resurrection

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There is a Light: A Good Friday Meditation

When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19:30

We find ourselves at the foot of the Cross again. Some try to bypass it. However, life always brings us back to the Cross. We cannot avoid it. We cannot say anything relevant to this world without confronting it. It is strange that many Neo-Evangelical churches in Brazil will be empty this Friday. They are the largest Protestant congregations and yet they don’t observe Good Friday. They are still obsessed with the doctrinal wars. They say that it is a Catholic tradition and they don’t want any part of it. They have allowed doctrinal conflicts to rob them of an opportunity to reflect on the Cross. However, they still celebrate Easter. Can Easter be meaningful without a moment at the foot of the Cross?

It is Easter that has brought us to the Cross. All Christians remember this day because of the reality of the Resurrection. When we look at the Cross, the Light of Easter warms our souls. It is impossible for us to experience that fateful day like the first disciples. We hear the pain and suffering of our Lord in the Passion readings. We can imagine the dread and hopelessness of the situation but the Light of the Resurrection still comforts us. The Cross for us will always be a sign of hope. It was not so for the first disciples. They saw their hopes and dreams being decimated when they heard the words, “It is finished.” For us, these words are words of Hope. For them, it was literally an end of what they believed to be a new beginning.

Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” John 20:29

We are blessed as Jesus said. We have faith to believe without seeing. The first disciples had to witness the horrendous situation. The scene devastated their souls. We can’t imagine what Mother Mary felt when she saw her Son being tortured and humiliated. The disciples, especially, his close friends, just stood there and watched and felt helpless. They could not do anything about it. Jesus told Peter to put away his sword. It was the only way he knew how to defend Jesus. Without it, he was lost. He denied his best friend because he did not know what else he could do for Jesus.

We can never share in their despair and loneliness. We might feel a sense of mournfulness. It is something we can conjure up within ourselves. However, we still stand at the foot of the Cross with this powerful knowledge; all is not lost! We are truly blessed to know this in our souls. We did not learn it. It was given to us. Now, the Cross asks us the question; what are we going to do with our blessed status?

Being blessed in this situation means that our eyes are opened to see something deeper and greater than what is presented to us. It is a gift that comes with great responsibility. We are given the privilege to comfort those who are like the first disciples. There are many like them around today. There are countless women like Mother Mary who see the light in their sons and daughters disappear forever in an cruel manner. There are many like the disciples whose hopes and dreams are shattered with one cruel blow. There are those who think that life only dishes out loneliness and suffering for them. They are at the foot of the Cross. They see Jesus hanging on the tree. They are unable to see the Light that shines brightly behind the Cross.

Many of our children take comfort in the suffering of Jesus. However, they cannot see the Light of the Resurrection. They share the same sentiment as the first disciples. They feel the pain of Jesus when He cried out,

“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46

They are not angry with God. They just feel abandoned.

We see the Light at the foot of the Cross. It is our privilege and our duty to stand at the foot of the Cross and testify that all is not lost by God’s grace. However, we cannot do this unless we are willing to stand with those who cry in despair and share their grief. If we just point at the Light without participating in their pain, then we will be discarded as optimistic fools. Besides, we cannot make people see the Light but the same faith that opens our eyes to see the Light can open our hearts and minds to participate in their pain and suffering. Only then, we can talk about hope. Only then, they will know that we have something to offer.

The way of the Cross is a way of pain and joy. It sounds like a paradox but only for those who refuse to face the reality of this life. We cannot talk about the joy of this life if we are not willing to participate in the pain. Jesus knew about the eternal joy of His Kingdom but He needed to endure the Cross first. Only then, the Truth of His Kingdom could be clearly understood. We know that Easter is the foundation of our faith but it does not excuse us from being at the foot of the Cross with those who suffer and are abandoned in this world. Jesus is crucified constantly in this world, it is our privilege to be present at these places and testify that there is a Light that never dies.

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A Shift in Focus

At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!” – Mark 12:23-27

This was supposed to be a trap. They wanted Jesus to admit the absurdity of the resurrection. The people who questioned Jesus did not believe in it. They did not believe in the life after death. For them, there exists only one reality which can be perceived by the senses. They came to this conclusion by a literal reading of scripture. They were the fundamentalists of Jesus’ time. These people still exist today. They are not the fundamentalist Christians. Today they call themselves different names. They are rationalists, secularists, and materialists. Each age has a different name for them. Their thoughts and ideas are not new. Nevertheless they still prevalent and influential. Many hold their views without even knowing it. In Jesus’ time, these opinions were held by the Sadducees. They only believed in the first five books of the Bible and since most of the Old Testament does not explicitly mention anything about life after death, they refused to acknowledge any possibility of such a notion.

