Exploring My Strange Bible - The Crocus Flower and the Empty Tomb - Gospel of Matthew Part 35

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

This story has changed the course of human history over the past 2,000 years. Of course the story is profound, but the IMPLICATIONS of what it means to the history of our universe leading up to Jesus��� resurrection is incredible. This teaching is a reflection about the significance of Easter. Jesus walking out of the empty tomb offered a whole new history of the world.

Tim Mackey, Jr. utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 10 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can be helpful for you too. I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find those resources at thebibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. All right. Well, in this episode, we're going to continue to explore the Gospel according to Matthew. In fact, we're exploring the final story in the Gospel according to Matthew.

It's the story of the empty tomb and of the resurrection of Jesus after his brutal execution. This story has changed the course of human history over the last 2,000 years. has changed the course of human history over the last 2,000 years. The story itself, but also the implications of what an event like this means in the history of our universe. What the resurrection of Jesus says about the story of human history leading up to this moment, the story of Israel's history, the story of the scriptures, to which this moment is a culmination and fulfillment. But also, with the empty tomb, Jesus walking out of there opened up a whole new history for the future of the world. The implications of this story for you and for me, for what we even mean when we say the word God or human or the universe,

everything changes in light of this moment. So this is, you know, a reflection on the significance of Easter and of the resurrection. And there you go. What else can you say except let's just humble ourselves and stand before this amazing moment of new creation that happened right here in the middle of our old creation. So let's open our minds and hearts and we'll learn together. I invite you to grab a Bible and you can turn open or turn it on to the Gospel according to Matthew. We're going to start in chapter 27. And this is a really familiar story. Probably you have family members, co-workers.

They know you're a Christian. And if you were to ask them, like, oh, what is Christianity about? My hunch is that they would know that it has something to do with a claim that Jesus rose from the dead. Like, it's just kind of, what do people know about Christianity? Well, Jesus, and he died, and they say he was raised. Like that's very common knowledge. And so we're reading a story today, one of the most familiar stories about Christianity, period.

The empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus, which means that we're at risk. We're at risk. We're at risk. Anytime we come to a story of the Bible that is familiar to us, we're at risk because we think we already know what it means and what it's about. And usually what that means is we've only ever entertained the tip of a very large iceberg, but we are satisfied with that. And so no more of that. We're going to deal with that today and next week as well. But let me frame it. Let me just kind of give a framework for it with a story and an image that I've used once before to talk about the resurrection, but it was not here at 9th and Fremont. It was back in Hawthorne days. And I can't think of a better way to frame this story. So here we go. How was yesterday here in Portland, you guys? It was really

great, wasn't it? Did you know, you know, there's lots of websites, National Weather Service, all this kind of thing, that since December 1 till now, last 100 days have been the wettest, most wet 100 days in recorded history in Portland, which is the last 150 years or something, which is pretty long, but it's not that long, you know. But as long as people have been writing it down, we get 44 inches of rain annually, and just in the last 100 days, since December 1st, we've had 27 of those 44 inches. And we've almost had our longest streak of days without sun. The longest streak actually happened in 97,

but it was like 42 days or something like that. But we came close until the break in February and that kind of thing. But all that to say, how are you guys doing? Some of you love it. Some of you love it and thrive in it. Some of you tolerate it. And some of you are tortured by it. But so like yesterday comes and we all like emerge like wounded animals.

You know what I mean? We're just like, what is it? What is it? That thing up there. by it. But so like yesterday comes and we all like emerge like wounded animals, you know, we're just like, Oh, what is it? What is it? That thing up there. And, um, so we had a, we all have our ways of dealing with it, uh, with the long winter gray, that kind of thing. Um, I have a particular way of dealing with it and I'm going to share it with you. It's not going to help you at all, but I'm going to share it with you anyway because it's part of my story. So I grew up here in Portland, and is there any other way to live with this kind of weather? That's growing up. And then for graduate school, I moved to the upper Midwest, to the lovely state of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. And in Madison, Wisconsin, winters are very different there.

