Resurrection: The Passover of All Things

For many of us, I know the term "Easter" or, even, "Resurrection" has become simply a title or a symbol that we have lost track of. We use the words as if the essence of what we are talking about is assumed. As if it is some distant, abstract, mysterious thing that we celebrate as some routine pattern of Christianity.

So I've often found myself asking, what is this all about anyway? Where does it come from? What does it mean for the world? Why is it such a big deal and what does it actually have to do with Jesus and God's movement in the world?

So for those of you who may be having the same thoughts, who have wondered about the substance behind Jesus' death and resurrection, I wanted to share some things I've discovered over the past couple of years.

Because there has got to be more to it than that.

And my hope is that the Easter story and the movement of Jesus can become a little bit more real for you.








Sometimes I go to read something with quite a bit of length and wish that the author would have just simply laid out the core essence of the writing so I wouldn't have to trudge through the whole thing. So I wanted to do that for you. This writing is long and is loaded with depth and complexity and details that you just might not be that interested in. But that shouldn't keep the substance of what is written from being approachable.

So for those of you who just want the 'thing', the raw idea - I'll just simply lay it out. But if something doesn't make sense or you want more of the digging behind what is being said, you can just go on to read the full thing and hopefully it can add some substance. Either way, I'm hoping that the experience of Easter becomes a little more vivid and meaningful through what is being said.

So here's the summary.

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Essentially, Jesus' death and resurrection can't be understood without Passover.

Passover is about liberation from exile, about being saved from oppression and darkness. This is what is happening when the Israelites go on their exodus from Egypt. They endure a particular judgment over the land with ensuing curses and then go on to escape through the wilderness to the land God had for them.

Central to this event, though, is that during the final curse, in order to be spared from the messenger of death, a lamb had to be sacrificed and its blood painted on the doorposts of the house. And when the messenger saw the blood, it would 'pass over' that home.

Hence, the Passover.

Immediately after this event, the Passover became the defining image for the Hebrew people. It held together their life and their story as a community and, as the people again found themselves in exile, the Exodus story and the Passover became the defining image for Israel's future.

Upon their escape from Egypt, God laid out before Israel two directions, the path of curses and the path of blessing. As they began their life as a community and a nation, they would need to chose one. If they chose to bless the world, they would find themselves in the very blessing that they were manifesting all around them. However, if the chose to be a curse to the world, those curses would find themselves enacted in the very life of their people.

Exile was a part of the curses.

So the prophets find themselves navigating this very story of curses and exile because, essentially, Israel had sinned as a nation. They had began disconnecting the world, making it less and less like God created it to be; separate from the way God had shown them through Torah. And their sin, their curses, led them to be dispersed and devastated as a people. They were on the verge of extinction living in a world of suffering and pain and death and starvation.

And they needed liberated.

Just like in Egypt.

It became the plea of the prophets in confronting the sin of Israel that God would restore them. That they could be God's community in the world again that blessed the world as opposed to the curses they had been implementing. That they could move from disconnecting the world to reconnecting it.

That they would be forgiven of their sins.

Which is much more than just a personal record of wrongs being released so you can go to heaven. The forgiveness of sins was essentially the end of exile and extinction and curses as a nation.

And this is what the prophets began saying God was going to do.

God was going to take Israel and make them a force of blessing in the world again. God was going to deliver them from their suffering and pain and death. And they called it "the forgiveness of sins".

It was all about being liberated from exile.

Which sounds a bit like Exodus and the Passover.

Yet this time it was going to be different. This would start with Israel, but it would then go on to expand to the entire world; even to all of creation. Almost as if this would fulfill and complete the very Exodus that started so many years ago.

Instead of the blood on the doorposts of houses, it would be blood on the doorposts of all things.

God was going to liberate and heal and restore it all.

But liberation and entering into the God's world involves judgment, just as it did in Egypt. It involves enduring the curses that have been brought to the world. Because forgiveness of sins can only come by enduring what those very sins and moving through them. This was the judgment. To reverse their disconnection.

Which is exactly how the Exodus happens.

So, naturally, this Exodus, too, would involve the same thing.