The Sadducees brought a problem to Jesus and wanted him to give a solution. They thought that any solution that Jesus would propose would be unsatisfactory. They wanted to show how the concept of resurrection was incompatible with this reality. To their surprise, Jesus agreed with them. Resurrection cannot be comprehended with the values and principles of this existence. It ushers in something new. It presents a new way of looking at our reality.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! “(2 Corinthians 5:17)

I was recently listening to a British comedian, Eddie Izzard, and in one of his routines he talked about Moses. Izzard, being an atheist, pointed out the absurdity of someone doing something because a bush told him to do. He is right. If someone wrote to me and said that she wanted to work in our ministry because her stove told her do so, I would recommend that she seek some help. I would not make her my leader like in the case of Moses. However, Moses did not speak to a bush. The bush pointed him to a new reality. The bush was a symbol that drew Moses to something greater than itself or even himself. Jesus used this as argument for the resurrection. He addressed Himself as the God of the deeper and more profound reality that moved Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to see beyond what was presented to them by their senses. They walked against the so-called common sense of their generation. This new reality put them at odds with their families and society. It radically changed the way they interacted in this world.

The early church members sold everything and lived in common. They were not communist or socialist, such notions did not even exist. These were not celibates or monks. They were regular people with families. They had regular jobs and some even had great properties. According to the standards of this world, they would be considered irresponsible. According to the New Creation, they were acting like the people of the resurrected Christ. They did not do this to make a social statement. They did this because their notion of life had changed radically. The resurrected Christ changed everything. He changed the nature of family. Complete strangers now became family to them. They no longer pursued wealth and power. They dedicated themselves to the service of God. Eventually some serious conflicts arose from this attempt. It was inevitable. The new creation has to function within the old. The old values came to haunt the early church and consequently caused much tension and distress. Much of the writings of the New Testament record the struggle of the community of the Resurrected Christ trying to live out the new creation in the materialistic world. If we find their struggles strange, maybe it is because we don’t have the same understanding they had of the resurrection. Maybe they can teach us something valuable that we have lost.

When Jesus told the sadducees that the physical resurrection is going to change the nature of our relationship with the opposite sex, it was a truly radical concept then and now. Jesus said that we would be like angels. Unfortunately, this has been trivialized by infantile imaginings of the dead growing wings and playing harps in the clouds, not to mention the sentimental hollywood pseudo-theology that has contaminated our thinking. Jesus is, in fact, saying that the resurrection changes our basic concept of relationships in this world.

The male-female relationship is a basic relationship. Even current times with dialogues and openness about alternative lifestyles cannot alter the reality of this basic relationship model. All relationships stem out from this foundational relationship. In our reality, this relationship has only been sexualized. Our cultural and societal values evolved based on a sexualized concept of this foundational relationship. Jesus has shaken this foundation with the Resurrection. It is no longer based on sexual or reproductive roles but on the new creation that Jesus ushers into our reality. One of the implications of this radical shift is reflected in the concept of the family in the New Testament. It was no longer limited to blood-family ties. Paul was the forerunner of this concept.

“Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.” 1 Corinthians 4:15

Paul tried to live out the radical implication of the Resurrection. It doesn’t mean that he did it perfectly. If we are only looking for someone perfect, then Paul would not be the right person. We won’t find anyone perfect except for Jesus in the Bible. However, if we want to find someone who struggled to understand the broadness and depth of the Resurrection, then Paul is a good role model. He was limited by his cultural and social upbringing and yet he was an apostle and a father to the people whom he was taught from infancy to despise. He became the spiritual father to the Gentiles. This was a radical shift that only the reality of the resurrection could bring.

When God calls us to serve, whether it is in Brazil or in our local neighborhood, God is calling us to discover the reality of the resurrection. I have to point out that we would miss a great opportunity of knowing the power and wonder of the New Creation if we reduce Christian ministry to social work or just doing some charitable work. Christian ministry is a ministry that introduces the values of the resurrected reality into this world. It breaks the boundaries between us and them. We go into the world to receive and embrace strangers as family members. It is not something that will happen automatically. We are still living in the old creation. The values of the old creation are dominant here. It is hard for people to see something beyond the reality before them.

We have been here a little over two years. After two years of talking and spending time with the children and teens, they are beginning to see beyond our games and the art work we do with them. Recently, Gabriel, a fourteen year old, complained that we were not passing by during the weekend. The others joined in and said that they wanted us to spend more time with them. In reality, we have been spending more time with them than before. Some older teens have taken us aside and talked about their relationship problems with us: the kind of stuff one would talk about with one’s parent. They are figuring out that we are more than social workers. We realize that we want to become a family to the children and teens. However, it is a new kind of family. It is the family of the New Creation. There are no manuals or books written about this kind of family. The instructions on how to become this family are being written on a daily basis in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

We cannot prove the Resurrection is true with persuasive arguments but we can live its reality and invite others to join us in this new reality.

