From Tim Mackie

“…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, it’s the world where people die tragically, where loss is what’s normal. It’s the world where someone is super healthy. All of a sudden their heart gives out, and you would have never seen it coming.

It’s the world with cancer, right? It’s that, 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, you know, 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 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.

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.”

From Exploring My Strange Bible: The Crocus Flower and the Empty Tomb – Gospel of Matthew Part 35, Feb 10, 2019

https://podcasts.apple.com/…/the-crocus…/id1271147429…

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