Resurrection day4

 For some reason, people did not immediately recognise Jesus after His resurrection. One reason is surely because He was the last person they expected to meet, walking around like a, well, like a living person again. As we said earlier, dead people didn’t tend to do anything but stay dead back then. Just like now.

But there was another reason they didn’t recognise Him. There was something about His physical appearance that was different. His body had changed somehow. His closest friends recognised His voice, but they were skeptical about His identity until He offered some proof.

The proof He offered came in the form of His scars. (Lk 24.39)

Interesting, isn’t it, that God brought Jesus back to life, supplying Him with a new kind of body but choosing to retain the scars from His former life (and death)?

Apparently, the resurrected life — which is one that all followers of Christ are expected to participate in — is not identified by its accomplishments, possessions or honorary degrees. Rather, the resurrected life is known by its scars. After all, we are not only called to participate in His resurrection, we are called to join Him in His death. (Mt 16.24-25)

Jesus’ life after His resurrection looked an awful lot like His life before His crucifixion. We see Jesus, after He has come back from the dead, serving others,(Jn 21) telling people about the kingdom of God,(Ac 1.3) and preparing and commissioning others to continue the work He had begun. (Ac 1.4-8)

And now He calls us to live as He did — to serve others in love, to tell people about the availability of His kingdom, to prepare others and commission them to continue the work He began and continues to do in and among and through us. We will encounter hardship, but we will endure it with gladness. We will bear in our bodies the scars of our own crucifixion so that the ongoing, everlasting life of Jesus may be seen in us as well. (2 Cor 4.10)

We will live in the shadow of the cross and in the light of the empty tomb. We will live as those who have been crucified with Christ, raised with Him and sent back to this earth on a temporary mission.

 

Prayer 

 

Father, I know that if the earthly tent that is my bodily house is torn down, I will have a building from You, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. And while I am in this body, I groan for the new body You are preparing for me, which is no longer perishable but imperishable, no longer earthly but heavenly, no longer weak but glorious in resurrected power. For I know that my true citizenship is in heaven, and that my humble and decaying body will be transformed into conformity with the body of Christ’s resurrected glory. And I know that in that day, I will see how the sorrows, suffering and scars of this life will be fully redeemed by that glory. Seeing this, I pray that I will be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in Your work, knowing that my toil is not in vain in the Lord.

In Jesus’s name, Amen