As I pen this article I am sitting at my usual table at the Frothy Cup Coffee Shop. It's Saturday which is the one day of Holy Week where apparently not much happened back in the first century. Some call this Saturday, "Joyous Saturday."
Metaphorically,we are all living in Saturday. The work of Christ on Friday is almost 2000 years behind us. Sunday, our day of Resurrection is still somewhere in the future. So, we wait, as it were, in a kinda limbo on Saturday anticipating Sunday.
Christ was still dead on that Saturday and laying still in the tomb. It was the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest. But, as Christ clearly showed in the Gospels, the Sabbath was not to be used as an excuse to do nothing. In fact, as Christ showed us, the Sabbath although being a day of rest was also a day of doing good, of healing people, helping people in distress.
The Pharisees and other members of the religious elite scolded Christ for "working" on the Sabbath. Christ asked which one of them would not feed and water their animals or rescue them from falling into a pit on the Sabbath.
Of course, they didn't try to answer his question since they knew that they would naturally take care of their livestock even on the Sabbath. So, the implication then, is if they are willing to help a "dumb" animal on the Sabbath would it not be permissible to heal the withered hand of a child of Abraham?
On the seventh day after he was finished with his Creation the Hebrew Scriptures says that God rested. God rested not because he was tired but rather because his work was finished. Then, we see as Christ was finished with his work on the Cross, being human was in fact tired, exhausted, depleted by blood loss lack of water, overheated by hanging there on the in the Sun.
So, it was done. Christ released his spirit and his body was taken down and interred in a borrowed tomb which was located in a garden. His body rested in the garden. Adam and Eve rested in a garden too.
But what did happen on that fateful Saturday so long ago outside the walls of the Holy City? The Christian Scriptures state that Christ descended down into Hell and proclaimed the Kingdom to the spirits in prison who were there since the days of Noah.
There is plenty of speculation as to what all this means. Could it be that Christ was informing the "spirits" or fallen angels that Christ instead of being defeated was in fact made victorious by his death on the Cross. Or, could it be that these were the souls of those rebel humans who rejected Noah's preaching and died in the resultant flood?
In other words, do people who die "in their sins" get a second chance after death. No one truly knows for absolutely sure. You may think you have it all figured out and will no doubt quote me Scriptures that support your position that God's grace is only effective in this present age and dimension. And, you may be correct. On the other hand, I can quote Scripture that indicates otherwise.
God's ways are mysterious. His thoughts are higher than oury thoughts, his ways higher than ours. Just remember this, the people of Israel thought they had God all figured out too. The Messiah would burst into human history riding atop a white charger brandishing a sword and smiting the Gentile kings and kingdoms and liberating his chosen people.
Then came the one called the son of man. He was born in a filthy stable to 2 poor marginalized peasant parents who lived on the peripheral of Jewish society.
He never held power in the government or was influential in the economy.Nor, was he was he born to the priestly line who tended the Temple cult. Furthermore, he was persecuted and ridiculed by his own family, his brothers, the priests, the Pharisees and eventually by the Roman Empire.
He had no military position or army. He had no wealthy sponsors, no political or business connections.
He was an itinerant preacher who had only 12 lowly friends and several women who followed and believed in him and his mission.
Instead of being a victorious, conquering hero he was despised, forsaken and crucified on a cross naked and rejected not by only the Romans but by his own brethren. Hardly the Messiah the Jews were looking for. The Hebrew Scriptures indicates that there were to be either two different Messiahs or in the alternative show two different aspects of the same Messiah.
The Scriptures talk of a conquering hero who liberates his people as well as a lowly, humble, rejected and suffering servant. The Jews could never reconcile the two different forms of the Messiah. But, because they were suffering under the oppression of the Roman occupation and by their own religious leaders they yearned for the conquering King thus blinding themselves to the reality or to the Truth in the form of a man who walked town to town healing, proclaiming God's Kingdom and raising the dead. Pilate asked Christ what is truth with the irony that Truth was standing there in front of him in the guise of a son of man.
The Kingdom he talked about was not of this world. It was not a Kingdom of domination of one group over another. It was a Kingdom that grew and spread in silence much like yeast spreads in bread dough. You can't hear the yeast working its way through the dough. You can't see the yeast as it expands through the dough.
When the farmer drops the seeds in the ground he can't see the seed transforming as it germinates. He can't hear it. Yet, he knows that the seed is doing whatever it's supposed to be doing even though the farmer does not understand how it's transforming the landscape. And, the farmer not knowing how it all works...simply waits patiently for the day that the crop bursts through the dirt.
He compared his Kingdom to a mustard seed, the smallest seed there is, where when it is dropped into the soil and dies is then recreated into an entirely different thing, a plant that grows large enough that birds make their nests therein.
This humble son of man describes in the Book of John in so many words that his Kingdom is like a wedding where the wine suddenly runs out but then after intervention that plain clear, tasteless, water contained in clay jars is somehow mysteriously turned into wine. And, not just plain wine, but the best tasting wine ever. And, not just a few glasses of wine. No, rather overflowing amounts of wine, extravagant amounts of wine. And, guess what? This best tasting and copious amount of wine is saved for the end of the wedding echoing the concept we see repeated throughout the Scriptures that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
A totally new world order had broken into human history in first century Palestine and the Jewish religious sophisticates were too blinded and made asleep by their own pride and avarice.
So, they killed the Messiah. Their Messiah. You know. The one they had been waiting for all those centuries.
The whole theme that threads it's way through both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures is that man was created in an ideal setting, the Garden; but, through disobedience and pride fell, were exiled to live east of Eden, then are finally restored and end up back in the Garden on the new Earth. Read Isaiah 65 and Revelation 21 and 22 to see our final destination.
You will see the same theme promulgated where Israel is held in bondage in Egypt. They are then delivered, saved if you will. Then, they commence journeying through the Wilderness on their way to Paradise, the land flowing with milk and honey. You see in the Gospels where Christ joined John the Baptizer at the Jordan and was baptized.
He immediately departs afterwards for the Wilderness, but not for 40 years but symbolically for 40 days and is subjected to temptation as the Israelites once were. Christ comes through those temptations successfully unlike his brethren hundreds of years before.
Christ's death and his Resurrection inaugurates the Kingdom of God. God brings the future into the present. But, the Kingdom is not fully here yet. The "Age to Come" has been expanding and spreading through human history since that time. You cannot see it directly. You cannot hear it. Nonetheless, it is here.
And, one day, the Kingdom of God will be here fully and will fill all of the Earth with God's love and justice with the righting of all of the wrongs. No more crying. No more tears. No more injustice. No more evil. With Friday and Saturday done Sunday will soon be upon us. The eighth day. The day that God re-creates and the new Heavens and the new Earth will appear. And, finally, our journey will end and we'll find ourselves back in the Garden where we belong with God coming down to tabernacle with us. His people...the apple of his eye. We're all on a journey of return. Return to our origins where once again we will walk with God in the Garden in the cool of the day.
That's what the Resurrection and what Sunday is all about. Being restored to a new world, a new body and a new life. Life everlasting filled with feasting and copious amounts of wine, fellowship, love, justice and the eternal presence of God. We will be singing a new song with God. But, we don't have to wait. We can sing that new song today on Saturday in anticipation of that glorious Sunday that's about to burst in upon us. Amen!
Have a Happy Easter my friends!
BR Schoenbein
March 26, 2016- Saturday
