Resurrection story of Jesus Christ, Twitter Style

You've got to see this. What a brilliant way of taking the Gospel story to the present technologically inundated age. Very compelling.

Plundering the Twittering Egyptians

So I started Tweeting today.  (You can follow me by clicking on the "Twitter" tab to the right of this blog column.)

You need to know that this is a big step for me.  I have been pretty anti-social-media up to this point, but I think I received a little inspiration from recent visitor to ONU's campus--Leonard Sweet.  It wasn't any particular thing that he said as much as his "dive in and make a difference" attitude toward such popular social media as Twitter, Facebook, Google, and I-phone/pad/everything.

And as I signed up today for a Twitter account, I heard the words of the Ancient Church Father Augustine ringing in my ears: plunder the Egyptians!


If you're not familiar with that metaphor/image, you should be.  It's an image Augustine drew from the Exodus narrative and wrote about in his On Christian Doctrine.  The metaphor/image works like this: Just as the Israelites plundered the Egyptians of various articles of gold, silver, clothing, etc. when they left Egypt and, presumably, put them to the use of God's people; so also Christians today "plunder" the world about us, using what we find for the service of God's people and the Kingdom.


So maybe I'm making an excuse . . .  or maybe I've really tapped into something here.  Maybe (some, not all) Christians can utilize the social media we find, not in the same way the world around us puts these media to use, but in a way in which the people of God are served and the Reign of God advanced.  I hope that's what I end up doing with my blog, my Facebook account, my Twitter account, etc. (I have yet to buy into the I-pad thing: Why do I need to buy a $500 piece of equipment to play "Angry Birds"?)  And hopefully you can put these media to Kingdom use, too.

May we plunder the Twittering, Facebooking, Googling Egyptians of our day for the People and Reign of God!

He Is Risen!

Happy Easter to all those whose hope is firmly planted in the Empty Tomb!

Living into the End

I am becoming more and more convinced that the best way to handle the questions we often put to our faith--What ought I to do?  Who ought I to be?  Why?  What is God's will?  What is sin?--is to ask one simple question--a question I call the "eschatological question":


When God is through with us--through with his purposes for us and for the world--what will we look like?  What will the creation look like?


Obviously it is a simple question to ask, but a difficult one to discern the answer to.  Though, perhaps not so difficult as we might first assume:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

New Creation--both of us, and of the creation at large.  The expulsion of all evil; the embrace of all good.  The dwelling of God and the dwelling of men reunited.  This is the end toward which everything is moving.

The end of evil and wickedness; the eternal establishment of that which is of God.  God dwelling with us once again.  That's the answer.  Anything that draws us closer to that vision is of God; anything that pulls us away from it is not.  Of course which things do and don't still requires discernment (that's why were are given the Spirit of God), but this is the end toward which we are moving nevertheless.

As we wrestle with how to live out our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ, may we always keep the eschatological vision of the New Testament at the forefront of our prayers, our minds, and our lives.

May we live into it!

The Resurrection of Jesus: Another Reason to Believe

I have just posted a response to my friend Nick's blog post concerning popular Christian apologetics.  (Click HERE)  On that blog Nick was talking about how he's coming to view most of these apologetic agendas fairly negatively.  I agree with him; well-meaning Christians are getting caught in the modern myth of providing "absolute proof" for historical events.  Instead of such apologetic schemes, Nick proposed that we accept that the resurrection of Jesus is the basis for all "proof" of the Gospel.  While I agree in part--again, see my comment--this whole discussion got me thinking that I ought to share publicly one of the reasons that I have come to be convinced that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth was an actual historical event.

Now--just so we're all on the same page here--the argument I want to here put forth is an argument concerning historical evidence, but it is not intended to be what popular Christian apologists like to call "proof."  I do not think that I can prove with 100% certainty any historical event--let alone the historical event of the resurrection of Jesus.  Proof is for the realm of science, which deals with repeatable events; not history, which necessarily deals with events that only occurred once.  (I cannot prove that Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, because it is an unrepeatable historical event, though I haven't found anyone that doubts that he did.)  Nevertheless, there truly are some really good historical reasons to accept the resurrection, though accepting it might just cause you to rethink your definition of "history" and of what is historically plausible.  But, hey, that's what worldview-changing events like the resurrection do!