Much, much different. They're cold. And you might say, well, like, it's cold here in the winter. No, it's cool. It's cool here in the winter. Even in December and January, it's merely cool. This is a picture of the last Thanksgiving that we had in Madison, Wisconsin. This is a picture taken out our front window on Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day.

And this is the week of Thanksgiving almost always is the first week of snow, and it's when the temperature drops and never gets above freezing again for months, literally until spring break week of March was the only predictable point at which you could trust that there'd be a good thaw. Which means this, what happens if it's months before it will ever get above freezing again, where does all the snow go? Did you know that snow actually evaporates? It's water. So it does evaporate, but it never totally goes away. What happens, this is a fresh snow on Thanksgiving Day of 2011, but it just piles up and then it evaporates and the dust and the dirt and it becomes this gray, dirty, brown, crusty ice world for months and months. And it doesn't melt until March. So be thankful that you live in

Portland. That's the lesson I'm trying to teach you right now. This is amazing. This is balmy, and anyhow. So there's an experience that I had. This was, my wife and I, we bought a fixer-upper. I wasn't quite done with school. We bought a small fixer-upper house for our last years there. And in the front yard, that this picture's taken out of, there was something, something happened in March, after the first year,

March 2009, after we had bought the house. And in March, once the thaw comes, in mid to late March, after the first thaw, and you get your days in the 40s and so on and it feels people are in t-shirts outside in the 40s there in march and um the

first wave of flowers comes what flower is it it's usually it's true in many places yeah the crocus the crocus flower so here's the picture of the crocus amongst all the dead leaves and dead grass in the front yard. It's really striking there because there's nothing green after being buried under ice for four months. There's nothing green, no green anywhere, just everything's brown and dead. And then these crocus flowers. So these things appear in our front yard. And my wife has a green thumb. She knew what they were. But this is my first time like, hey, this is my little yard. And we didn't know these were there.

And they were awesome. And ever since then, spring 2009, I've had this thing for the crocus flower. There's a deep, deep sense of meaning to me with the crocus flower because the winters were just harsh there. And these things come up, and there's nothing like them anywhere. You can see them driving from the street. They're just these little spots of yellow and red and purple popping up. And so what do they do for us psychologically, for me at least, right? They remind me that, like, winter's not eternal, right?

That there is, I have lived before in a world where there's green and red and yellow and purple. And there it is. I will again. I will live in that world again because, look, the crocus flower has bloomed. Now, what would very typically happen as the crocus flowers are in bloom, which would be late March. They bloom in January here, but it's mid to late March there. There would be snowstorms that come still. In late April one year, there was a huge snowstorm

that came through. And so you'd end up with scenes like this in my front yard. And that's beautiful. Anna should have probably sold it to iStockphoto or something like that, but I didn't. But anyway, there it is. And this was actually kind of depressing. Like, it looks beautiful now, or something like that, but I didn't. But anyway, there it is.

And this was actually kind of depressing. Like, it looks beautiful now, but for it to be the second week of April and the crocus flowers are out and it dumps three inches again. Are you with me? I'm looking at some friends who are moving to Wisconsin in the summer. I'm sorry, you guys.

But you know what you're moving back to. So anyway, so there it is. And for me, this was like disheartening. But even though, like, there's another three inches, it's going to melt quicker. It's going to melt in four days, you know, instead of four months. And the crocus flower's there. It's there. I can point to it. Summer's coming. You guys tracking with me? So this story is something like how the first followers of Jesus made sense of the story and experience we're going to read today. The world seems like it's a certain way, and then something happens that's so out of place,

that's so sudden, you would have never seen it coming, and then all of a sudden, the world still continues to be the way that it was, but it's different now, because the crocus has bloomed. Do you have ears? Are you listening? Matthew 27, verse 55. This is the last movement

of the story of Jesus' death and execution. So he's just yelled out and breathed his last. He's dead on the cross. And who's there watching? There were Roman soldiers, of course. They were the ones that executed him. But who else is there watching? Verse 55. Many women. Many women were there. Many women. Many women were there.

