I must be feeling better. Last week I said i was 6 months out after surgery - it is only 4. Nice. More from Alison
The resurrection of Jesus was not a miraculous event within a preexisting framework of understanding of God, but the event by which God recast the possibility of human understanding of God.
Alison goes on to say this is done in the person of Jesus, through his life and teachings, leading up to and including his death. Then he notes: There is a first step in this recasting of God through the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, and this is the demonstration that death itself is a matter of indifference to God.
He goes on to day: The content of the teaching was made available when Jesus himself was raised, and it became possible to seee that God's love for this man was such that that love was unaffected by death, and that for that love death was no necessary separation, for love could carry on begin reciprocal even through death. For God, death is as if it were not, which is why Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob live in God.
The love of God is the end of death. It becomes a power within life that has claimed to be the end all. And yet, God's love cannot be contained or ruled or owned by such a boundary as that. I hear that as another 'turn the world upside down' notion that is well known among the followers of Jesus - but it needs to be said again and again in new ways. Is this why the martyrs of the Church could and did stand their ground in the most brutal of times? The witnesses of God's Reign that has no end and will go on beyond all that we can imagine - even death - is enough to grant us peace and life and healing in and throughh all things. Death means nothing to God - doesn't break our relationship with God - is not able to separate us from God - will never be the last word. Therefore, we are invited to live. Live as though life has no end. Live as though all of our fumbling and stumbling and falling short and making a mess of things will not put an end to us in the sight of God. Our God never loses sight of us. Our God is both here and now and will be forevermore. Think of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - not so much as in the clouds, rather they are living beyond our imagination for sometimes we can only imagine what life is now.
Connection: Sometimes, the smallest new phrases and the reexamination of those faithful lines trips me up and makes me wonder at a level quite different from what I wondered previously. Maybe that is the invitation we always are handed by our God - to wonder again - even when we seem to be at the end and can see no further. Wonder about God's endless promises.
O God of life, you open up time beyond time and help us to see the power of life you hand to us all. In that opening, you expand our hopefulness and secure a future we have yet to understand. Praise to you, O God. Amen.
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