{"id":10272,"date":"2018-02-23T17:55:42","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T17:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/?p=10272"},"modified":"2018-02-23T17:55:42","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T17:55:42","slug":"the-resurrection-as-revealing-god-as-redeemer-not-as-rescuer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/?p=10272","title":{"rendered":"The Resurrection as Revealing God as Redeemer, Not as Rescuer"},"content":{"rendered":"
http:\/\/ronrolheiser.com\/<\/a><\/div>\n
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Before you get serious about Jesus, first consider how good you are going to look on wood!<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a line from Daniel Berrigan that rightly warns us that faith in Jesus and the resurrection won\u2019t save us from humiliation, pain, and death in this life. Faith isn\u2019t meant to do that. Jesus doesn\u2019t grant special exemptions to his friends, no more than God granted special exemptions to Jesus. We see this everywhere in the Gospels, though most clearly in Jesus\u2019 resurrection. To understand this, it\u2019s helpful to compare Jesus\u2019 resurrection to what Jesus himself does in raising Lazarus from the dead.<\/p>\n

The Lazarus story begs a lot of questions. \u00a0John, the evangelist, tells us the story: He begins by pointing out that Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary, were very close friends of Jesus. Hence, we are understandably taken aback by Jesus\u2019 seeming lack of response to Lazarus\u2019 illness and the request to come and heal him. Here\u2019s the story:<\/p>\n

Lazarus\u2019 sisters, Martha and Mary, sent word to Jesus that \u201cthe man you love is ill\u201d with the implied request that Jesus should come and heal him. But Jesus\u2019 reaction is curious. He doesn\u2019t rush off immediately to try to heal his close friend. Instead he remains where he is for two days longer while his friend dies. Then, after Lazarus has died, he sets off to visit him. As he approaches the village where Lazarus has died, he is met by Martha and then, later, by Mary. Each, in turn, asks him the question: \u201cWhy?\u201d \u00a0Why, since you loved this man, did you not come to save him from death? Indeed, Mary\u2019s question implies even more: \u201cWhy?\u201d Why is it that God invariably seems absent when bad things happen to good people? Why doesn\u2019t God rescue his loved ones and save them from pain and death?<\/p>\n

Jesus doesn\u2019t offer any theoretical apologia in response. Instead he asks where they have laid the body, lets them take him there, sees the burial site, weeps in sorrow, and then raises his dead friend back to life. \u00a0So why did he let him die in the first place? The story begs that question: Why? Why didn\u2019t Jesus rush down to save Lazarus since he loved him?<\/p>\n

The answer to that question teaches a very important lesson about Jesus, God, and faith, namely, that God is not a God who ordinarily rescues us, but is rather a God who redeems us. God doesn\u2019t ordinarily intervene to save us from humiliation, pain, and death; rather he redeems humiliation, pain, and death after the fact.<\/p>\n

Simply put, Jesus treats Lazarus exactly the same way as God, the Father, treats Jesus: Jesus is deeply and intimately loved by his Father and yet his Father doesn\u2019t rescue him from humiliation, pain, and death. In his lowest hour, when he is humiliated, suffering, and dying on the cross, Jesus is jeered by the crowd with the challenge: \u201cIf God is your father, let him rescue you!\u201d But there\u2019s no rescue. \u00a0Instead Jesus dies inside the humiliation and pain. God raises him up only after his death.<\/p>\n

This is one of the key revelations inside the resurrection: We have a redeeming, not a rescuing, God.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the story of the raising of Lazarus in John\u2019s Gospel was meant to answer a burning question inside the first generation of Christians: They had known Jesus in the flesh, had been intimate friends with him, had seen him heal people and raise people from the dead, so why was he letting them die? Why wasn\u2019t Jesus rescuing them?<\/p>\n

It took the early Christians some time to grasp that Jesus doesn\u2019t ordinarily give special exemptions to his friends, no more than God gave special exemptions to Jesus. So, like us, they struggled with the fact that someone can have a deep, genuine faith, be deeply loved by God, and still have to suffer humiliation, pain, and death like everyone else. God didn\u2019t spare Jesus from suffering and death, and Jesus doesn\u2019t spare us from them.<\/p>\n

That is one of the key revelations inside of the resurrection and is the one we perhaps most misunderstand. We are forever predicating our faith on, and preaching, a rescuing God, a God who promises special exemptions to those of genuine faith: Have a genuine faith in Jesus, and you will be spared from life\u2019s humiliations and pains! Have a genuine faith in Jesus, and prosperity will come your way! Believe in the resurrection, and rainbows will surround your life!<\/p>\n

Would it were so! But Jesus never promised us rescue, exemptions, immunity from cancer, or escape from death. He promised rather that, in the end, there will be redemption, vindication, immunity from suffering, and eternal life. But that\u2019s in the end; meantime, in the early and intermediate chapters of our lives, there will be the same kinds of humiliation, pain, and death that everyone else suffers.<\/p>\n

The death and resurrection of Jesus reveal a redeeming, not a rescuing, God.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/ronrolheiser.com\/ Before you get serious about Jesus, first consider how good you are going to look on wood! That\u2019s a line from Daniel Berrigan that rightly warns us that faith in Jesus and the resurrection won\u2019t save us from humiliation, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fr-ron-rolheiser-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10273,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10272\/revisions\/10273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}