They were watching from a distance. See, they had been the ones who had followed Jesus from Galilee. They had been caring for his needs. And among this group of women, we're going to name three or identify three. One's Mary Magdalene. One's Mary, the mother of James and Joseph. And another one was the mother of Zebedee's sons, the two sons of Zebedee. Now, this is the kind of thing you just read over,

but this is really significant for a number of reasons. First of all, these are disciples of Jesus, yeah? A whole crew of them, we're told. The three just represent three among a larger group of women, and they're with Jesus as he dies. Like, they're watching. They can see him. He could certainly see them. Who's not there? Who's not there? Men, right? Like, the male disciples are just very explicit about it, right? When did they leave the scene? They haven't been present for any of the execution.

When did they abandon Jesus? The circle of the twelve, that symbolic inner circle, they bailed on Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane last night. And so this is very significant. You could read through the Gospel of Matthew up to this point and you wouldn't even know that Jesus' disciples was a large co-ed group. And now we find out that it was all along, that there's been a whole bunch of men and women,

and then a specific circle of women had a lot of cash and they had been funding the movement, right? They had been caring for Jesus and supporting the whole Jesus movement up to this point. And they are the faithful ones. That's the point here. It's these female disciples. These are the ones that are faithful to Jesus. And these are the ones to which we owe thanks because it's because of their eyewitness testimony that we have these stories. Where did the stories about Jesus' crucifixion come from? Not Peter. He wasn't there. Not Zebedee's

sons. Who are the sons of Zebedee? Do you remember? Zebedee were the two fishermen who left their dad in the boat when Jesus said, follow me. Do you remember their names, the two sons of Zebedee? James and John. James and John. So they bailed Jesus, on Jesus, in the garden. They abandoned him, but mom didn't. Their mom's been on the road too with them. And their mom stayed faithful and stayed with Jesus all the way through.

Are you with me here? This is very significant. Matthew highlights these. And he highlights them, as we're going to see, they're going to play a big role in the story to follow. Okay, so that's what they're there. They're watching. And what are they watching?

They stay through the whole crucifixion and they watch Jesus die. Now, this is certainly not the first crucifixion they've seen before. Jesus was not the first crucifixion they've seen before. Jesus was not the first Jewish man to be crucified by the Romans, and he was not the last. Thousands before him, thousands after him. In the late 1960s in Jerusalem, in northeast Jerusalem,

they were bulldozing and leveling a field to build an apartment complex. This kind of thing happens all the time in Jerusalem. And so they're moving earth around to do construction, and then they strike on some 3,000-year-old discovery or something, and then the whole thing gets halted, and then it was called the Israelis Antiquity Authority gets called in, and they do archaeological excavations. And so in the late 60s in this neighborhood, the bulldozer strikes on this large stone structure. They have to stop and they excavate it. And it's a first century family tomb. And inside of the tomb, there's a handful of old stone

boxes. And they have the family names on them. And one of the names on the box is Yehochanan ben Hakol or John, Hebrew for John ben Hakol and inside the box is a lot of dust and decomposed you know, what you expect to find in there, ashes and so on

but there is some large bits of bone, Yehochanan's bones that are fossilized and are sitting here in this box. And this is what caught international news of course about it, is that there was a large iron nail

through an ankle bone that you can see on the right is the thing, and then on the left is a reconstruction of where the nail is in relation. There you go. Yehochanan ben Hakol was crucified.

In the same time period as Jesus. And of course, the nail. What's up with the nail? What do you notice about it? It's bent. So what's the story behind that? That's horrifying. That's horrifying if you think about what happened there. So the theories are either first is two ankle bones were together and they were doing that first on the pavement before they

put it on the cross and it went through quickly, hit the pavement, and bent. More likely is the theory that there was just a big, fat, hard knot in the wood on the cross beam. And instead of going into the wood, so you can imagine what that was like. There you go. It made international news for one, it's a piece of a Jewish man's crucified body from the same time period as Jesus. That's significant and interesting.

But it also is significant for lots of other reasons too. It reminds us that Jesus was unique, but the way that he died was not unique. The way that he died was the fate of thousands of Jews before him and thousands of Jews after him. When the Romans sacked the city of Jerusalem 40 years after Jesus, a number of ancient historians tell us that the Romans crucified 500 people a day as the city was being burned and dismantled by the Romans.