As a graduate student in the field of Biblical Studies, I have spent a significant amount of time studying ancient Judaism.  In so doing, I have found that the idea of "resurrection" is a relatively late development in ancient Jewish thought.  You will not hear much of any talk about resurrection in the Old Testament--except for one of the latest (perhaps the latest) books of the OT, Daniel (written around 150BCE).  Nevertheless, by the first century the idea of resurrection (in Greek, the word anastasis) was a well-known concept, and one that many Jews (perhaps the majority? it's difficult to tell) embraced.

Here's a funny thing about Jewish beliefs in resurrection, though: Although not all Jews believed in resurrection (see, for instance, the group known as the Sadducees in the New Testament), all Jews who did believe in resurrection believed that it was an end times event.  This is how Daniel describes it in Daniel 12:2-4, the only explicit (at least I think it's explicit, and so did 1st century Jews) reference to resurrection in the whole OT: "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.  Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.  But you, Daniel, roll up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end. Many will go here and there to increase knowledge."  So, if you were among the Jews who believed in the resurrection of the dead in the 1st century, you likely either believed (1) at the end of time, God would raise the righteous dead up into new, bodily life fit for his everlasting kingdom, while the wicked would remain in Sheol (the underworld) or (2) at the end of time, God would raise all mankind to new, bodily life and then invite some into his everlasting kingdom and exclude others (this is the belief of the majority of the first Christians; see, for instance, 1 Corinthians 15).  In either case, the resurrection was only conceived of as an end times event that would occur to either all mankind, or at least all the righteous, at the end of time.

Let me add another funny fact about the belief in resurrection during the 1st century: The wider Greek-speaking world of the first century was well acquainted with this notion and they wanted nothing to do with it.  For instance, in the great Greek epic, the Iliad (composed long before the 1st century, but still popular during the 1st c.), one character says to another: "Bear up, and don't give way to angry grief; Nothing will come of sorrowing for your son, Nor will you raise him up (verb form of anastasis) before you die." (Iliad 24.539-51)  Or again, take the scene of the death of the great Greek hero and philosopher, Socrates, poetically recounted in Phaedo, written by his famous disciple Plato.  As Socrates is about to take the poison that he is mandated by the city's officials to take for his heretical teachings, he bravely looks at his disciples and says: "Offer up a chicken to Asclepius on my behalf."  Now what you've got to know is that Asclepius was the Greek god of healing.  Socrates is saying, "Death . . . getting out of this body . . . this is exactly what I've been longing for--having my soul released from my body is actually an act of divine healing!)  There is A TON of more Greek literature like this from all over the years (see N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God for a MASSIVE amount of literature), but I hope this is enough to paint the picture: The non-Jewish, Greek-speaking world of the time of Jesus and his disciples were well aware of what "resurrection" (anastasis)--getting a new body after death--was, and they wanted no part of it.  Death was release of the soul.  Why would you want to go back to a body after that great release?

( I mention only briefly that, funnily enough, I think many Christians today think more like these pagan Greeks--i.e. "I can't wait to die and go to heaven."--than they do like early Christians--i.e. "I can't wait for the resurrection of the body!" [again, see 1 Corinthians 15])


So here's the picture: The first-century world, both Jewish and non-Jewish, was well acquainted with the particular idea of "resurrection" (anastasis).  It was the specific idea that entailed getting a new body after death.  Many Jews believed that it was an end-times events that would happen to either all mankind or to all the righteous; non-Jews knew of it and thought it horrendous--why would you want a body back after your soul has been released from its captivity to the first body?


In the middle of this world, some first-century Jews began to claim that Jesus of Nazareth--one, particular person--had undergone resurrection (anastasis), even though the end of time had obviously not come.


This message simply would not have been possible to invent given their cultural milieu.  It is non-sense to both Jews and non-Jews.  Jews would have said, "You know the end hasn't come yet, right?" and Greeks would have said, "that's a quaint but pretty stupid idea that we want nothing to do with."  What would be the disciples' motivation for inventing this?

If the disciples had seen Jesus in a "spiritual" form, or if they had had a mental breakdown and hallucinated seeing him, they would not have used the word anastasis to describe this experience.  To say that one person had undergone anastasis before the end of the age just would not have made any sense.

For this, and other reasons, I am convinced that the best historical explanation of the events of Easter--and of the kind of language that the disciples used to describe these events--is that Jesus of Nazareth truly did experience the resurrection of the dead.


And if that's true . . . everything changes.