This is what the prophets and the people of Israel saw themselves going through. They became centered on this movement of history from curses to life. From darkness to blessing. And, for them, this became the very hope of the Messiah; that the Messiah would bring this very world of God back to Israel.

Which is why the passion accounts of Jesus in the Gospels always begin with Passover. It begins by situating the whole experience in the context of what Israel was so eagerly anticipating - that the Messiah would take the people through the sea and into liberation.

Apparently, you can only understand Jesus' death and resurrection by first understanding the Passover. You can't understand the bread and the wine outside of the bread and wine taken during the Passover meal; the bread and wine that Jesus makes about himself. Because the story of Jesus is simply a direct continuation of the story of Israel.

The cross and Jesus raising from the dead, then, is simply the awaited Passover experience.

It is God actively liberating and restoring the world, moving it from the curses of exile to God's Kingdom and God's world that expands to the entire earth.

It is the Passover of all things.






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|  The Passover of All Things

The central event and experience of the Jewish people is Passover. It is remembering the story of Israel exiting Egypt; bringing Israel back to the land promised to Abraham so that they could go and bless the world again. It was the endurance of various curses culminating when the messenger of death passed over the homes of those with the blood of a sacrificed lamb on their doorposts.

Israel went through a sort of judgment and moved through a series of curses bringing them to escape death and be liberated from exile.

And it was all because of a lamb's blood.

So, naturally, this is a highly celebrated story because, without it, this group of people would still be slaves in Egypt. This liberation is what gives the Jewish people their existence . It is what gives hope and life in the midst of oppression and darkness. So, every year, they remember and reflect and celebrate because the Passover is what allowed them to go and be God's people and bless the world again.

And one of the first progressions upon their freedom was to establish a place for God's presence. This movement began that would eventually result in the Temple. A place that would be the picture for this community and who they were in light of this liberation from Egypt. It would be the essence of God's presence, a place that displayed the Creator God of Israel and how this God works to the world. They wanted a place that put on display what this God is like.

This is the kind of thing you do when you are liberated from death.

Now, as Israel's story continued they eventually wandered on to become a nation; an established community in the world. Their liberation, their being saved from Egypt, results in the formation of a community that collectively displays the way of God together.

They called it 'Torah'.

But eventually, this nation begins to fall away from what God set them out to do. Meaning that they stop fully displaying and following Torah. And what happens is that after being liberated from the oppression of an Empire, they go on to become the very Empire they needed saved from.

And it is this that lands them back in exile.

The community was disconnecting the world and destroying life and bringing darkness to the world instead of God's way of shalom. They were supposed to be restoring the world as a people that goes out and blesses it to make it good again as their Creator intended, but, instead, they find themselves adding to the brokenness. They are shattering and disrupting, not healing and blessing.

They contrast the very way of God they are supposed to be perpetuating.

They sin.

Back in the Torah, before they even began to established themselves as a community, God stopped them and said that they are going to have a choice of what kind of force they will be in the world - a force of connection or a force of disconnection. And whatever they chose would naturally lead to their own experience of the world. If they chose to bless the world, then they would naturally be blessed because that is the existence they were making manifest. If they chose to curse the world, then they, too, would find themselves in an array of curses.

Which meant that this sin, this disconnection of things, it was cursing the world. And, as a result, Israel was now finding themselves in the very curses God told them would happen if they chose to be that kind of force. If they chose to bring pain instead of shalom.

Namely, this meant exile.




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|  Echoes of Exile

It was in the midst of this chaos and exile that the prophets arose to become a voice for God.

What happens to Israel in exile is that they find themselves on a path of extinction; of eliminating their name as a people and assimilating into the very world they were supposed to be transforming. It was the threat of slowly losing their existence because their exile had detached them from the very thing that made them who they were.

And to some of Israel's people, this extinction happened.

Israel had been divided at one point, into a Northern Kingdom and a Southern one. The Southern Kingdom was mainly comprised of the tribe of Judah which is why they would eventually become known as 'Jews'. They became what we think of today as the people of Israel. The Northern Kingdom didn't fare so well. Eventually the Empire of Assyria invaded and, slowly, began to eliminate the identity of the nation. Some were killed, some were deported, but some were just intermarried with foreigners...which meant they were no longer Israelites. God's people in the Northern Kingdom eventually became a sort of Gentile. Instead of changing the world, they faded away from it losing their land, their identity, and their very sustenance of life.

