{"id":2199,"date":"2007-04-08T20:40:16","date_gmt":"2007-04-08T20:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/from-all-over.html"},"modified":"2007-04-08T20:40:16","modified_gmt":"2007-04-08T20:40:16","slug":"from-all-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/from-all-over.html","title":{"rendered":"From all over"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anglican Bishop Tom (N.T) Wright in the Guardian:<\/a><\/p>\n

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And whatever Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were doing in writing the final sections of their books, they were not telling the story of Jesus’s resurrection as a happy ending. They were telling it as a startling new beginning. Easter morning isn’t a slow, gentle waking up after the difficult operation. It’s the electric shock that brings someone back to life in a whole new way. <\/p>\n

That’s why the Easter stories tumble out in bits and pieces, with breathless chasings to and fro and garbled reports – and then, stories like nothing else before or since. As the great New Testament scholar EP Sanders put it, the writers were trying to describe an experience that does not fit a known category. They knew all about ghosts and visions, and they knew it wasn’t anything like that. <\/p>\n

Equally, they knew the risen Jesus wasn’t just a resuscitated corpse, still less someone who had almost died but managed to stagger on after all. They had the puzzled air of people saying, "I know this sounds wacky, but this is truly how it was." They were stumblingly describing the birth of new creation, starting with Jesus but intended for the whole world. <\/p>\n

It sometimes seems that the church can hardly cope with this any more than the world can. Perhaps that’s why, after 40 days of Lent, many churches celebrate Easter for a few hours and then return to normality. But nothing can be "normal" after Easter. New creation has begun, and we are summoned to get on board. We should at least have an eight-day party, or even a 40-day one. <\/p>\n

And if Easter is all about the surprise of new creation, there is every reason to suppose that it will ripple out into the world in ways we would never imagine. Gangsters and drug-dealers get radically converted and set on fire with God’s love, while pale churchmen drone their disbelief and warn against extremism. <\/p>\n

Extremism? What can be more extreme than God raising Jesus from the dead after the world has done its worst to him? Supposing the power of that event were to be released into the world, into local communities, into ordinary lives, here and now? What might that look like?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Patriarch Bartholomew:<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cChrist is risen! \u2013 writes the Patriarch \u2013 let the Chitins message of good news sound throughout our society of well-being, for the most part Christian.  This society no longer questions itself about the nature of death and instead lives as if death were inexistent and the resurrection useless. And yet there is nothing as tremendous as the mystery of death as Church records and daily reality shows.  Fear of death is pervasive, particularly for those who are ill or elderly, despite our efforts to defeat it with various methods; it consumes our peace and fills our souls with an unjustifiable anguish, constant uncertainty making it intolerable\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Lord\u2019s resurrection \u2013 continues the Easter message \u2013 put an end to our uncertainties.  Death no longer dominates life.  It is no longer the inevitable end of our existence.  The tomb stone no longer covers our existence in eternal silent.  The massive rock that covered the entrance to Our Lord\u2019s tomb was removed and Christ emerged triumphant, victorious over death.  Fear of death disappeared for those who followed in his footsteps and they were filled with joy and hope\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anglican Bishop Tom (N.T) Wright in the Guardian: And whatever Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were doing in writing the final sections of their books, they were not telling the story of Jesus’s resurrection as a happy ending. They were telling it as a startling new beginning. Easter morning isn’t a slow, gentle waking up…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom all over - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/from-all-over.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From all over - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Anglican Bishop Tom (N.T) Wright in the Guardian: And whatever Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were doing in writing the final sections of their books, they were not telling the story of Jesus’s resurrection as a happy ending. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}