If you arrange the Gospels and The Book of Acts by when they were written and by authorship; Acts should fall right after Luke. Acts is thought by many scholars to be Book II of Luke (Book I). Jesus ascends to heaven at the end of the Luke and the disciples return to Jerusalem...back to the temple.
But wait! The temple shroud has been torn, the inner sanctum where God's holy spirit dwelt, has been released into the world in the victory over death by Jesus' Resurrection...why would they go back to the beginning?
And then there's that tomb. That empty tomb collecting dust as the wind swirls outside its open door. Why don't the disciples run back to the empty tomb? Praise God inside the very space that could not contain him? But alas we never hear about the tomb again.
What we get is a historical account of the early disciples life without the physical presence of Christ (but with the Holy Spirit after Pentecost). After that we get epistles written by Paul and other unnamed authors trying to make sense of a changing world, culture, religion, and a passing of more and more time away from Christ walking on earth. What we get is an attempt to figure out what to do with a Resurrected God. And we haven't stopped trying to figure it out; we haven't stopped going back to the beginning...
We carry with us this historical memory that reminds us that one time, a long time ago, humans walked and talked and did life with God in the flesh of/as Christ. Easter makes my fingers tingle as if I was in the upper room breaking bread with Jesus. My nose breathes in the scent of fish baking in the sun as baskets and baskets are shared with thousands. My lips taste the salt of many a long and short journey over lakes and rivers. My ears ring at the sounds of crowds gathering so close. My eyes see him standing there. I remember what I never was a part of because resurrection brings me there; back to the beginning.
Yet, there's that tomb. Always sitting there, collecting more dust as the years go by.
Genesis says that we are dust. Do we fill the tomb?
We, as the collective human body, sprint forward from Resurrection Sunday to live a resurrected life but we as mortals still die. We become dust.
We become dust with our bodies when our mortal lives are cut short. But We also create dust when we whip the soil that builds are foundation into a fury.
We stand on the knowledge of a resurrected Christ but we create clay idols to place within the tomb. We fill the empty tomb not with idols that are foreign but from the very soil we stand on.
We bend down and scoop up ideas, beliefs, rituals, names, words...and craft them into tiny clay molds to sit upon the cold empty slab in the tomb. Isn't that what the disciples in Acts were doing and all the epistle writers? They were clinging for that warm body arisen that first Easter Sunday but finding dust instead. Some let the dust slip between their fingers; letting it glide back to earth. While others clung on and made stones of particles.
We make idols that build borders between who's in and out. We lift up platforms that only certain people can stand on and preach. We choose our morals over their ethic. We give Jesus our eyes and skin color. Make our breaking of bread and drinking of wine the right kind. We robe and un-robe. Drum drums and electric guitars while organs fight back with classical quips. We feed those people and starve the others. We turn salvation into sentences and membership. We sprinkle or dunk, dip or sip. Build cathedrals across from crumbling steeples. DUST...
We will continue to fill the empty tomb. Its what we do as foolish humans. We will even move in, clean it out again, and run back to the beginning because the fact of the matter is as the days go by in a world with a Risen Christ its hard to live a resurrected life when we still know that we are dust.
Eternal life is God's gift to us and it will come as God grants it. Its not eternal life that is the difficult thing to handle but the mortal life; the life where the empty tomb still stands collecting our dust.
1 comment:
Our incredible good fortune is that the Father God who created us from dust and comforts us with the acknowledgement that he understands the inherent weakness of that building material, promises He doesn't stop there. In fact, the death and resurrection of Jesus set off an atomic reaction, if you will, of re-creation. As Jesus tried to explain to Nicodemus and to His disciples when He told them to wait in the city until they were clothed with power from on High, His salvation includes a whole new birth--we become something entirely new. Far from abandoning His people, Jesus permanently moved into the neighborhood, being pleased, with the Father, to dwell inside believers, in the person of the Holy Spirit, never to leave us or forsake us, complete with His power right here in our earthly bodies, dust and all. So, why did the disciples return to the temple? Because of God's next creation--a new family. He allowed them and us to be part of a great treasure hunt to find all our new brothers and sisters, robed and in jeans, sprinkling or dunking, dipping or sipping. And then He went a step farther and re-created us as molecules--parts of a single body with Christ as our head. The staggering implication is that we who are believers in Jesus are not only related, but are necessary for each others' function and survival. The drummer NEEDS the organ player, the blue-eyed needs the brown, I need you, and you, my dear Allysa, need me. The walls are an illusion. The fact remains, whether we see it or not, as followers of Christ, there is only one flock, only one family, only one body. Jesus said our unity is what will convince the world that God sent His Son to be our Savior. Our unity also helps us handle being dusty. We are all connected to one vine, and, if the fruit is abundant, you can't even see the branches.
PBD
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