diminish her, to make her Jesus’ appendage, his girl-friend or even his wife, whereas she was his chosen first apostle. Here, as so often, the revisionist versions of Christianity only succeed in domesticating the utterly revolutionary message of the New Testament – not, of course, that the church has not been guilty of that as well.
Dude, that's awesome! What a call we all have to live in and share the living message of Christ's death and ressurection. What a call that we are all invited into even those that society has thought were "unfit" to do ministry. Mary become the apostle to the apostles; what a thought.
Mary's simple act of obedience in sharing that Jesus was alive began a ripple effect of living proclamation that reverberates into our hearts and world today.
I've been making a list of people that God wants to use but may feel inadequate or "unfit." I don't know how I'm going to encourage them but I am. I'm going to repent of ever thinking that God didn't want to use them and I'm going to join with God in inviting them to be "used."
3 comments:
Good ol bishop Tom, when i was in Colorado one of our teachers showed over and over how woment were used to proclaim the gospel first. The cool thing for women is that Jesus did not try to highten their standing in the world, so it doesn't matter how the church views them, the revolutionary message is not that they should claim their rightful place but should live out their true identity in the radical new covenant. Even we are called to that, it is so easy to get caught up in institutional recognition, titles and all that crap. the truest Christian acts are not done out of a title. Another cool thing Jesus did was to call those into his service who didnt even believe in him yet, but as they had a relationship they slowly came to see him as Lord. So maybe we need to look at inviting those who don't even have a relationship into his service so that they might get to experience the true life he offers even if they haven't gone to a mega church and queitly raised their hands to eternally avoid Hell.
I like this post a lot (esp because N.T. is quoted at length. But I would love to hear your thoughts about when Wright says, "this stupendous message, this primal announcement of new creation, this heraldic proclamation of the king of kings and his imminent enthronement." Is this what the resurrection means to you? Is there anything you would add to it? I'm not asking to put you on the spot, but because I'm really trying to figure the whole thing out. Is it the proclamation of a new creation, or is it more than that (as if that wasn't enough)? I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Oh, and welcome to the blogosphere. Nerd.
I think the new creation theme is seeming more and more fundamental to my understanding of the cross, but i don't think it will ever fully encompass the greatest mystery in the cosmos. One thing that i have heard and read is the the ressurection was not part of our salvation, in other words when Jesus died it was truly finished and the new covenant was written. If all of soteriology is understood through his death then the resurrection has to have a completely unique significance for Jesus revolutionary work.
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