Just thousands of people. And so what this moment represents is these faithful disciples, these women, watch Jesus die. They're watching Jesus die the fate of slaves and criminals and the innocent, just like they've seen happening on and off throughout their whole life.

It's a moment that represents how the world is, that the powers that be can define right and wrong however they want, and people like Jesus, and we don't know about Yehochanan Ben-Hakol, they get crushed by the machine. And so Jesus actually participates here. He's in solidarity with the suffering and oppression of his people before and after him, just like Yehochanan ben Hakol. What's going through their minds as they watch Jesus die like they've seen others die? Verse 57.

As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea. His name was Joseph. Now he himself had become a disciple of Jesus. Here's another disciple of Jesus we've never met before. And what's the one thing we know about him? Well, two things we know about him. Where he's from. He's from Arimathea. And what's the other thing we know about him? He's rich. Now that's interesting. We would have walked away from Jesus' teachings about wealth thinking, yeah, no chance for wealthy people, right? The camel through the eye of the needle. Remember that? It's easier for the camel to get through the needle than for a rich person

to follow Jesus. So apparently, camels walk through needles because here's a rich man. So that's interesting in and of itself. And he apparently wasn't on the road with Jesus. He lived in Jerusalem and he had a ton of money. And at some point he became a disciple of Jesus. And he, what do we see this wealthy disciple of Jesus do? He's one of the only ones in the whole gospel of Matthew. And what does a wealthy disciple of Jesus do? He uses and leverages his wealth to bring honor to Jesus. And that's what he does here.

He goes to Pilate, verse 58, and he asks for Jesus' body. They have to imagine there's some risk here. He's a wealthy, influential man in the city of Jerusalem, and he's asking for the body of a convicted state criminal. Like he's associating himself with Jesus. Yeah, there's some risk there for sure,

but he doesn't care. And Pilate agrees that it be given to him. So Joseph took the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and he placed it in his own new tomb that he had had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and then he went away, but who doesn't go away? Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, they're still there. Do you get the image here? They're just like flies on the scene. They can't stay away, and they're just following and observing everything that went down. So they go, and then they just sit there opposite the tomb that we're told. This is Archaeology Day, I guess. I don't know. So these kind of tombs are all over Jerusalem still today. Here's a picture

of a couple of them. On the upper left is a tomb of King Herod. The Herod that tried to kill Jesus as a baby built this tomb for his extended family. It's outside modern Jerusalem. It's just in the middle of a park. You can just walk. There's no ropes around it or anything. You just walk in there. You can see you walk down in these little steps. The door is not that high. It's about this tall. You have to duck under there.

There you go. Do you see the stone? Do you see the big round stone? That's a replica. They found remains of it and then they went and placed one there that would fit the size and shape. But there's like a slot that goes back and a track that rolls on. It's huge.

The whole point is that when it says he had a tomb hewn out of the rock, he's a wealthy man. Do you think he was down there with a pickaxe, you know, like doing this? No, of course not. This is a huge family tomb that he's had hewn out. And when it says he rolled the stone,

of course he's not down there, you know, he's got a crew of ten that he hired. You're with me here. He's a very wealthy man, and he's built a super fancy family tomb for his family. And instead of using it for his family, he was a disciple of Jesus.

And so Jesus normally, you know, crucified people would just be left there to rot and be picked apart by crows. It's very odd and surprising that he was able to get the body of Jesus, but he does. And so he honors Jesus by putting Jesus' body as the first body to be buried in his family tomb. This tomb on the lower right here is in north Jerusalem. It's called the Sanhedrin Tomb. It's from the first century. And if the word Sanhedrin is familiar to you,

it's the crew of chief priests and power brokers that condemned Jesus and got him murdered. Yeah? So we have their family tomb of that whole circle of people. And you can go see it still today. And it's super nice, all chiseled. You can tell it used to be lined with plaster. And you see those, they're called niches right there. So those go back about six feet. Each one of those are about this tall. And here's what you do. You would get the body wrapped, wrap it with all of these oils and spices, wrap the body tight, and then you would put it in one of those niches. And then it's just there for six months to a year, however long it takes for the whole body to just decompose till there's no organic matter left, just the bones.