This was what it meant to live out the curses.

So the prophets enter into this and begin confronting the people, attempting to push Israel to a new future; one with blessing, not curses. Shalom, not pain and darkness. To become God's force of good again, making the world how God created it to be. And central to this message of confrontation was what the prophets began calling "the forgiveness of sins" - the dealing with Israel's disconnection and exile and how they had broken and shattered and disrupted the world. Forgiving the existing curses that came from their failure to live as God created them to. And as you read the prophets, you see this all over the place.

The prophet Jeremiah speaks again and again about this thing God is trying to do with Israel and with the world.

"The days are surely coming, says Adonai, when I will make a new covenant

with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant

that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring

them out of the land of Egypt...but this is the covenant that I will make with

the house of Israel after those days, says Adonai:

I will put my Torah within them, and I will write it on their hearts;

and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 

No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, 'Know Adonai',

for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, 

says Adonai; for I will forgive their iniquity, 

and remember their sin no more.

God is actively at work in restoring Israel - through forgiving their sins.

Notice how nowhere in any of this are the prophets talking about individual sins of how some single person has messed up. Sin isn't about your personal transgressions. It involves the whole of the community. 

And it is interesting that he brings up not having to teach one another or remind each other to know Adonai. Because what this is implying is that everyone would already know. The problem with exile and the threat of extinction was that people had forgotten the Creator God of Israel and turned away from Adonai. And so part of the forgiveness of sins is that this wouldn't be an issue anymore. Israel as a whole would be restored. 

There is another book titled Daniel where Israel has been exiled to Babylon and this Daniel figure is put through the threat of assimilation, to detach himself from his people and join the Gentile powers. But he doesn't. Again and again, he stands in stark contrast to the world around him for the sake of his God. It is in the midst of this conflict of power and domination that the King of Babylon has a dream. 

But he doesn't know what it means. 

And the only person that can interpret it is Daniel, the stubborn Hebrew man that just won't assimilate.

So the King tells him the dream and Daniel proceeds to explain it in a way that completely subverts the authority of the Empire that has such a stranglehold on Daniel and his people. He confronts the vast array of kings that have subjected Israel to exile and that have oppressed them. He portrays the kingdoms and empires as weak compared to the Creator God of Israel showing that the same God that powers the seasons is the one who removes kings and sets up kings. And then Daniel says this:

"And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up 

another kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor will God let any other 

people damage his kingdom. Rather he shall dissolve all these

kingdoms, and his shall stand forever."

Apparently, Israel may be oppressed and subjected and under the threat of extinction and assimilation, but God's Kingdom is going to take shape despite the Empires of the Earth. 

And while all those kingdoms will come and go, will grow and then fail,
this Kingdom will overcome. 

This Kingdom will prevail. 

The problem is that, throughout the rest of the book, we are shown a nation whose inhabitants have been dispersed and dejected. We are shown an Israel that has been practically destroyed. They've been devastated by the powers of the earth and have found themselves in the suffering lifelessness of exile. 

Which is what the curses are all about. 

So we have the picture that God's Kingdom will prevail, but the sin and the curses that Israel has chosen must be dealt with first. 

Which is what chapter nine of Daniel is all about (please read the whole thing in its entirety). It is about the movement of Israel from curses to blessing. From exile to God's Kingdom that will last forever. And in the midst of that we find Daniel pleading:

"Forgive Israel's sins not for our sake, but for yours

because we are your people and called by your name. 

All Israel has sinned. We have forsaken Torah and the covenant. 

None of us have kept our covenant promises, and so we brought

this on ourselves and have been scattered in all directions."

Because we have sinned like this, we have no claim to you God.
We only pray that you act out of your mercy,
let your wrath come to an end...

...and forgive us. 

Then God answers:

"Seventy weeks of years are decreed concerning

your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression,

to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity,

to bring in everlasting righteousness, 

to seal both vision and prophet, 

and to anoint a most holy place."

This is what we find the prophets talking about again and again and again.

