You may be wondering why I've convoluted and drawn out a single subject to the point of, now, three separate blog posts. Allow me to break the fourth wall of blogging for a moment. As Christians, it is of central importance that we look at all Scripture through the lens of resurrection and new beginnings. If we look at Scripture and view Yahweh as a God who ends anything, we are creating God in our own image. Because we are the ones who have endings wrapped up in our very nature. Not God. And when we make God in our own image, we have full permission to boss Him around and support just about anything we want Him to.
So we have arrived at a point in which we can look at Scripture in two different ways. A disjointed set of rules and suggestions which serve as the basis of a selfish morality, or as a sweeping narrative that spills over the pages and seeps into our lives. The Apostle Paul actually covers this in his letters to the churches. He tells us that this difference is really the difference between the law and the Spirit. The law leads only death because it points only to our own accomplishments. And that right there is an ending. We do all that we can to highlight our own stuff. The Bible says pretty clearly that if "our stuff" is good that it comes from God anyway, and if it's bad than it's sin, which has already been defeated. So much for that. Living life in the Spirit over the law, however, lets our lives point to the eternal, or a lack of endings.
What Paul is saying is if you want to align your life to an ending, feel free. God's love is big enough to allow that. But with the Spirit, the end of the story isn't really the end.
From the perspective of early Christians, the resurrection of Jesus Christ was an event that meant everything changed. For them, this was the age old promise of their God being fulfilled. The resurrection was everything. So, of course, this meant that everything had to change. Paul's letters are the best example we have of the early Church wrestling with the concept of being resurrection people. For a long, long time, that's what the story has been.
A good example of this is Paul's exposition to the Corinthian church about giving monetarily. In it, Paul commends the church for giving abundantly, and also states that God loves a cheerful giver. This is the same God who makes grace overflow so that all needs are met.
Do you see the resurrection? The Corinthian church is able to give out of poverty because they know that God does not end and they are the people of this God. Paul says it. Whatever is given will be restored to the point of overflow. That's a characteristic of grace. Resurrection. For Paul and the Corinthians this is more than just a good idea that promotes morality. This is part of the embodiment of the resurrection movement which pulses through nature and is emblematic of Yahweh.
There's more to money than just money.
Even Jesus before He is crucified speaks to people about all kinds of resurrection. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells His disciples that whoever gives up their family or possessions to follow Him will have them restored 100 times over. Because the resurrection is that deep. Because Jesus says "there's more."
The resurrection is everything. It is the end of endings. For everything. The early church grappled with this. They absolutely struggled with how to align with the restoration movement of God in every aspect of life.
Do we grapple with this? Do we see the resurrection in everything? Or do we impose endings where they just don't belong. Because the thing about the early Church is that it was early. There's more to that story.
Once again, things were only just beginning.
No comments:
Post a Comment