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By JAY PARINI
Easter morning arrived with a
holy hush, the day after the Sabbath,
with little fanfare. The gospels pass over the Resurrection, and we
never actually see Jesus waken, rub his eyes, stand and stretch. We
don’t even see the rock that sealed the tomb actually rolled
away. The joyous resurrection of Jesus happens off-stage, as it were.
The first inkling of change occurred when some of the women close to
Jesus came to visit his tomb. The gospel narratives vary on who turned
up in the garden first: Mary Magdalene alone or with Mary, the mother
of Jesus, and with Salome (Mary’s sister or the mother of
James and John). In John, the story plays out in suspenseful detail as
Mary Magdalene visited the tomb by herself to mourn. To her amazement,
she found the stone removed. In panic, she ran to tell Peter and
another (unnamed) disciple, who hurried back to the tomb and discovered
it empty, much to their distress and confusion. They assumed that
someone had stolen the body. Meanwhile, Mary Magdalene sat outside the
tomb by herself, crying softly. She could hardly believe the things
that had happened in the past few days, and the missing body of Jesus
was really too much to bear. Huge questions confront anyone
thinking about Jesus. Did he really rise
from the dead? Was there an actual Resurrection? If so, what would that
look like? A large number of Christians throughout history have
imagined a resuscitation, refusing to countenance the slightest hint
that the Resurrection should be regarded as something beyond human
understanding. I myself would argue this: life and death are
mysterious, at best, and the membrane between the living and the dead
is a porous one, perilously thin. Jesus rose from the dead, the
scriptures say. I see no reason to doubt this. And yet a literalistic
belief in the Resurrection cannot be, as many fundamentalist churches
insist, the only important part of the “good news”
of Christianity. The message of God’s love in operation in
the world trumps everything and must be regarded as the necessary
extension of the idea of rebirth, the social basis for true spiritual
enlightenment. Nowhere more so than here does it matter that we find a
proper balance between the literal and the figurative, giving full
weight to the concrete meaning while relishing the mythic contours of
the story. The fundamentalist view of the
cross, with its emphasis on the
sacrificial or “substitutionary” aspect of the
Crucifixion, evolved in the Middle Ages and solidified with Martin
Luther’s insistence on the single, simple, and stable meaning
of scripture; the text of the Bible itself became a mighty fortress
that resists symbolic interpretations. (I would note that early in his
career Luther was much more amenable to symbolic readings of scriptural
passages.) To many, the idea of Christ as sacrificial lamb becomes the
whole of the Christian message, to the disparagement of every other
reading, leading to an exclusionary view of salvation. Yet the apostle
Paul himself warned early Christians in his second letter to Corinth
that to become an able minister of the new covenant one should not read
the scriptures in ways that undercut their fullest meanings,
“for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life”
(II Corinthians 3:6). See
"Link to External Source Article" below to read further. -----------------------------------
This article is quite lengthy, and well worth the read. The passages
above are the passages that I wish to expand upon in this blog. It is a quite beautiful account
of the resurrection of Jesus, written
by a man who is focused on looking for the human side of Jesus - an
endeavor that is every bit as satisfying as simply accepting Jesus as
the
divine Son of God. He was, of course, both - son of man and Son of God.
However, owing to the scarcity of information that we were left with in
the Bible, much thought, reflection and imagination has to be
undertaken
to wrap
one's mind around this amazing event. As the author says,
And of course, he's right.
Nevertheless, Christians and others who want
to know about this event have only had these scanty Biblical accounts
which say virtually nothing about the resurrection except after the
fact. Even so, it is a testament to the power of the Scriptures that
for these past 20 centuries, just these accounts have been sufficient
to inspire generations of believers. Now comes the 21st century, and
still people are yearning to know more
about Jesus. The internet is full of his name, book after book is
written, exploring the different facets of his life and teachings...and
his death and resurrection, as this article (excerpted from yet another
book) does. What if I told you that the
every second of the resurrection was
recorded by the angels; every question you may have had about it,
answered; every niggling doubt you may have harbored, resolved? Well, it's true. Part IV of The
Urantia Book contains the entire life
of Jesus, including every detail from his crucifixion, his
resurrection, and his subsequent resurrection appearances. The Urantia
Book account is indeed a center-stage presentation. Rather than try to tell you
what it says, I want to give you some links
to The Urantia Book story, so that you can read these details for
yourself,
and come to your own conclusions whether it is a more satisfying and
illuminating account than you have ever read. I am referencing the same
events that are covered in the article above: (NOTE: The Urantia Book authors
use a term: "Morontia," which is a tern
designation a state of existence midway between the material and the
spiritual.) Please see:
the
whole of Paper 188 The Time of the Tomb,
which also includes The
Burial of Jesus Paper 189 deals with
The
Resurrection, and includes the
details of
the
disposition of Jesus' material body,
as well as
Jesus'
first appearance - to Mary Magdalene,
and why he was not at
first recognizable to her and the others. The Urantia Book tells us that
Jesus appeared to nearly 1000 people, in
nineteen separate appearances, between the time of his death and the
time of his resurrection, on Thursday, May 18, 30, A.D. The
following links will take you to all of them Paper
192, and Finally, the author of the
article above states:
This is a profound observation. And in The Urantia Book, we are given
two additional amazing "other readings" - treatises that give all
believers a greatly expanded view of the meanings behind these
world-changing events. Please see:
The
Meaning of the Death on the Cross
and,
Lessons
from the Cross Everyone who loves Jesus can be
grateful for the Bible and its accounts
of Jesus' life in the gospels. Doesn't it always make you want to know
even more? We all know that there are many details not covered in the
Bible; but now, we have been given this amazing restatement of Jesus'
life that is Part IV of The Urantia Book. It is a greatly expanded view
of this God/man who we all love so dearly - a new way to look at him
and his life - a new and inspiring re-telling of his matchless life and
teachings for the minds of modern truthseekers. Please have a look. Compare and
prayerfully reflect...maybe you'll find
some new insights, some new inspirations, some new validation that
Jesus truly was ( and still is) the greatest human being ever to have
lived. "To
many, the idea of Christ as sacrificial lamb becomes the whole of the
Christian message, to the disparagement of every other reading, leading
to an exclusionary view of salvation."