We see this with the prophet Isaiah, with the prophet Micah, with Zechariah, and even when Ezekiel is dealing with the dry bones - this is what they are all referring to.

Israel has put their community into the curses of exile but, through the forgiveness of sins, God's Kingdom will prevail.

And this has some pretty serious implications.

Because the forgiveness of sins is not some legal record of wrongs. It isn't about getting an individual into heaven when they die. There would have been no conception of this for the prophets and the Jewish people.

Rather, forgiveness of sins was the end of Israel's exile and slavery and oppression to the Gentile Empires. It was the end of pain and death where their threat of extinction was gone. It was the end of starvation and not knowing if you were going to die from there not being enough food. It was the end of Israel's shame and failure and fragmentation as a people. This was what it meant to have their sins forgiven. It dealt with the entire community of Israel as a whole being restored to flourishing. Being liberated from exile and saved from the hellish experience of suffering and death that they knew so well in order that they would begin finding health and life and food and water and fertility and purity.

You could just say that they would find themselves in God's world again.

This is the forgiveness of sins that the prophets were pointing towards.

Do you see why healing, then, is so prominent with the movement of Jesus, especially when he is talking about forgiveness and God's Kingdom? Because it was a picture of the sort of deliverance from suffering that God's Kingdom was supposed to bring. For example, in Matthew chapter 9 Jesus heals this paralyzed man and tells him that his sins have been forgiven in correlation to him not being paralyzed anymore. This isn't, "You can walk and are going to heaven when you die, congratulations." This is Jesus restoring this human being to life and love. It is essentially Jesus saying, "You have a share in Israel's restoration life."

And we see this happen all the time where Jesus heals someone or has an interaction that ends with the person being 'saved'. Do you see what is happening here? Salvation is not some state of being that gets you into some place when you die.

Salvation is an identity.

It is participating in God's Kingdom, making the world good and beautiful and connected again. Which is what Israel's was supposed to be doing. So God restores Israel and they are 'saved'. And as the story continues, this salvation keeps getting spread to the ends of the earth; people are getting welcomed in the restored community of Israel to be God's force of blessing and healing and shalom.

That's what it means to be saved.

We see this all over the book of Acts. Salvation isn't when people believe the right things. It is people entering the community of God's people. Acts 15, the famous council of Jerusalem when they discuss Gentiles and circumcision and Torah, isn't about whether or not Christianity should force people to follow a law. It is about whether or not the Gentile people can enter into the heritage of Israel without the very thing that distinguishes that heritage. It is based on entering this particular life with this particular people of the God of Israel. Can Gentiles be adopted into our community without the very mark that has distinguished us? In other words, can Gentiles be saved? it deals with entering an allegiance to the Creator God and the people of Israel. Salvation is simply the entrance in this particular community. Which is why, as the church begins displaying this community, it always seems to result in people sharing their stuff and developing commonality and being a subversive political, social, and economic force that contrasts the Empire. When you are 'saved' it simply means you have entered God's Kingdom and God's world and are actively participating in it.

A lot of people like to talk about Matthew 16 where Jesus tells his disciples that to "follow him" means to take up your cross as some spiritual ideal to attain. Which completely ignores the tangible discussion that immediately follows on the kind of life that results from the way of the cross. The next several chapters all outline that taking up your cross means entering this kind of community in all of its political and social and communal implications. It is leaving your 'self' behind to enter into the bigger life of God's people.

This is salvation.

This was the forgiveness of sins.

The end of curses and the entrance into liberation;
the very thing that the prophets were talking about.

Which sounds a lot like Passover and the Exodus.

And that is exactly what they began to call it.

This movement in the world, this thing God was doing with Israel, it was the completion and fulfillment of the Passover.

Except, this time, it wasn't just dealing with Israel. This time, it would begin with Israel, but it would expand to the Gentiles and to the whole world and even to all of creation.

The prophet Isaiah even describes it as blood of a sacrificed Passover lamb that would go on the doorposts of all things.

But just as the Exodus from Egypt involved enduring judgment and moving through the experience of curses.

So would this Exodus.

