Luke 24:1-12
But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. (24:11)
One of my favorite scholars made an interesting observation about the Resurrection Accounts in the Gospels. “They are told in whispers,” he observed. He meant that these stories are told as if the witnesses thought they could not be true, or it was too good to be true.
God’s working, God’s deliverance leaves us humans “gobsmacked.” The Psalmist uses this same idea in describing the restoration of Israel after the Babylonian Captivity.
“When the LORD brought back the captives of Zion,
We were like those who dream.” (Psalms 126:1)
When God works in human existence, it is like a dream that is too good to be true. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, when encountered by his followers, to use a modern phrase, “it blew their minds.” But for us, being raised with these stories, having them told over and over again, this good news can become common place, almost mundane or ho-hum. Maybe that is why it seems the power of the resurrection is not at work in the world today. We have reduced the story from “too good to be true,” to a Golden Book children’s story.
But the whisper of the resurrected Christ in just three hundred years will have conquered the Roman Empire, and has become the cornerstone of Western Civilization. Maybe when we hear, “ALLELUIA! CHRIST IS RISEN” we should be gobsmacked, as we respond to the news that is too good to be true “ALLELUIA! CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED! ALLELUIA!”
Blessed Easter to Al.
Pastor Greg
