On Losing Part of Me

January is full of anniversaries for the Moffitt household. There's our wedding anniversary of course- nine years in 2017. This is quickly followed by the anniversary of our engagement – an anniversary that often passes with little to no notice. It was in January that I moved back to Sydney after a twenty year sojourn in Katoomba. And ten years ago today I managed to sever part of my body. It is a yearly observance which I share with Britain's last 'royal martyr' – thankfully for my sake it was only my left index finger and not my head that underwent cleaving from my body. Though to be true, it was only the tip of my finger that was detached. I didn't even lose any part of my bone structure (I did however briefly lose my fingernail).

On 30 January 2007 I managed to sunder part of my finger from the rest of me. A brief, freakish, unfortunate interaction with a folding bed resulted in several courses of antibiotics, finger exercises, physical therapy, and one finger that is slightly shorter than it should be. If you look carefully, the scaring is still visible. It is sometimes hard to point with that finger. Sometimes, inexplicably, it just feels weird. (Even now as I sit here typing I can't really use that finger to type because of the entanglement of nerve endings in my index finger).

It wasn't as though I had lost a leg or an arm. I hadn't lost the sight in my eyes or had my spleen removed. It was only the very tip of my finger - probably the best part of your body to lost if you had to lose one part. But losing the end of my finger provoked much melancholy for me. That something so small could be the source of so much pain was beyond belief. Without the medical marvel of antibiotics, I would have lost more of my finger. It took weeks of rehabilitation to be able to regain functionality in my finger. Frankly it was embarrassing to explain over and over again at wedding receptions and job interviews exactly how I had ended up with my arm in a sling and my finger all bandaged. But I also had a lot to be thankful for from that time: a new fiance whose care and attention epitomised her love; her family who took me in and cared for me in their own home; a soon to be father-in-law who drove me around Sydney to find a hospital that could save part of my finger; friends who would sit with me in hospital waiting rooms whilst I waited for my rehab sessions, or freely volunteered to clean up the leftover blood.

Most of all I came to appreciate anew the power and the hope of the resurrection. That Jesus had been raised from the dead had often been taught to be as the cherry on top of Christ's atoning working; the denouement to crucifixion. It was treated as nothing more than God's grand apologetic sign 'He really did die for your sins'. In such a moment of agony and desolation, it was an incredible consolation to know that my sins had been cleansed and that one day I too would be raised with an incorruptible body, over which death would hold no dominion. I too would be raised like him.

The Christian gospel has always proclaimed the distinctly Christian hope of bodily resurrection. As one of our theologians has said: "The bodies of the saints, then, shall rise again free from blemish and deformity, just as they will be also free from corruption, encumbrance, or handicap. Their facility will be as complete as their felicity".

The resurrection is God's 'No!' to a world polluted by selfishness and pride, malice and murder, envy, slander, alternative truth, and falsehood. The resurrection is God's 'No!' to a world marred by cancer and tooth decay, marred by famine, greed, and sexual exploitation. It is God's 'No!' to a world shrouded by death; a world which would dare condemn God's own Son – the source of all life.

Whilst the resurrection condemns our own efforts to decide what is right and wrong, and to love everything except the person we should love the most, the resurrection is simultaneously God''s 'YES!' to his created order. It is his 'YES!' to the way things are meant to be. Creation matters. Our bodies matter. Matter matters. The risen Christ is God's affirmation that his world will not forever remain enthralled in the darkness of decay and oblivion. Magnificently, God doesn't consign creation to the scrap bin of history and start again. The new creation is creatio ex vetere, creation made new. It is a place liberated from sin, suffering, and all that makes life unlivable; or in the words of one of the Apostles, it is a world made fit for righteousness to inhabit.

The Christian confession is in the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. In former days we constructed our churches in a cruciform shape to remember the centrality of Jesus' death to our faith and worship. We would surround our churches with cemeteries - an ever present reminder that Jesus is Lord over the quick and the dead; that one day he was raise our bodies to be like his body.

I fear however that we have become far less diligent in remembering that we are made of the dust of the earth. As liberalism has gained ground politically, economically, ethically, we have become less confident to speak of the resurrection of the body and the renewal of creation. We speak instead in terms of identity and character - malleable categories we can confirm to our own will and desire. 'Our bodies, indeed this world will be abolished, but our identity will continue.' To suggest this is to drink from the same well which sprouted identity politics. Those who propose such views have wandered from exegesis and theological reasoning into the realm of conjecture and speculation. Can you really have virtue or identity or even a soul apart from the body? If the body is entirely new, is it really the same identity? What walked out of the tomb on the first Easter Day was not a litany of characteristics, nor an excarnated identity, but a body. It had been altered, yes. It had been changed. But it was the same body which had been carried into the tomb three days prior. The resurrected Jesus was the crucified Jesus.

So let us not mock God with metaphor or analogy:
Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.

So what of my finger? Ten years ago I lost not just a fraction of my body. I lost a part of me. Yet even as the flesh and tissue disappeared inside a bio-hazard bin, God's healing work in my body had begun. I lacked, and I have not lacked. And as I look for the resurrection of dead, I look forward to the day when not only my finger, but my whole body and the world it inhabits will be restored and renewed; when God makes all things new.

