Resurrection Day

On this Easter Sunday, I am reading portions of JR Daniel Kirk's wonderful and exhaustive A Man Attested by God. The book is a scholarly argument for the emphasis put on the humanity of Jesus by the writers of the Synoptic gospels.

Resurrection is usually a celebration of the divinity of Jesus: The conquering god, resplendent in power, tramples death itself. Messiah Jesus is revealed to the world as Almighty God. Divinity is proven. Alleluia! 

That is not the story of Scripture. The story of Resurrection, is a story about the Son of Man. It is the story of a man who appeared so divine that Mary Magdelene mistook him for a gardener! He said "Hi" to the women that came to perform burial and told them to stop grabbing his feet.

The resurrected Jesus walked with a few disciples on the Road to Emmaus. They ticked him off so much that he insulted them and lectured them. He was hungry enough to be talked into a meal. They didn't even realize that it was him until he blessed the meal and broke the bread. When he appeared to them later in Luke 24, he challenged them to touch him. He ordered them to see his flesh and blood, his hands and feet.

He was also still hungry. He ate some fish.

Here was a celebration of Immanuel - God is with us. He is with us so much that he is one of us. God had become so human that he died. God had become so human that even in conquering death, he had the dirty hands of a gardener and the famished stomach of a weary traveler. 

Like much of the Gospels, the Resurrection story presents no insecurity about Christ's divinity. It goes out of its way to be a human story. A wild and crazy story, but still a human story. In this human story we can find ourselves. Its a story about injustice and corruption. It is a story about tragedy and death. It is a story about the grief of those who loved someone who has died. It is a story about reunification. It is a story about confusion and shame when a tomb is found empty.

There is plenty of theologizing occurring on this Resurrection Day. But today, I'm reading the story as it is and letting it wash over me. I am not looking for truth. I am looking for myself.

We do not need to engage in a free-ranging investigation to seek out and construct who and what God truly is, and who and what man truly is, but only to read the truth about both where it resides, namely, in the fullness of their togetherness, their covenant which proclaims itself in Jesus Christ.

- Karl Barth

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