Chapter Fourteen
1. The resurrection isn’t just a
surprise happy ending for one person; it is instead the turning point for
everything else. It is the point at which all the old promises come true at
last: the promises of David’s unshakable kingdom; the promises of Israel’s
return from the greatest exile of them all; and behind that again, quite
explicit in Matthew, Luke, and John, the promise that all the nations will now
be blessed through the seed of Abraham.
What are the promises of these individual periods and
people? How do they coalesce to form a
unified promise for all people of all times?
2.
In this story, fishing
seems to stand for what the disciples, like the rest of the world, were doing
anyway whereas shepherding seems to stand for the new tasks within the new
creation. To develop that as a metaphor, it seems to me that a good deal of the
church’s work at the moment is concentrating on fishing, and helping others to
fish, rather than on shepherding. Those who find the risen Jesus going to
the roots of their rebellion, denial, and sin and offering them love and
forgiveness may well also find themselves sent off to be shepherds
instead.
How do we characterize “fishing” and “shepherding”
today in the context of the Church’s mission?
Which do you feel called to do?
3. Paul declares
that the speculations and puzzles of pagan theology and philosophy can now all
be put on a different footing because the one true God has unveiled himself and
his plan for the whole world by appointing a man to be judge of the whole world
and has certified this by raising him from the dead. This is what the
resurrection does: it opens the new world, in which, under the saving and
judging lordship of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, everything else is to be seen in
a new light.
How has your understanding of Jesus resurrection shed
new light on your life and the lives of others?
How has it shed new light on God’s work in the world today?
4. We can sum this
up in the following way. The revolutionary new world, which began in the
resurrection of Jesus—the world where Jesus reigns as Lord, having won the
victory over sin and death—has its frontline outposts in those who in baptism
have shared his death and resurrection. The intermediate stage between the
resurrection of Jesus and the renewal of the whole world is the renewal of
human beings—you and me!—in our own lives of obedience here and now.
What does this require of us today, as baptized
followers of Jesus?
5. But at the
start of Colossians 3 he focuses on what it actually means to share, here and
now, in the resurrection of the Messiah. Paul insists that if you are already
raised with Christ—in other words, if you through baptism and faith are a
resurrection person, living in the new world begun at Easter, energized by
the power that raised Jesus from the dead—then you have a responsibility to
share in the present risen life of Jesus. “If, then, you are risen with the
Messiah, seek the things that are above; set your thoughts on things above, not
on things of the earth.” It is no use simply saying, “I’ve been baptized;
therefore God is happy with me the way I am.” Paul’s logic is: “You have been
baptized; therefore God is challenging you to die to sin and live the
resurrection life.”
What does this mean for us? What does this resurrection life look like?
6. Part
of getting used to living in the post-Easter world—part of getting used to
letting Easter change your life, your attitudes, your thinking, your
behavior—is getting used to the cosmology that is now unveiled. Heaven and
earth, I repeat, are made for each other, and at certain points they intersect
and interlock. Jesus is the ultimate such point. We as Christians are meant to
be such points, derived from him. The Spirit, the sacraments, and the
scriptures are given so that the double life of Jesus, both heavenly and
earthly, can become ours as well, already in the present.
In Jesus, you and I become points where heaven and
earth intersect and interlock. When and
where do you acknowledge and experience this?
7. Christian
holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good, but of learning
to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered
in our baptism. There are many parts of the world we can’t do anything
about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical
reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us
calls “myself.” Personal holiness and global holiness belong together. Those
who wake up to the one may well find themselves called to wake up to the other
as well.
Where is the wisdom and challenge in this powerful
statement?
