The account of the resurrection in Matthew 28 sounds crazy to me. The author seems to be talking out of his mind.
“There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.”
You know how things get skewed when you are excited? I imagine that the account is somewhat like that. I can imagine that the author was flustered, trying to put into words what he had seen, saying, “There was an earthquake, and then, there was an angel. He looked like lightning. He was glowing. His clothes were as white as snow. All the guards were like dead men.”
Unfortunately, we usually tell it with a monotonous tone of voice, as if we’re not excited to hear it. One day, I want to see someone burst into a church service with the kind of excitement that I read in that passage. “You’re not going to believe me, but here’s what I saw.”
That’s the craziness of the resurrection. It’s wild. It’s unheard of. It’s something that will change your life radically. It changed the lives of the disciples who were scared out of their minds in Matthew 27, and now in Matthew 28 (and Acts), they went on to change the world. That’s what the resurrection can do to you.
(image by: dbarronoss)
It’s interesting that there was nothing said at our church last Sunday about it being Palm Sunday, but I still thought a lot about the arrival of Christ in Jerusalem the week before his crucifixion. I was reading John 12, and I came across something that I had probably seen but never noticed before.
In short, I want to be like Lazarus. Read these verses: “So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus” (John 12:10-11, NIV).
Imagine that your testimony or ministry were so strong that people wanted to kill you. Imagine that your teaching were so effective and your testimony so bold that so many people were believing in Jesus that people wanted to murder you for it. What a testimony! What a ministry!
Lazarus wasn’t just enjoying the blessings that Jesus had to offer him; he was living life full on for Jesus. He had every right to live like that. Jesus had saved him from death. He had called him out of the grave. He was no longer dead, but alive through Jesus Christ.
Isn’t that the same thing that we claim as Christians? Don’t we claim that Christ has rescued us from death? The life that we now live we no longer live in the flesh. We live it by the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us.
But we choose to live in mediocrity, timidly accepting life as it comes. Or we oppose everyone and repel them. The people wanted to see and be with Lazarus.
Think about the show that Lazarus was. He was once dead. I mean, people would come from miles away to see him. And he was drawing all sorts of people to Christ because of his testimony.
What about us? What are we doing to cause a stir like Lazarus?
Image by: dtcch
Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. He lived from 415 to the 470s (his death date is disputed), and he was a missionary who often referred to himself as a sinner. He had an enormous impact on both Ireland and the rest of Europe.
He was an evangelist who also worked to abolish slavery. In Patrick’s lifetime, the Irish slave trade ended.
An interesting fact about Patrick is that he never thought of himself as worthy or intelligent enough to minister. He was a humble man who was used by God.
The legend that is St. Patrick and the facts about his life have become mixed over the years, but there is no doubt about his missionary influence on Ireland. He was also an inspiration to many missionaries who followed him.
For more information, check out this article. Here’s an excerpt.
Patrick also became the model for later Celtic Christians. He engaged in continuous prayer. He was enraptured by God and loved sacred Scripture. He also had a rich poetic imagination with the openness to hear God in dreams and visions and a love of nature. Hundreds of Celtic monks, in emulation of Patrick, left their homeland to spread the gospel to Scotland, England, and continental Europe.
Middle school is a period of most of our lives that we would love to forget. Our legs and arms grow too big for our bodies; our voices sound like we swallowed a frog, we begin to notice how bad we smell, and many other embarrassing things. Middle school is a self-esteem nightmare. The irony of middle school is we are happy when finally we “graduate” and become freshmen in high school.
Unfortunately, seminaries are not too much different than middle schools. They are full of academic competition, intellectual arguments, and ministry comparisons. A person with low self-esteem will probably not last more than a week in either a seminary or a middle school.
Even the faculty members at seminaries have problems with this. The degree that you have, and where you earned it, play into our competitive nature, causing us to intimidate others or be intimidated by others.
Shouldn’t the opposite be true? Shouldn’t seminaries be places to encourage and engage people in a loving manner without judging their intellectual ability or their ministry competency? Instead of chewing people up and spitting them out, shouldn’t we be “spurring one another on to love and good deeds?”
I’d love to see my seminary as a place where people feel welcomed and are seen as part of the same team, regardless of if they are studying theology, youth ministry, music, or Christian education. I’d love to see the professors that have been around forever and have their Ph.D look at the others as equals and respect them as experts in their field with something valuable to contribute to the school. I’d also love to see the new professors be less intimidated by the others, and it would be great if we weren’t all always trying to impress each other. We are, after all, part of the same body.