A Fresh Perspective

The text we read together in Luke 24 is Luke’s empty tomb story. When it comes to the appearance stories, all the Gospels have their own unique stories to tell, with the exception of Mark, who does not include an appearance story. But all four Gospels have some version of the empty tomb story. Each story is unique and contains variations from the others (there are differences in the details) but the main point, of course, is the main point of all the stories. The tomb is empty, and Jesus is alive. The question this raises for me is this: Why was the story of the empty tomb considered to be of such importance that each of our canonical Gospels contain a version of it?    It’s not, in my estimation, intended to teach that the resurrection of Jesus has to be physical? In 1 Cor. 15, where Paul is responding to questions about the resurrection raised by the Corinthians, Paul struggles to try to explain what the resurrection involves in terms of the body. He says, “fles h an...

Ann Lamott tells about the time she and her two year old son were staying in a condominium at Lake Tahoe. Because the area around Reno is such a hotbed for gambling the rooms come equipped with curtains that block out every speck of light so one can sleep during the day. One afternoon she put her son to bed in his playpen in one of those rooms where it was pitch black. He awoke, crawled out of his playpen and was at the door knocking. Somehow he managed to push the little button on the doorknob and locked it from the inside. He was calling out to her, “Mommy, Mommy” but she couldn’t open the door. She called out to him, “Jiggle the door knob, darling.” It soon became apparent to the little boy that he could not open the door and panic set in. He began sobbing. So his mother also in a panic ran around like crazy doing everything she could think of trying to get the door open, calling the rental agency where she left a message, calling the manager where she left another message, and r...

The resurrection of Jesus is a matter of faith. Perhaps you have heard Christian pastors or leaders argue that the resurrection of Jesus is the most clearly attested   event of history. That, of course, is not true. The Easter stories in our Gospels are stories of faith, not historical reports. There is no way to verify historically the resurrection of Jesus. What we can say historically is that some of Jesus’ closest followers, who participated in his mission, became convinced that God raised him from the dead. All four of the Gospels give us an empty tomb story. There are certainly differences in the details, but they all build a story around the empty tomb. And three of the four Gospels, with the exception of Mark, give us appearance stories. Our Gospel story today combines the empty tomb story with an appearance story. Now, one   might think that appearance stories are stories only relevant to Jesus’ first disciples who actually knew him personally. That’s not true. ...

In our Gospel story today Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple. Interpreters point out that Luke collapses two different Jewish rituals into one – the purification of the mother and the redemption of the first born. These were actually two separate rituals observed at different times, but in this story Luke combines them, reminding us that for the Gospel writers the proclamation of good news was always more important than getting history and the traditions right. The offering that is presented by Jesus’ parents tells us something about the economic conditions in which Jesus was raised. The law required a lamb for the offering, but it had a poverty clause that permitted the offering of turtle doves or pigeons for those who could not afford to bring a sheep. And this is what Mary and Joseph bring. I suspect growing up poor helped to nurture within Jesus a real passion to help the poor. He knew how systemic poverty entraps and diminishes people. When Jesus sets forth his agenda ...

The movie A Beautiful Mind tells the story of John Nash, played by Russell Crowe, a brilliant mathematician who struggles with mental instability. His wife stood with him through years of illness and uncertainty. On the evening he proposed the conversation went like this: Nash says, “Alicia, does our relationship warrant long term commitment? I need some kind of proof, some kind of verifiable empirical data.” /   Alicia amused at his awkwardness says, “Sorry, I’m just trying to get over my girlish notions of romance.” Then she wonders out loud, “Hmmm . . . proof . . . verifiable data . . . Okay.   How big is the universe? / He says, “Infinite.” / She asks, “How do you know?” / He says, “I know because all the data indicates it’s infinite. / She responds, “But it hasn’t been proven yet?” / He says, “No.” / She asks, “You haven’t seen it?” / “No,” he says. / She asks, “How do you know for sure?” / He says, “I don’t. I just believe.” / She says, “It’s the same with love, I guess...

The last two weeks in my Sunday School class we reflected on Jesus’ death in general and his cry of forsakenness on the cross in particular. No one in my class thought that God had actually forsaken Jesus, but we all concurred that Jesus felt forsaken and was expressing his sense or feeling of God’s absence in echoing the cry of the Psalmist, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When I asked, “Why do you believe that God did not actually forsake Jesus,” someone said, “Because God raised him up.” And that response, I think, gets to the heart of what the resurrection is about. Actually, you wouldn’t need a resurrection to believe in an afterlife. I used to treat the resurrection of Jesus as if it was the great proof that there is life after death. But that is not really what it is. It may indeed be a sign, a foretaste of what is to come, but we don’t need the resurrection of Jesus to believe in an afterlife. There are non-Christian traditions that believe in immortality. The ...