Because moving from exile to liberation involves dealing with the very things that caused that exile and then overcoming them. To again enter blessing and life, you had to endure the judgment. You had to endure the very curses that you brought into the world.

And this is exactly what God's Kingdom is supposed to do. This is what it meant for the forgiveness of sins and salvation to come.

Which meant that the Temple was going to be involved.

Because the Temple was going to need restored, too.

This marker of God's presence, this display of God's way to the world that came to define Israel in their liberation from Egypt - it had become extinct and dissolved in its own right. So in crossing the land out of this bigger sort of Egypt, it would end with the establishment of a new Temple.

And it was this that eventually began talk of a Messiah figure. It became the hope and anticipation of Israel that Messiah would come and do this: bring Israel out of its curses and into the forgiveness of sins that would result in a restored Israel and a restored creation.

The Messiah would bring the flourishment of shalom.

The Messiah would come and make things good again.

And it would all deal with Passover.




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|  The Cross and the Storm

It is into this very story that results in the Gospels beginning like they do.

Every single story of Jesus begins with both John the Baptist and Jesus proclaiming that God's Kingdom, the very thing the prophets were crying out for, was actively present. That the Passover dealing with Israel's curses and exile was at hand.

And this, too, is why each story always begins with John. This is something we often forget.

That you can't have Jesus without John.

John is this strange man that causes a lot of political upheaval with various authorities and is first seen gathering the masses of Israel at the Jordan river pronouncing that the liberation from exile and disconnection and pain and death, that it is here.

Sounds a lot like the Exodus doesn't it?

He is depicted as this culmination of the prophets, as the Elijah figure that would prepare the way for this Kingdom of God thing, and this is exactly what he begins doing. He gathers Israel at the Jordan and says that the forgiveness of sins comes from turning away from the curses and turning back to God's way; from repenting as a community and nation and a baptism of entering the Jordan and coming out of it.

Just like the Exodus.

This is how every Gospel begins - John initiating this movement of humanity; setting the stage for Passover and moving Israel from curses to forgiveness, from exile to blessing. He connects everything that is soon going to happen with the story of Israel - that this Jesus is rooted in Israel's history.

And the Gospels themselves take great effort to make this clear.

Each one begins by making a statement that Jesus is the very culmination of Israel and the prophets. Matthew begins with a genealogy that traces Israel's history situating Jesus right in the midst of it. Mark begins by saying that this is the beginning of the Gospel that started back in Isaiah where this Exodus fulfillment is continually discussed. Luke begins with a picture of the priesthood and Abraham and Sarah, the very people that began God's community back in Genesis. And John prominently displays that this Jesus is the very identity that brought forth creation with the God of Israel back in the beginning.

This Jesus is displayed as the very Messiah Israel was hoping for.

And, immediately, Jesus begins carrying it out.

This story unfolds of Jesus enacting and displaying this whole Kingdom of God and its accompanying forgiveness of sins. We find him teaching and showing what it is like and how it works. He is bringing people into it and explaining that it might look a little different than a triumphant authoritarian version some were expecting. We see Jesus clash with the elites on the broadness and depth that this movement expands to and that even the expendables and traitors can be restored to this community. And we get exposed to the very subversiveness and wholeness that God's Kingdom takes shape as.

And it always comes back to the very forgiveness of sins that Israel had been anticipating for centuries. To the restoration and liberation of this community and of the whole world.

But as this story culminates, something interesting happens.

We are told that this Messiah is going to be tortured and executed - the very thing a Messiah isn't supposed to do; which is why it is so disorienting even for Jesus closest disciples let alone the masses of Israel. Messiah was supposed to be some triumphant and big and explosive figure. But Jesus claims that the only way for him to do what the Messiah is supposed to do is to be killed on a Roman execution stake.

To be crucified.

Now, as this day approaches, we find Jesus giving us the picture that his death has something to do with judgment; the very judgment that would deal with Israel's curses and bring them through 'Egypt' into the liberation they were hoping for. It is about confronting the very curses that his people were responsible for.

Jesus' death was going to display the very way to endure these curses that would propel the world out of exile.

At one point in a long discourse that takes place in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus begins talking about this approaching storm and that some people are going to build their houses on sand and some on rocks and when the storm comes, either they will endure it or they will be swept away by it.