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Death and a Conversation about the Resurrection and Life

Sadly, another young girl died in the streets this week. Her name is Raianne. She was nineteen. This is the third person to die in this streets this year. Mary and I never met this young girl but the team had been ministering to her since she was a young child. On Sunday, she and another girl had a fight over a trivial incident. One girl pushed the another in anger and Raianne fell and hit her head on a rock. We know the girl who was involved as well which makes it even more tragic. Raianne left behind two young toddlers.

Needless to say when we met the children in the streets they were upset and pensive. Whenever something like this happens, the question about their own mortality becomes alive. Raianne had survived many dangerous situations in the streets but it only took a misplaced rock to end her life.

Nobody wanted to talk when we arrived, but they did not ignore us as well. It seemed like they wanted us to be there but they did not know what to say to us. We stayed and waited. Then Eduardo, one of the older teens, opened up. He asked us what happens to our soul when we die. He wanted to know whether we lose our identity or does it remain intact. This started a long and serious conversation about God, life, and the resurrection. Our conversation lasted for almost an hour and it was truly a conversation and not an one-sided lecture. Personally, we were amazed at the profundity of the questions Eduardo asked.

One of the things he wanted to know was whether our memories remain with us for eternity. He especially wanted to know that if we would remember negative events and continue to bear grudges against the people that hurt us for eternity. His concern about this made sense. Eduardo’s life has not been easy. He has been in the streets since he was a young child and it was unfair circumstances that brought him here. He wants to shake all the negatives memories of his life and live a new life. He doesn’t want to continue a life of crime, but he is big and intimidating looking young man who is 19 years old. Not many people want to give someone like him a chance. He does not rob but we suspect that he deals in drugs. However, despite his tough exterior, there is a tenderness in this young man. He wanted to know if, in the afterlife, he would be free from all the baggage of this difficult life.

Speaking about the afterlife is not easy. No one can speak authoritatively about this subject. We told him that we can only speculate but we can know something about Resurrection because there is One person who resurrected from the dead. The Resurrection helped us to address the question about memory. The Resurrected Body of Jesus bore the marks of the hatred and anger, but its resurrected state changed the affects of its scars. We told him that the act of Resurrection is truly a divine act and it can only be understood by faith. Jesus believed that He was to be resurrected by God and this influenced the way He lived his life in the body. He did not succumb to hatred and anger even though he was assailed by these. Instead He chose to find His strength in the Love of God. This Love transformed the scars of hatred into symbols of victory. However, only through faith we can understand the meaning of this.

We told Eduardo that whatever he does in this life with his body will bear the mark for eternity like in the Resurrected Body of Jesus. He can decide in this life what he wants to be remembered for eternity. His past memories do not have to determine everything he becomes now. God is able to take what we have and transform it into a miracle.

Eduardo asked us how our bodies would restored if they suffer decomposition. We told him honestly that no one knows how this is going to work but it is not impossible to imagine God using these materials to create something new and wonderful. This, of course, served as a wonderful analogy of the bad childhood and rejection that Eduardo had and how God is able and willing to use all these materials to create something great. We told Eduardo that the Bible has examples of people whose histories were radically transformed; people who suffered great injustice like Joseph. God used the rejection and injustice and made it into something wonderful. Even St. Paul who persecuted Christians and the Resurrected Christ changed his history forever.

There were several moments of our conversation which moved Eduardo to tears. Perhaps in a strange way, Raianne’s death opened the door for us to speak about Life to Eduardo. I believe that something happened this day. We changed the nature of our relationship with these young people. They know now that we are willing to converse with them on serious and complex questions about Life without pretending to know all the answers. We don’t need to know all the answers and we don’t want to give easy answers. We can only share with them what we have and we have Hope in the Living Christ that transforms our lives in the here and now.

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Redeeming our Individuality: An Easter Meditation

Mary said, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him,“Rabboni!” -John 20:13-16

There are a variety of ways of looking at the Resurrection. In a way, it is something that occurs daily in nature. Something dies giving life to something else. Life is always resurrected from death. The idea of resurrection is not foreign to us in some senses. However, it is strange and foreign that Jesus came back as Jesus. Not Jesus in a ghostly sense, but Jesus bearing the marks of His pain and suffering on His body. He remains the individual that died on the Cross but now, He is Alive.