And then the bones get gathered and put in one of those boxes, just like Yehochanan ben Hakol. And then the bone box gets slid into the niche, and that's where it is. And so that's the scene here, is Joseph gives him an honorable burial, and these Marys, these women come, they stick to it,

they don't abandon Jesus for a moment, even his body. And so they come, and they see it placed in, they see all these guys have to roll the stone, and then it's over. How are you feeling about your life if you're one of these women? Verse 62. Now the next day, this is the one after the preparation day, that's about Passover observance, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. Sir, they said, we remember that while he was still alive, that deceiver said, after three days I will rise again. So give the order so that the tomb can be made

secure until the third day. Otherwise his disciples might come. They might steal the body and then Take a guard, Pilate answered, and go. Make the tomb as secure as you know how. And so they went. They made the tomb secure. They you know how. And so they went, they made the tomb secure, they put a seal on the stone, probably a big wax thing over the seal so no one could open it without it being really clear. It's like one of those child safety plastic things

they put on vitamins, one of those. So put a seal on the stone and then post a guard, right? So they seal it and then they put a seal on the stone and then post a guard, right? So they seal it, and then they put a guard there. So just, let's just pause here. You're one of these Marys, right? You've been following Jesus for the years. You left everything. You went on the road with him.

We know Mary Magdalene is mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, that Jesus had healed her. She had been oppressed by these evil spirits, and Jesus drove them from her life. I mean, we've got a crew of disciples around Jesus, people who they'd seen him heal others. They themselves have been healed. They've been transformed by his teachings and his grace and his mercy, right? And he had this electric,

beautiful, compelling vision of the world and a claim about himself that he was God's son and that he was bringing God's kingdom and God's reign and rule. And he would invite people into his family of disciples, people who had never been included, you know, in any families or religious groups before. And he would celebrate the kingdom of God with them and celebrate the healing power and love of the Father. He taught these people that God cared about the sparrows. These people that God cared about, the sparrows. How much more are you? You know, he taught his disciples that the world's a safe place for us because of the Father's love, and he taught us to love our enemies.

Right? That's Jesus. We've lived with him for a year and a half because we've gone through Matthew. He's beautiful. He's amazing. And he's so compelling. And then this. Like this

happens. Right? This beautiful, amazing vision of Jesus. And then what happens to him? He gets crushed by the machine. Jesus suffers the fate of Jehochanan ben Hakol and the thousand Jews before him

and the thousands of Jews after him who got crushed by the empire of Rome and so what's going through their minds this was all very nice they had their hopes up that maybe the world is the kind of place that Jesus talked about. And then it all just shatters.

He could save others, but he couldn't save himself apparently. That's the headspace they're in. And this story, there's so many layers to it. that he dies it's that they've they watch him die that way they watch him get buried like they've surely buried family members on their own before and not only that the powers that be then do their best to make sure that this

jesus movement gets erased from history once and for all. And you're sitting watching all of this go down and you're just going, yep, that's right. This is how the world is. It's a lot like how you feel after four months of living in Wisconsin, right? When the temperature never gets above 32 degrees or it's how you feel during the wettest. It's just like, yeah, this is how it is.

It's nice to dream about the fact that it could be different, and Jesus helped us foster that dream for a while. That was fun. But now we're brought back to reality. And we live in the world where might makes right, where people define good and evil the way they want to for themselves

and their tribe, and it's a world where chimpanzees don't even treat each other as poorly as we do. Right? Chimpanzees behave really badly, but they don't crucify each other. They don't devise ways to maximize pain and shame and how we kill each other. That's what we do, and that's the kind of world we live in. And, you know, living in Portland or whatever, living in the West, it's hard for many of us. There are some of us who have gone through excruciating loss

and pain in our lives. And when that happens, we're reminded, we're participating in what the majority of human history has been like. You know, if I don't know someone who's died tragically or murdered, I stand out in human history. That's how the world is. And that's what these stories are about. Whatever the Christian message is, it's not a pipe dream. It's not pie in the sky. It's the

Christian story looks right in the face of the worst tragic evil that our world knows. And it actually embraces it. It's participated in it. Jesus died the death of a criminal

and a rebel as an innocent man. And these women, like what are they supposed to think? I guess we'll go home and I'll learn how to cope. And that's about the best that many of us do. Like we have a vision of how the world is.

