All posts in Resurrection

  • Mistaken As the Gardener

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    Mistaken As the Gardener
    Brian Zahnd

    “Mary Magdalene turned around and saw Jesus standing there,
    but she did not know it was Jesus…supposing him to be the gardener.”
    –John 20:14, 15

    “On the third day the friends of Christ coming at day-break to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of a gardener God walked again in the garden, not in the cool of the evening, but in the dawn.”
    –G.K. Chesterton

    The first person to encounter the risen Christ was Mary Magdalene. It happened in a garden. At first Mary thought Jesus was the gardener. A logical mistake. Or a prophetic mistake. Or a beautiful mistake. Or perhaps not a mistake at all.
    Read more

  • The Gardener

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    The Gardener
    Brian Zahnd

    “Mary Magdalene turned around and saw Jesus standing there,
    but she did not know it was Jesus…supposing him to be the gardener.”
    –John 20:14, 15

    The first person to see the risen Christ was Mary Magdalene. It happened in a garden. At first Mary thought Jesus was the gardener. A logical mistake. Or a prophetic mistake. Or perhaps not a mistake at all.
    Read more

  • Easter Monday

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    Easter Monday
    Brian Zahnd

    The risen Christ is not one who has come back from the dead. The risen Christ is the One who has gone through death and opened the door to the new world beyond death.

    The risen Christ is not one who has wrestled free from the clutches of death to return to the land over which death still holds sway. The risen Christ is the One who has passed all the way through the black hole of Hades into the world of light and life where death cannot go.

    Lazarus is a man who came back from the dead…only to die again. Christ is not a mere survivor of Sheol. Christ is the Conqueror of Sheol who has trampled down death by death.

    Christ was raised on the third day. Lazarus on the fourth. But that doesn’t mean Lazarus is one up on Christ. Oh, no! Lazarus merely came back from the grave…but still a subject to the tyranny of death. Christ went all the way through the grave…and emerged as the Vanquisher of death.
    Read more

  • The World After Easter

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    The World After Easter
    by Brian Zahnd

    He Who Sits Upon The Throne says, “Look here! I am making all things new!”

    This is the only time in Revelation where we hear the voice of Him Who Sits Upon The Throne.

    There are only three other times in the New Testament when we hear the voice of God the Father:

    At Jesus’ baptism: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

    At the Transfiguration: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased — listen to him!”

    Before the Paschal Mystery: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

    These occurrences of the Voice of God emphasize that Jesus is the Word of God — the incarnation of the Logos/Logic/Love of God sent into the world to redeem humanity from the dominion of Sin and Death.

    When He Who Sits Upon The Throne says, Look here! I am making all things new! — he is doing it through his eternal Word, his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

    This is what was promised in Abraham.
    Foretold by the Prophets.
    Born at Bethlehem.
    Inaugurated on Easter.
    The making of all things new!

    God’s solution for a Creation marred by Sin and Death is not to abandon it, evacuate it, condemn it, or destroy it, but to remake it — to make it new again! This is what was inaugurated on Easter! Read more

  • Resurrection Here and Now

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    Resurrection Here and Now

    An Easter Monday Meditation

    On that first Easter morning God’s new world began. The old world is still with us, still dying, but the new world is here too; the age to come has already begun!

    Or as G.K. Chesterton put it…

    On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of a gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

    But what of it? Or as Francis Schaeffer might put the question, how should we then live? Read more

  • Humiliation and Dignity

    In his humiliation justice was denied him.
    Who can describe his generation?
    For his life is taken away from the earth.
    -Acts 8:33

    Someone showed me a picture and I just laughed
    Dignity never been photographed
    I went into the red, went into the black
    Into the valley of dry bone dreams
    -Bob Dylan, Dignity

    Life is a struggle. A struggle against humiliation. A struggle to gain dignity. And in the battle against humiliation in the hope of gaining dignity we may experience some triumphs. The dignity of courage. The dignity of wisdom. The dignity of noble gesture. The dignity of rising above base animal instinct and becoming fully human. But in the end its a war we all lose. Death sees to that. Death is the final and ultimate humiliation. In death we are laid low. In death we return to dust. In death we are humiliated. In death we return to the humus. Humiliation and humus are related. We strive for the stars, but we return to the soil. Humus. Humiliation.
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  • Ruminations from Delhi

    Peri and I are laying around in our New Delhi hotel resting up after our travels and ministry in India. We’re getting ready for the long haul back home at 1:00 AM tonight — a journey across two continents and an ocean. We’re looking forward to being back at Word of Life this weekend. We began our morning with a couple of room service cappuccinos and watching the latest episode of The Office online. Living the high life!

    Last night I started reading an Indian novel — The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize). My favorite novels are those which don’t merely tell a good story, but explore important ideas through the art of story. I suppose that’s why Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are my favorites writers — they don’t just tell stories, they grapple with big ideas. As far as I’m concerned Fyodor Dostoevsky is really a theologian disguised as the greatest novelist ever. Well, anyway, I started Desai’s novel and came across this sentence. Read more

  • For Whom The Bell Tolls

    June 25, 2009.
    Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett.
    Two American-culture icons.
    Dead on the same day.
    The cynic says,
    Why all the news coverage for Jacko and Farrah? There’s more important news than the death of celebrities.
    That’s one way of looking at it. Read more

  • The Savior of the World (and DMB)

    “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world” 1 John 4:14

    Do you believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world? This is what the Apostle John claimed in both his gospel and his first epistle. But do you believe it? Do you really believe that Jesus is the savior of the world?

    You know how the famous verse goes…For God so loved the world, etc. And then the next verse: For God did not send his Son into the the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

    Then in the next chapter the Samaritans in Sychar declare that they have come to believe that Jesus is the savior of the world.

    (And I suspect they believed this because they saw how Jesus was capable of mending the breach of historic hostility which separated Jews and Samaritans.)

    But do you believe it? Do you believe that Jesus is the savior of the world? I’m not asking if you believe if Jesus saves individuals who are in the world, but whether you believe Jesus is the savior of the world. Is Jesus the savior of God’s creation and God’s dream of human society living in harmony and exercising dominion as creation’s caretakers? Do you believe that what was lost by the First Adam can be recovered by the Last Adam? Do you believe that the one Mary Magdalene thought was the gardener can restore the Garden? Read more