Out of dust, we became an individual and we lose our individuality when we return to dust. This is the tragic state of humanity. We are aware of our individuality and we are also aware that it is fragile. We strive hard to be individuals. We want to be unique. We want to be special even if it is for one person. We want our individuality to be affirmed, but we also know that even if the whole world recognizes our individuality, it is pointless; we will eventually return to dust. This desperation and futility of life was expressed aptly in the Book of Ecclesiastes:

For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust. (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20)

Our struggle to assert our individuality makes us aware of the injustice and immorality of this world. We define anything that tries to destroy our individuality as evil. Well, the question of evil is closely related to our individuality. Buddha taught that our individuality was the problem. It was believed that we perceive evil  because we persist on our false idea of our individuality and the solution was to break free from our notions of self-identity. Still, this did not solve the problem. Our sense of individuality is still strong and despite the sufferings, we think that there is more joy in being an individual than giving it up altogether.

Jesus affirmed our sense of individuality. His disciples were fishermen and tax collectors, people who usually classed as a group and not as individuals. We don’t expect any prominence from these classes. He called individuals from these groups and made their names known throughout the world. Jesus affirmed the individuality of his female disciples in a time where their individuality was suppressed. Jesus, in one occasion, called an ailing woman to identity herself when she wanted to lost among the crowd. Jesus made people feel that their identity was relevant. They were important as individuals. His life was the hope that they could finally be someone and His tragic death robbed them of this hope. Only the resurrection could give them back this hope in a new and wonderful way.

Jesus bore the marks of His torture and pain. His torture and pain were once tools used to threaten his individual existence, but now they set Him apart from the rest. The resurrection changed the meaning of his suffering and death. It showed us that nothing can steal our individuality in this world. Our Individuality is not an invention of cultural conditioning or rational thinking, but it originates in the mind of the One who has the power to resurrect us. It always brings a new understanding of our lives here. Jesus bore the marks of hatred and death on His body, but His love overcame them and changed their meaning for eternity.

We know through Jesus that all will be resurrected (I am aware of the various debates on this subject). However, this has to change how we live our lives now. What we do with our body will be reflected in our resurrected body. Our bodies can be instruments of Love or Hatred and the marks of our choices are worn eternally on our resurrected body. Jesus reveals to us the most excellent way to shape our bodies and soul for eternity. He shows the most excellent way to cultivate our individuality.

Have a Blessed Easter. Christ is Risen!

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Jesus Takes His Time

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” …though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. (John 11:1-45)

In moments of crisis, we want God to act and act immediately. For many, this is the decisive moment of their faith. It is the moment where we know whether our faith in God is real or just a theoretical notion. Martha told Jesus that she believed that Jesus was the Messiah. It was not enough. She needs to make the transition from theory to reality. She needs to know that the God she believes in is not just a concept but a reality. It was an intense moment. In fact, the whole gospel passage is very intense. If we stop thinking about Jesus as some spiritual superhero for a moment and think of Him as a human being, we can sense the intensity of the text. Everyone was putting God on the line including Jesus. Jesus took a big risk when He waited.

Lazarus has been dead for four days. There is a common belief in the East even today that the spirit of the dead remains around for at least three days before leaving this world. Whether there is any foundation to this belief is not the issue. The people believed this and Jesus waited for more than three days. When Jesus arrived there, no one believed that there was anything that could be done at this point. Everyone had exhausted all their physical and emotional resources. There was only one thing to do now.

“Jesus wept.”-John 11:35

We weep because we are helpless in the face of the human tragedy. Even Jesus wept, He was truly human and only humans can know their limitations. Only humans can sense that there is something greater beyond their reach. We don’t weep just because we are sad. We weep because we are too weak do anything. We need something different. We need to have new strength. We need something to change the meaning of the tragedy in our lives.

This new change is the Resurrection. 

Martha knew the theory of the Resurrection but now she experienced its reality. This transition cannot occur unless we are willing to acknowledge the limits of our humanity. In order to this, we need to follow the example of Jesus, we need to take a risk. Without risk, we never discover the reality of our God. Without taking any risk, we are settling for a comfortable existence of theoretical religion. It is a religion that never realizes the meaning of the Resurrection for the here and now. Lazarus was resurrected in the here and now. We know that he eventually died but it changed the way he understood Life.

The gospel text addresses the issues of death, mourning and fear. All these make for the tragic elements of Life. These are things that most of us make every effort to avoid. Yet, Jesus deliberately faced these things because He waited to go to Lazarus. Because he waited, He helped his disciples including Mary, Martha and Lazarus have a new understanding of the Resurrection.

Jesus took a risk for us so that we can experience the new reality of the Resurrection. It is a reality where God comes piercing through our darkest moments to bring new Life. And He will wait for the perfect moment to do this.

 

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