Day 52 - Friday, April 6
Title: The Fact of Christ’s Resurrection
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also. For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

Poetry: The Say-but-the-Word Centurion Attempts a Summary
By Les Murray
That numinous healer who preached Saturnalia and paradox
has died a slave’s death. We were manoeuvered into it by priests
and by the man himself. To complete his poem.

He was certainly dead. The pilum guaranteed it. His message,
unwritten except on his body, like anyone’s, was wrapped
like a scroll and despatched to our liberated selves, the gods.

If he has now risen, as our infiltrators gibber,
he has outdone Orpheus, who went alive to the Shades.
Solitude may be stronger than embraces. Inventor of the mustard tree,

he mourned one death, perhaps all, before he reversed it.
He forgave the sick to health, disregarded the sex of the Furies
when expelling them from minds. And he never speculated.

If he is risen, all are children of a most real high God
or something even stranger called by that name
who knew to come and be punished for the world.

To have knowledge of right, after that, is to be in the wrong.
Death came through the sight of law. His people’s oldest wisdom.
If death is now the birth-gate into things unsayable

in the language of death’s era, there will be wars about religion
as there never were about the death-ignoring Olympians.
Love, too, his new universal, so far ahead of you it has died

for you before you ever met it, may seem colder than the favours of gods
who are our poems, good and bad. But there never was a bad baby.
Half his worship will be grinding his face in the dirt

then lifting it to beg, in private. The low will rule, and curse by him.
Divine bastard, soul-usurer, eros-frightener, he is out to monopolise hatred.
Whole philosophies will be devised for their brief snubbings of him.

But regained excels kept, he taught. Thus he has done the impossible
to show us it is there. To ask it of us. It seems we are to be the poem
and live the impossible. As each time we have, with mixed cries.

THE FACT OF CHRIST’S RESURRECTION

#Resist bumper stickers adorn cars and social media these tumultuous days. History pushes the repeat button; unrest and clamor prevail while a growing economy rests on a faltering empire and crumbling infrastructure. Civilization requires moral public character for institutional health and capability, but yields to an emergent uncivil square where citizens yell and scream past each other. Time fails to yield an answer to the question “What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Athens morphs into Rome, now dominating long-suffering people in their own land. Their prophets long gone, Jerusalem’s priests carefully manage the ancient holy words, adding commentary to make the best of a bad situation. They look for a long-awaited champion, a messiah, to overthrow the kingdom and restore seeming control over their own destiny. Jostling for the best position they can, they #Resist the force of law and arms embodied in legions and their commanding centurions.

The Nazarene emerges in this milieu, a man of lowly birth without polished resume or privileged legacy. Hailed by some as the promised one, he makes an easy target for polarized peoples to vent their rage. Ultimately the empires sentences him to die, laid bare under the watch of a mindful centurion, who sees, ponders, and questions his personal existence in light of the crucified provocateur. It would be so politically correct to #Resist! But no – truly this was the Son of God he cried before the tipping point of a time-space continuum where everything changed. The great Singularity! The deceased agitator came back to life three days later.  All other messianic imposters had stayed in their place of repose – this one left an empty tomb and appeared to many.  #Resurrect !

In today’s passage, Saul of Tarsus recounts his own experience with the resurrected one. He remembers his own confrontation on the road to Damascus with this living messiah questioning, “Why do you persecute me”?  “Why do you #resist me?” The chief of resistors, Saul falls before the power of resurrection. Even now in retrospect, the writer Paul can hardly contain himself as he recounts all the others, over 500 strong, who too were visited by the resurrected one prior to his ascension home. Note however that Paul singles out the Lord’s encounter with both Cephas and James, each of whom seem to have been at odds with Paul over the role that religious rules and regulations would play for believers awaiting the living Christ’s return. Even those who have differed from him theologically have been visited by the living Christ, the anointed messiah. Already a power is at work, bridging a divide, forming a more perfect union of those who have shouted past and screamed at each other. Jews, Greeks, Romans, are now all knit together as eyewitnesses to an unfathomable event. All witnesses are bound together for life, many in common martyrdom at the hands of those who continued to feebly #Resist.

The power of the resurrection and the fellowship of Jesus sufferings join together one people out of many. The gates of hell will not prevail against that perfect union. Resurrection always triumphs over resistance. #Resurrect - the power of God unto salvation for all who believe.

Prayer:
Lord, No greater power, no stronger fellowship, no more glorious testimony exists than the power of your resurrection and the fellowship of your sufferings.  May we be like the centurion, Cephas, James, Paul and all the saints before us, awake from our stupor to gaze upon you once dead but now alive body and spirit. We beseech You to transform us, #resurrect us in Your image.
Amen

Greg Enas, Ph.D.
Venture Catalyst
Innovatov LLC