It is important to note that everyone is going to have to go through the storm.

Judgment isn't just for the wicked or the sinners or the people we have determined are "out". Just like the Passover, everyone goes through judgment. Everyone must endure the world of curses that had been brought.

It is the only way to be freed.

Restoration and healing comes by moving through storm.

And so over and over again we keep getting this picture of this looming judgment that is coming to Israel, the same one correlated with God's Kingdom that brings the forgiveness of sins that had been approaching since the prophets.

Naturally, then, at the center of this process of judgment is the very institution that resulted from the judgment of the Exodus, the same institution that the prophets pointed to as the marker of God's restoring Kingdom.

The Temple.

We find Jesus saying that within one generation, the Temple is going to be destroyed and the very world that Israel found themselves in would be re-oriented. It would be a cataclysmic event that would result in a completely reshaped universe and the end of the world they knew so well.

Which means this isn't about some end of the world apocalypse. These things Jesus says towards the end of his life are about what is happening to Israel at that very time.

The world as they knew it was going to end. Regimes were going be shifted. Structures would be viciously altered. And things were going to get a little bit crazy.

A new age was on the horizon and it all came back to what was happening with the Temple.

Because the Temple was the place of God's presence. The picture that displayed God to the world. This institution was going to end as they knew and understood it. It would be destroyed and would never look the same again.

And, for Jesus, this was the depicted judgment.

The way of curses that was chosen would result in this structure being toppled so that not one stone would be left on another.

Yet, after this storm, on the other side of this judgment, Jesus said that there would be a new sort of Temple.

His body.

Which is why Jesus kept saying that he was going to have to die.

Jesus goes to Jerusalem to be crucified in solidarity with what is going to happen to the Temple. Jesus sets his face to go through the very judgment that is on his people; to identify with the whole of Israel by experiencing their curses in their fullness.

And somehow, through this, the very liberation from exile that all were hoping for was going to come to fruition. It wasn't what the people wanted. It was practically blasphemous. Yet it was the very storm that had to be endured and Jesus was set on showing what exactly that would look like.

Because, apparently, through this death that Jesus was entering into, a New Temple would emerge.

Which is what we see in the Passover. That liberation from exile results in God's presence being put on display.



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|  Bread and Wine

Now, if you were reading this story and watching this movement of Jesus unfold, you would be picking up on one central thing: that Jesus is taking his people and the world through a sort of Passover.

Because this was the very thing Israel's story was pointing to.

It makes sense, then, that each Gospel places the whole crucifixion of Jesus in the context of Passover. Jesus' death is always first begun with the approaching festival and Jesus gathering with his disciples to celebrate the meal.

Because this is what sets the stage for the storm and judgment and the liberation from exile through the forgiveness of sins that he was claiming to restore as Messiah.

You can't have the Easter story without Passover. The authors of the stories of Jesus want us to see Jesus' death in light of this Passover and in light of what was happening with the people of Israel. It is what instills the meaning of Israel's story and God's movement into the entire thing. Which is why Jesus, while celebrating this meal with his disciples, goes on to make the very symbols of Passover about himself. He takes one of the cups that was drank to remember different parts of the story, the cup of redemption and restoration, and says that it is his blood. The blood that is painted on the doorposts of all things. And he takes the bread at the end of the meal, the bread that anticipated the future deliverance through the Messiah and says that his body being broken in the storm of Israel is fulfilling what that bread is all about. These elements were used to remember Israel's Exodus and to anticipate the future liberation of the world.

So Jesus takes the bread and the wine and says that this is exactly what he is doing. That these elements are his body and his blood that will carry Israel and all of creation into God's world.

Jesus is saying that what he is about to do is fulfilling the very essence of Passover.

The anticipated Passover of all things.

This is even further emphasized in the fourth gospel, John's Gospel, where Jesus is tangibly pictured as the Passover lamb. The blood of the lamb is what evaded death for the people, it was what released the people into the new land and brought them back to what God was doing in the world. So when we are told that Jesus is this lamb, we are being told that Jesus is going to be sacrificed by not only Israel, but all people, as the very lamb that will liberate them from curses and death to life.

