becoming

Rowan Williams’ Easter sermon reminds us that we (i.e. our lives) are the living proof of the reality of resurrection:

…And the only way of saying that, of course is for it to be lived out. It’s no use talking endlessly – preaching endlessly – about reconciliation and forgiveness and liberation. No argument can persuade anyone about this, only the lived reality. It’s worth remembering that Paul of Tarsus joined the Christian community not as a well-meaning religious enquirer but as someone who had been the equivalent of a terrorist gunman, someone who had supervised the activities of a private militia devoted to abducting and imprisoning members of the Christian sect.

On the other hand, Larry Hurtado’s Why Was Jesus Crucified? A historical perspective is a flip-side warning to the Church when she forgets her subversive nature and mission:

In fact, Jesus’ crucifixion posed a whole clutch of potential problems for early Christians. It meant that at the origin and heart of their faith was a state execution and that their revered savior had been tried and found guilty by the representative of Roman imperial authority. This likely made a good many people wonder if the Christians weren’t some seriously subversive movement. It was, at least, not the sort of group that readily appealed to those who cared about their social standing.

Jesus’ crucifixion represented a collision between Jesus and Roman governmental authority, an obvious liability to early Christian efforts to promote their faith. Yet, remarkably, they somehow succeeded. Centuries of subsequent Christian tradition have made the image of the crucified Jesus so familiar that the offensiveness of the event that it portrays has been almost completely lost.

And Mark Roberts encourages us to celebrate the Resurrection with his Easter Postscript:

…Because of the resurrection, we reverence the cross.
Because of the resurrection, the symbol of the cross is one of the best known in the world.
Because of the resurrection, what was once the sign of horrific death is now a sign of life and hope.
Because of the resurrection, the death of Jesus is remembered, cherished, even celebrated.
Because of the resurrection, the Stations of the Cross lead, not to death, but to live.
Because of the resurrection, we are reborn into a living hope.
Because of the resurrection, we know that we too will live anew.
Because of the resurrection, everything is different.
Because of the resurrection, new life has begun.
Christ is risen!
He is risen, indeed!

While our good bishop at Durham commissioned us:

…to be agents of new creation we must ourselves become, and live as, people of new creation. And that means holiness, which means rediscovering what a full and genuine human life was always meant to be like. Our world has lived on so many lies and half-truths about what it means to be human, whether it’s the celeb culture, the drug culture, the idolisation of sport, the obsession with sex, or just the slow deterioration of human relationships and community. The challenge to personal holiness always comes as a shock, like someone waking you up at midnight and insisting that you’ve got to come running to see the new dawn. We are called to be Easter people, resurrection people, leaving behind in the grave all that spoils and downgrades our human calling.

校園《編疆》的阿詳，在這節期中，貼上一連三篇思考復活真諦的文章，很值得向大家推介：

1. 復活全體驗──復活三部曲之一
2. 復活的力量──復活三部曲之二
3. 復活的靈修學──復活三部曲之三

他整理了Eugene Petersen，Henri Nouwen 和 Rowan Williams 等人論復活的作品。尤其在討論Williams 的 Resurrection一書，寫得相當精彩：

…耶穌被釘十字架並不是結局。耶穌因著愛、因著勇氣，承受了世人的怒氣，甘願在「譴責與被譴責」、「壓迫與被壓迫」的暴力循環中，選擇成為那個被譴責的人， 成為一個受壓迫者。祂打不還手、罵不還口，悲慘地走上了十字架上，承擔一切的暴力與怒氣。可是，祂復活了。祂從死裡復活，祂也從無止盡的暴力循環中復活。

Rowan Williams認為，因著耶穌的復活，人類的暴力循環、譴責與被譴責的邏輯便被切開、斬斷。耶穌的復活大聲地訴說著一件事情：這世界上曾經有一個人，承受了世人的譴責、怒氣、壓迫，祂沒有把這樣的譴責、怒氣、壓迫傳給其他的人，反而把這樣的暴力吸收，死在十字架上。但是上帝卻讓祂復活了，並且將所有承接的譴責、憤怒與暴力，轉化成一個新的生命！換言之，遭受迫害、暴力與譴責的最終結局，再也不是死亡，而是復活、而是更寬廣的生命！這，就是復活的真諦！

在眾多的受難、復活詩歌，經文和信息中，我們竭力的，是說明「復活」？證明「復活」？

還是活出「復活」？

[link: 編疆]

No wonder the Herods, the Caesars and the Sadducees of this world, ancient and modern, were and are eager to rule out all possibility of actual resurrection. They are, after all, staking a counter-claim on the real world. It is the real world that the tyrants and bullies (including intellectual and cultural tyrants and bullies) try to rule by force, only to discover that in order to do so they have to quash all rumours of resurrection, rumours that would imply that their greatest weapons, death and deconstruction, are not after all omnipotent. But it is the real world, in Jewish thinking, that the real God made, and still grieves over. It is the real world that, in the earliest stories of Jesus’ resurrection, was decisively and for ever reclaimed by that event, an event which demanded to be understood, not as a bizarre miracle, but as the beginning of the new creation. It is the real world that, however complex this may become, historians are committed to studying. And, however dangerous this may turn out to be, it is the real world in and for which Christians are committed to living and, where necessary, dying. Nothing less is demanded by the God of creation, the God of justice, the God revealed in and as the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth.

NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, p.737

Via Mark Goodacre's NT Gateway:

The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan And N.T. Wright in Dialogue

Paperback: 220 pages
Publisher: Fortress Press (January 1, 2006)

 
The book is based on the inaugural Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum at New Orleans Seminary held on March 11, 2005 where N.T. Wright and John Dominic Crossan were the featured speakers. Wright, an Anglical evangelical scholar, defended the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus, while Crossan, a professor emeritus at DePaul University, set forth a metaphorical interpretation of the resurrection.