M&M Ch 13: Trouble, Resurrected

Chapter 13 always surprises me a little because it doesn’t spend much time on the resurrection. For whatever it’s worth, I think I spend too much time debating it in my head. Was Jesus literally dead for three days, only to come back to life? Is the resurrection story a metaphor for how you can’t kill the message? I’m not sure it really matters.

Like me, this chapter seems much more interested in what happened next. As the line in Manna and Mercy goes: “Jesus and his troublemaking go merrily on!” Whatever happened in that tomb, there's no denying that the things Jesus stood for refused to die with him.

The chapter calls the early church a “contrast society.” They weren't just people who believed something unusual about a dead guy. They were trying to live differently because of him... Not always successfully, either. (That's something I can relate to!)

I really appreciate the question near the end of the chapter: “Can human beings, with all their differences, live together in peace?” Two thousand years later, we're apparently still working on that one.

Society still seems pretty determined to kill the ideas Jesus brought into the world: mercy, forgiveness, generosity, and the idea that wildly different can live together in peace. And if I'm being fair, sometimes I'm part of the society trying to kill them. Mercy is great until someone doesn't deserve it. Forgiveness sounds wonderful until I'm the one who has to forgive. Living together in peace is a beautiful idea until I have to live with people who see the world completely differently than I do. I tell ya, it's a struggle.

Maybe that's what this chapter helps me see differently about resurrection. Whatever I think happened in that tomb, the things Jesus lived for are hard to kill. Jesus and his troublemaking go merrily on.

Your turn: What’s one of Jesus' ideas that you think is really good, but also really hard to actually live?