Everything that happened in Israel's story, everything the prophets talked about, the completion of the Exodus that would encompass all people and all things:

Jesus Messiah is doing it.

The forgiveness of sins.

Salvation to the ends of the earth, restoring the community of Israel and bringing the world into it.

Liberation from exile into the very world God created this to be.

This is all happening through the Passover that Jesus displays.

Which is what the bread and wine are all about.




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|  Liberation. Restoration.

And then it all culminates in Resurrection.

Now, resurrection was not a new idea to the world of the Jews. In fact, it was an incredibly anticipated thing. The resurrection of the dead was the anthem for the restoration of Israel and the world because, if you overcame death, if the power of death and pain and suffering didn't have the last word, then the world was looking a lot like God created it to be. The resurrection of the dead would be a symbol of the manifestation of the forgiveness of sins. It would be a marker of God's Kingdom prevailing in the world, overcoming even the disease of death.

Which is why Jesus' Resurrection is depicted with a plethora of others. Because one guy raising from the dead wasn't going to change the world. People weren't really giving too much thought to that. But one guy initiating the resurrection of the dead? One guy bringing the world across the sea from Egypt into God's restored world?

This would flip the very substance of the world upside down.

Jesus, the anticipated Messiah who was actively putting God's Way on display and bringing the liberation and forgiveness of sins by healing the world and dealing with the suffering and oppression of Israel, has culminated all of this in the ultimate deliverance of suffering. He has confronted the most enduring exile known to human history, stared it in the face, and brought the people of the world through 'Egypt' and to the promised land of God's Kingdom. This is what is happening when Jesus brings Resurrection to the world. This is what he meant when he made the cup and the bread about himself.

It was a pretty big deal.

So we need to be able to see the resurrection in this bigger picture and what it had to say to the story of Israel that it was so firmly rooted in.

One thing that emerges within this is that if Jesus' death is his solidarity in Israel's judgment and it ends in Resurrection, then this must be the very way to endure the storm that Jesus had been talking about. When Jesus said that following him is what brings us through the curses, this must've been what Jesus meant.

The way to endure the curses and to experience restoration is the way of the cross.

It is this selfless, life giving, sacrificial, other centered, collective journey that brings you out of curses and into blessing and life. The way of the cross is what brings us into God's world of Resurrection.

Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he talked about his body being the New Temple.

Because the New Temple isn't a building.

It is a Way.

God's presence, the display of God to the world, is the very Resurrection that ensues from the cross.

This is the Temple.

Just as Israel endured back in Egypt, Jesus has endured this, he has endured death and destruction.

And it has led to the very image of God's world.

When we see this story in the context of Passover, we see that Jesus is showing us how to endure the storm. Jesus is showing us the New Temple that carries us through the world from exile to liberation.

And it is the way of the cross and resurrection.

But even more than this, we are shown the culmination of what Jesus has been displaying and enacting through his whole life and teachings.

The forgiveness of sins.

The liberation from exile for the community of Israel. The restoring of Israel to the wholeness of shalom and life.

Jesus dying in oppression as an insurrectionist to the Roman government and as the Passover lamb is the very thing that allows Israel and, therefore, the entire world to cross the sea from Egypt into God's Kingdom.

Jesus enters into the exile and comes out with Resurrection.

And then he invites us to do this with him.

He invites us to move into God's dream for the world through his putting the Passover on display.

This is what the Resurrection is all about.

Overcoming the disease of death that has dictated humanity.

Releasing the world from suffering and exile by going through it.

Showing that death and oppression and darkness don't have the last word.

Bringing salvation for the community of Israel to be restored and for us to enter into it. For us to get caught up in God's movement in the world.

This is what Jesus is showing us - the very way of God enacted and displayed for us to follow in the footsteps of.

This is the forgiveness of sins that the Messiah has brought. This is Israel entering into salvation as a community, expanding to the very ends of the earth. This is the very culmination of Israel's story.


And all things get to be a part of it.

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May you experience this story in all of its fullness.
May you join the restoration of the world and the liberation from exil that is Resurrection.
And may you enter into the Passover that the Messiah Jesus has brought into the world.

In other words:

Happy Easter.