Our life experience teaches us how the world is. You get hurt, it's hard, there's a lot of pain and loss and you just find a way to cope. And for many people that's what it means to be a human. But to be a disciple of Jesus is to do something crazy. It's to choose to believe that that vision of the world isn't actually the real world.

It's real in that it happens, but it's not the most true thing about the world. And it's certainly not where the world's heading. Why on earth would you believe that there is a world of green and purple and red and orange when it looks like planet Hoth out your front window? Right? Like, why would you believe that there are days of sunny and 70

where you'll go to the beach and get sunburned? You know what I mean? Why would you believe such a thing? Because I saw that crocus flower in my front yard. Chapter 28. After the Sabbath, at dawn, on the first day of the week, which is Sunday, there's Mary again, Mary Magdalene, the other Mary.

They went back to look at the tomb in the morning. There's an earthquake. For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and going to the tomb, he rolled back the stone and he sat on it. His appearance was like lightning. His clothes were white as snow. And the guards were so afraid of him, they shook and became like dead people. Then the angel said to the woman,

Don't be afraid. Right. Sheesh. Don't be afraid. I know you're here looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He's not here. He's risen.

It's just like he said. Come, come, look, here's where he was laying. He's not there anymore. Now go, quickly, tell his disciples that he's risen from the dead and he's going ahead of all of you up into Galilee and that's where you're going to see him. Look, I've told you, so go.

Now the women hurried away from that tomb, and what are they feeling? This is so important. What are they feeling? Matthew tries to capture it with two words, but it's a single emotion that he's describing. What are the two words? Fear and joy. It's not like they were afraid and then got happy once they started running. They're terrified and full of joy. Suddenly, Jesus met them like it's just any other day. And he said, hi.

Greetings is what's in most of our English translations, which sounds so nerdy. It's just the normal word for hi. So strange. Right? It was like, what just happened? And then they're running, terrified with joy, whatever that's supposed to mean.

We'll talk about that. And then as they're running then it's just like Jesus is there. And he's just like, hey! Hi! And so they come to him and then they fall. They grab his feet and they worship.

It's the only thing they can make sense to do. And then Jesus said to them, don't be afraid. Go tell the rest. Go tell the guys to go up to Galilee, and that's where they're going to see me. And that's the story. That's the story. There goes on another story about the guards

and then they go up to Galilee but that's it this is the women's experience these women who were faithful to Jesus the only ones where does this story come from? from them and they had this notice how simple the story's told. Most stories

about Jesus are longer than this in the Gospel of Matthew. It's just very, like, there's nothing about, here's what it means. Here's why the world's different. Here's, you know, like the Apostle Paul and Peter, they're going to give their best energies to writing and exploring the significance and meaning of all of this. But Matthew just tells us this bare bones version of just what happened. This is their version of what happened. And there's, like, what categories do you have for this? There's lots of ancient stories written by the Greeks and Romans about people seeing their loved ones after they died, whether in a vision or a dream or even as a ghost in some way.

There's lots of stories, even Jewish stories, some of them in the Bible, about people being revived after death. Stories about the great prophets. Jesus, when he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, he revived him from the dead. But Lazarus eventually died again. I don't know where he is today. He's not living forever. He died again. But this story is neither of those things. This story is utterly unique in ancient literature, and it's its own category. And it comes out of the story, the Jewish story, the story of the Bible, that the God of Israel, who's the creator,

he's on a mission to confront evil and defeat death and purge his world of injustice and evil. And the prophets looked forward to a day when he would bring his kingdom and his rule and do that. And then the hope was not that everybody floats away somewhere. The hope is that God would actually recreate his own people as new kinds of humans. And the word that Ezekiel and Daniel and Isaiah use this

is raising up, resurrection. Not to some spiritual state, but to act like a new human, living in a redeemed world that's been purified and cleaned and made new to be truly good and truly what God made it to be.

