Saturday, 4/1We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and
in him there is no darkness at all. As we approach Easter, part of our Lenten task is to prepare ourselves to hear and receive a message that is frankly outrageous. Saying “Christ is risen” is as bizarre in our day as it was in the disciples’ day. It seems weird to say that a dead man was the Son of God and was physically raised from the dead. But the gospels do not hedge about the risen Christ. Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances are not presented as visions or dreams. In his first epistle, John the Evangelist writes of “what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands.” Neither he nor the other gospel writers describe encounters with the risen Christ as visions or dreams. Post-resurrection Jesus might have been ghostly, might have passed through walls, might have vanished, but he also sat and ate with the disciples, who laid their hands on him and his fleshly wounds. It is easy for us to accept as history Jesus’ sayings and his travels around Galilee. We trust the gospel writers on that, but the resurrection seems, well, in a different league. And yet the resurrection is reported by those same gospel writers with the same matter-of-factness as anything Jesus ever said. John declares to us what he has heard and seen so that we may have fellowship with the saints, whose company truly is communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us prepare to receive this message this Easter, so that when we hear, “Christ is risen,” we may without reservation reply that “the Lord is risen indeed!” - Andrew Kryzak |