Luke, Chapters 1-7 - R. Vinson (Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary)
Today has been the grumpiest Easter ever. Bah bunny humbug! I woke up an irritable grouch, and it looks like I'll go to bed that way. I'm glad it wasn't my morning job to fly over and roll the stone away; I'd have slept in and left Jesus knocking, "Ok...I'm good...anytime now!" Can't you see him twiddling his super-shiny resurrected thumbs? "Come on Dave of all the mornings to be dragging your feet."
Several Resurrection related thoughts circling each other...
1) the Gospel writers, brave and bold in describing a variety of miracles and dramatic events, don't quite describe or narrate the resurrection (as does Gosp of Peter). From a story-telling perspective, beginning the resurrection with an empty tomb is surpassing brilliant; from a spiritual perspective, profound and beyond. How much can we learn about our Gospel authors by what they don't say about the resurrection?
2) Paul gives us a little bit about what he thinks - Jesus was raised from the dead with a spiritual body - definitely a physical body, but alive in a new way. He kinda describes it negatively. Not corrupted. Not perishable. Jesus was transformed, as we will be. In Mark and Matt Jesus says that in the resurrection people neither marry nor are give in marriage, because they will be like the angels.
3) I've enjoyed reading some of the historical Jesus debates about resurrection. Everyone agrees there was nothing as simple as a "resuscitated corpse." Oh good!
4) Paul and other theologians understand Jesus to have overcome or undone the archetypal sin-curse of Adam and Eve and restored or surpassed the original paradise.
5) In Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, Pagels says that in one of the gnostic amplifications of the garden story, Adam and Eve are described in sparkling, god-like terms - shining feet, giants with their heads in the heavens.
6) Mr ______, Celie's husband in The Color Purple, sins every which way - abusing two wives and multiple children, then gets a little taste of divine judgment and punishment, then repents. As an old man trying to live right he tells Celie, "I'm satisfied this the first time I ever lived on Earth as a natural man. It feel like a new experience." That reminded me of Dante's experience in the garden of Eden, on top of Mt Purgatory.
7) Dante, having climbed the mountain where the pilgrims work off their sins, has to walk through a wall of fire to enter Eden. Virgil motivates him with thoughts of Beatrice on the other side. "Then he smiled as one does at a little boy who is won over by an apple." And after Dante passes through, Virgil proclaims, "That sweet apple which the zeal of mortals goes seeking along so many branches, today will bring peace to your hungers."
Not only has Eden, with Adam and Eve, been restored, but the symbolic fruit itself has been redeemed. The fruit now represents a healthy, blessed desire. "...your own pleasure now take as leader: you are beyond the steep ways, beyond the narrow...free, upright, and whole is your will, and it would be a fault not to act according to its intent." Still, Dante is not yet to heaven.
8) Where there any heretics who claimed that Jesus was human "filled with the Holy Spirit," then after death God raised him into orthodoxy (fully human, fully divine)? Ebionites? I might be one of those.
9) Who stresses the natural-ness of resurrection? Did Jesus become more natural than natural? Supernatural, not in a spacial sense (above natural) but as an intensification (really really natural). Jesus the super-natural, super-spiritual, super-real, super-supper.
notes
The Color Purple
- It be more then a notion taking care of children ain't even yourn
- Trying to believe his story kilt her
- Some be dress too. Some don't hit on much.
- Nettie steady try...
- long as I can spell G-o-d I got somebody along
- streetcleaner
- I feels like Who Would Have Thought
- His little whistle sound like it lost way down in a jar, and the jar in the bottom of the creek
- white folks is a miracle of affliction
- By God, I miss you, Celie. I think about the time you laid yourself down for me. I love you with all my heart, Your Sister, Nettie
- Hard to be Christ, too, say Shug. But he manage.
- We know a roofleaf is not Jesus Christ, but in its own humble way, is it not God?
- Let 'im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.
- Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't.
- Crazy as betsy bugs. Nothing built this crazy can last.
- Well, say Sofia, mama fight the good fight. If there's a glory anywhere she right in the middle of it.
- I'm satisfied this the first time I ever lived on Earth as a natural man. It feel like a new experience.
- And you know how some whitefolks is, won't let well enough alone. If they want to bad enough, they gonna harass a blessing from you if it kill.
- Can't be rule. Every nigger you see got a kingdom in his head.
- ...stood up with him/her [at a wedding]
- a look of _____ (a lot of)
- Let her quit, say Sofia. It not my salvation she working for.
- Us look round at a lot of people's knees
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