That's the story. If you read the Old Testament scriptures, that's the vision and hope for the future. And that's what this story is saying. But what this story is saying is that the way God did that, the way God brought summer to our world of winter is in a very surprising way that not even these women had categories for. See, the prophets just said summer's coming. The land of green and milk and honey and flowers and tulips and roses. That's what the prophets pointed to.

But what actually happened was a crocus flower bloomed. Like in the middle of winter, at the end, like at the thaw. And there's still snow and ice around and this thing, right? It's this prototype of the new human. It's this first foretaste of the new creation

bursts out of the tomb. And nobody had categories for this. Jesus tried to tell them that this is what was going to happen, and they're like, yeah, we know summer is coming, Jesus. And he's like, no, you don't get it. You don't get it. And even now they don't get it, because they have no categories for what just happened. They just experienced a version of the world that is like what everybody thinks, death, pain, loss. And they have a future hope

that God will fix it one day. And then all of a sudden, like on Easter morning, this happens. And I think part of why we have just the bare bones narrative is they're trying through their testimony just to recreate for you the category shattering experience

that it was. Like all of a sudden you have to rethink your whole life if you're going to embrace this as true. And not just rethink your life, you have to rethink, like, what kind of world am I living in? Because apparently, this is the kind of world where the machines of selfishness and sin and injustice can just annihilate people. But that those machines of sin and evil don't get the last word. Why would you believe such a thing? Well, I've got this crocus flower in my front yard.

And there's this empty tomb in Jerusalem. And these eyewitnesses saw a mutilated, murdered man put into a tomb, and he's not there anymore. And then they met him, and he said hi, and wanted to hang out. And then the full story from the others,

he like ate meals with, it didn't end right here. It's like, then there's these women, and then Peter sees him, and then John sees him, and then the whole circle sees him. And then over the next month, and then Peter sees him and then John sees him and then the whole circle sees him. And then over the next month, hundreds and hundreds of disciples of Jesus have this experience right here. You can't just write it off

as like the eccentric delusions of a couple people. We're talking about a whole community was utterly transformed by this category-shattering experience. And it's the birth of the Jesus movement. Why did the Jesus movement not die out like half of the other strange religious movements of the first century in the Roman world?

There was something driving these people that was utterly unique. And when you ask them what it was, go read the New Testament, and they'll all tell you, Jesus rose from the dead. The world's not what you think it is. And to me, it all comes down to the way Matthew describes their response. What does it feel like to have, you thought your whole life and the whole world was one thing, and then in a moment it's all blown apart,

and you have to rethink everything. What does that feel like? To have everything you thought you knew shattered. It feels like terror and fear and joy. Not separate, at the same time. I thought long and hard about this. If I've ever felt anything even close to this, maybe you've been trying to think of that too. Terror filled with joy. And I can only think of two moments in lo my many 39 years on the planet, you know. And two experiences. And they're two separate experiences of the same thing.

And it's the moment when I caught a slippery, smelly, new human that just emerged from my wife Jessica. new human that just emerged from my wife Jessica. That was such a singular, unique moment in my life. And here's the thing. It's actually not that unique. It's happened to billions of people through human history. So I knew that it was coming.

It's happened to all of us. All of us went through that and experienced that firsthand. And a bunch of you have done the catching thing too. You've held these little creatures. And as much as I could try and think about what it would be like, like it's just nothing, nothing.

And it was truly fear and joy at the same time. And I didn't even go through labor and it was a terrifying experience. Every moment I'm just like, this is all, we're all going to die. It was really so intense. And then to be at the

culmination moment of that and then there's this new human and we're alive and he's alive. And he's so fragile, yeah? Like a whole bunch of things could go wrong in the next hour, right? Really. In the first couple hours, like everything could go wrong. And so you're just like, this is at the same moment, it's the most like earthy, human, smell, touch, feel, you know, moment. And it's also the most sacred, like transcendent experience I've ever had. This is a life has been created, and I've been a part of that,

and I'm holding it. And we're so amazing. This is so incredible, but we're also so mortal and fragile and frail. Just, you know? And I'm not joking like that. Those two experiences marked me. The emotional intensity has worn off, especially now that, you know, he's four and yells at me when I take his truck or whatever. Like, it all kind of...

