The Week After Easter...

I've been thinking about Easter, and how the idea of resurrection only makes sense if you understand the overpowering finality of death.

Pixabay: Andalusian

The only way to entertain the unthinkable fact of Jesus reviving is to understand our powerlessness. If you've ever been with someone in their last moments alive, then you know. To bow over a deathbed is to lean over the edge of eternity, powerless.

Of course prayer can change the course of nature, but it’s God's power. Not ours. No matter the measures we use to keep tethering a soul back to its body, to keep oxygen flowing and blood pulsing, at some point it all stops. And in the stillness, we are powerless.

As it always was, the soul is God's. He takes it where it's meant to go, and only He has the power to send it back to us. All we can know and learn and imagine of our seemingly endless universe is sealed inside this law-bound system encircled by a mysterious and inescapable void we can’t control. We have no science and no power beyond death.

Jesus did human things. Lived. Breathed. Laughed. Cried. Died. Was buried.

To say that a man died and was buried is mundane. That summarizes two thirds of the Gospel, and nothing about it sounds extraordinary to a stranger. But to say He came back to life after three days, and His community recognized him. That speaks of power.

His body was scarred, but healed, mocking the barbaric violence that carved the marks into His flesh. That shows dominance.

He crossed the life/death threshold, and crossed it again, and crossed over yet again. That shouts authority.

Jesus, Son of God, victory danced on the grave of our powerlessness.

He was the God who owned the void.

He was the Author who wrote the mysteries.

When He reappeared, He probably still smelled of spikenard, and I'd like to think that the sharp aroma was a special touch He allowed to cut through the paradigm-exploding shock the followers were swimming in.

Who? How? Why? It looks like Him. It sounds like Him. He still smells like burial ointment. Could anyone possibly fabricate a trick like this? Did He have a secret twin? And when the logicians among them ruled out every other absurdity, they knew it had to be Him. Alive. Again.

You'll never convince me He didn't laugh with them in their relief.

But how? So many questions, confusing and confounding. They wavered a bit, because it wasn’t possible. The twelve and all the rest were not real men and women if they didn’t sift through every detail like gold miners shaking sand through a strainer. Is this why He allowed the burial oils before? Because He didn’t need them later? Because the decay was only for three days, and then it was over, reversed?

He stood there and they could believe. Had to believe. It was all over. Finished. Complete. The power of the grave dissolved under His feet trampling back and forth over its barriers. The earth itself shook to get out of the way, and He lived again in the flesh.

The reality stood before them. Truth stood before them. Life stood before them. He could go, and come back, and go again. And He promised to come back yet again.

Before Jesus, all they knew of death was normal, powerless death where people die and don’t come back. Now they could not smell burial ointment without remembering how He made death itself smell like life.

Then they understood more fully. He was King of Kings, Lord of Lords, with all power the way He’d claimed. Absolute power everyone will recognize whether they want to or not, and they will bend at both knees and bow, because how could you stand when you finally see Him for who He is? This was power beyond human reason.

If we understand the limitations of death, then we can begin to marvel with the first followers at the magnetism of the words: “I am the resurrection and the life.” There is no death in Him. He is a pure and glorious force. Into all the voids, He speaks life. Over all the powers, He speaks authority. To all the mysteries, He speaks truth.

Now that I think about it, I had it backwards at the beginning. When we understand the overpowering finality of Resurrection, then we can see death for what it is. We can begin to realize how He held it down until it drowned, and how the fire of hope consumed its power down to ashes.  As we edge closer and closer to the Great Mystery, the invitation lingers in the very air. We can become complete in Him, and we can walk in the joyful, hopeful light of His resurrection. Powerless as before, we can live and move and breathe in the power of His Spirit, ever absorbing the intense fragrance of life that flows from Him, until we too begin to smell like Life.

"Jesus said...Everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die."

- John 11:26 (NASB)

Mark 14:2-4

John 11:25

John 12:3

John 19:30

Matthew 28:18

Acts 17:27-29

Colossians 2:9-10

II Corinthians 2:14-16

Philippians 2:8-11

I Timothy 3:16

~ Credit to fellow Chosen fan Hope Mopas for sharing the observation about the spikenard being an identifier for the disciples after the resurrection. And, to my friend Trish for the gift of spikenard oil that caused quite a stir in my heart.