But that moment was singular. Two singular moments. And all of a sudden, what woke up inside of me about these humans and for my wife, and she went through that, and oh my, she's the queen of the world now. It did something to me.

It marked me for the rest of my life. And that's just a poor analogy of what happened to these disciples of Jesus. And I wasn't there. You weren't there. Hundreds of people had this experience. And they've passed on their testimony

to us, what we call the New Testament. And it's a claim. At the end of the day, this is not just, oh, the world's a stranger place than I thought it was. Dead people don't stay dead, you know? Like, no, dude. Do you see? Do you see what's happening here?

Like, we think we know what kind of world we're living in. Right? It's the world where Yehochanan ben Hakol and Jesus of Nazareth get annihilated, and it's totally unjust, and it's corrupt, and like that's the world we live in. And it's the world where people die tragically, where loss is what's normal. It's the world where someone who is super healthy. All of a sudden their heart gives out and you would have never seen it coming.

It's a world with cancer, right? That's our world. And this story is inviting us to say that that's not actually the full story and it's not the end of the story. And so you and I, we walk in here, we come from lots of different places in a week, and some of us are totally the walking wounded right now

from how people have treated you and what's happened to you in the last year or seven days. And you're very tempted to read the teachings of Jesus and just go, yeah, that's a nice idea. If only the world was really like that. And some of us walk in here and we have major personal failures, moral integrity failures, and it's the ones that you keep doing. And you begin to say, like, this is who I am. And this is the kind of world I live in. And it's nice that Jesus could talk about, like, victory over death and Paul could say there's, like, hope for real change and life transformation, but, like, I know my life

and I know that that's a pipe dream. my life and I know that that's a pipe dream. And this story just asks you to entertain the simple simple claim to say no, that's not true. That's not the way the world is and that's not who you really are. You you're a glorious human

made in God's image. And you and I are caught in a web of selfishness, of evil and injustice. It's wrapped us all in. And we've all participated in the death of Jesus of Nazareth in one way or another. And this story is telling us that even our own failure and evil,

it's not the last word. It's not the last word. Like Jesus has chosen to take responsibility for us, for the human condition and the human story, and he's chosen to have victory over it with his life and his love and there's a hope for a new creation. There's hope

for a new you and it's real. It's not a figment of your imagination. And when you're tempted to think that it is, you can point to this thing that exists in history. It's the crocus flower. It's the empty tomb.

And the testimony of these hundreds of people who saw the risen Jesus. So I don't know what this does to you. We've all got our stories, if we're honest. We all have our wounds and our temptations to not actually believe

that any of this is true and to believe that you know how the world is. And the resurrection of Jesus is just saying it's not true. There's a different way and there's a different kind of hope. So here's what I want us to do as we're going to land and have our time to sing and to pray and to take the bread and the cup. Maybe there's some issue in your life, there's some relationship, or there's some character flaw or behavior, and you're like, yeah, that's just how it is.

And the resurrection of Jesus says, no, that's not how it has to be. Are you open to change and resurrection power to open up a new future? There might be some of us who we look at people we care about, or we look out at the world, and it seems so hopeless. And the resurrection of Jesus is saying it's not how it has to be. It can be different, and one day it will be different. Because Jesus rose from the dead. Thank you for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible. This episode concludes a 36-part series that we've been doing on the gospel according to Matthew,

and it represents an important transition moment, actually, in this podcast and where we've been, but also where we're going. So the next episode that's coming out, it might be a little bit longer of a gap than we've had in the past, but the next episode that does come out, I'm going to reflect a little bit on where we've been, but also share a little bit about some new things that are coming for the future of exploring my Strange Bible podcast. And there you go. So I'll look forward to sharing that with you, and we'll see you next time. you