Resurrecting the Gospel - Redux

Back in 2009 I wrote an article for the magazine Salt, a publication of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES).

AFES have republished my article, which you can find here.

20 Centuries in 20 Posts Part II

Coming to Terms With Jesus
Intro | Part I

How do you explain the rapid spread of Christianity? Within the world of academia, litres of ink are spent trying to explain, understand and justify this phenomenon. In articulating the enormity of what took place, Tom Wright writes:

“The single most striking thing about early Christianity is the speed of its growth. In A.D. 25 there is no such thing as Christianity; merely a young hermit in the Judean wilderness, and his somewhat younger cousin who dreams dreams and sees visions. By A.D. 125 the Roman emperor has established an official policy in relation to the punishment of Christians…”

Christianity exploded into the Greco-Roman world. What had started in Jerusalem had, within 100 years spread as far as southern France, Ethiopia and possibly even India. This is quite remarkable, given what we said about Jesus in the previous post. Jesus saw himself as the pinnacle of God and Israel’s story, limiting his ministry almost exclusively to Israel. What he offered, and what he embodied, was a new way forward for Israel. So how did we end up with the church? Although the church’s praxis in 125AD bore some continuity with Israel, the church’s shape and life was also looked quite different from Israel.

Various reasons have been suggested to explain this. For instance, was this the work of the Apostle Paul, distilling Jesus’ call to Israel into a more palatable message for non-Jews? Or perhaps the fourth century ‘pagan’ Roman Emperor Julian was right when he argued the church grew because of their love and hospitality:

“These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agape, they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes.”

There’s some truth in this, and we’ll explore Julian’s raison d’être for the growth of the church more in a future post. However, I want to suggest that the answer lies in a major shift in the worldview of the Apostles and the early church. They came from a Jewish background, and held a worldview consistent with first century Judaism. Yet for some reason their worldview had totally changed. I want to suggest that the resurrection of Jesus was a complete shift in the first century Jewish worldview.

That the early Christians believed in the resurrection is unsurprising – it was part of the standard Jewish worldview. However, what stood at the periphery of the Jewish worldview was now front and centre of the Christian hope. The conviction of the early church was that the resurrection had happened, not at the end of history as the Jewish worldview believed, but now in the middle of history. The resurrection of Jesus changed everything. We can trace what this meant for the early church in Paul’s letter to the Roman church (see Romans 1.1-6). The resurrection of Jesus declared that he was the Son of God, the Messiah; the true descendant of David and hence Israel’s true King.

The resurrection showed that Jesus was Israel-in-person, Israel’s representative, the one in whom Israel’s destiny had reached its climax. He was Israel’s King – raised from the dead. And if he was Israel’s King, then the Psalms and the prophets insisted he was also the world’s true Lord:

“Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.” Romans 1.5-6

This is why Christianity developed new practices and symbols apart from Judaism. The early Christians understood that Israel’s story had come to fruition in Jesus. The old symbols of God’s people would have to find new meaning in him. So the church started meeting on Sunday’s to celebrate his resurrection. They broke bread and drank wine together to commemorate his death and remind each other that they belonged together in him. The prayed and sang to him, because the story of Israel and the world was now focused around Jesus. And they were now on a mission. Jesus had fulfilled Israel’s vocation to be a light to the nations; now the nations must be brought into allegiance to him. It was time for the nations to join in God’s promises Abraham.

“For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.” Romans 15.8-9

This raised questions about the continuing connection between the church and Israel, and the place of the law and Israel’s symbols in the life of the church. The early Christians only started to answer this question as they came to terms with who Jesus is and what that means for the world. The church grew first and fore mostly because they understood themselves to be on mission. Jesus has been raised, and he is the King, of both Jews and Gentiles.

________
I feel that it’s all too easy for us to underestimate how big an issue this was for the early church. Yet this was the major issue in the first century church, that the gentiles could be “fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus”. We do ourselves a disservice when we screen this issue out of our reading of the New Testament.

My other reflection on this post is that mission and theology need to be more closely held together than is often case today. From what I’ve seen, the two ‘disciplines’ are often at arm’s length of each other. Yet, in one sense, it was because of theological reflection that the early church launched into mission. I wonder what would happen if our missionaries, church planters, evangelists etc. spent more time talking to theologians, and vice versa because the theological reflection in Acts often happened after the Holy Spirit took the initiative to bring gentiles to Christ.

For Further Reading:

• NT Wright: The Resurrection of the Son of God, 2003. RSG is a tour de force. Read this if you want to understand more fully how the resurrection of Jesus changed the worldview of the Apostles and the early church. If 800+ pages isn't your cup of tea, try Wright's Surprised by Hope, 2008.
  
• James Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 2003 and Beginning from Jerusalem, 2008. I've only just managed to look through these. Massive and magnificent!
• Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, 1997. Stark isn't a historian by training, and is a little bit sketchy when he moves away from history. Nevertheless, this is a important book. Helpful to have a sociologist's perspective.
  

Celebrating Easter

So how can we learn to live as wide-awake people, as Easter people? ...I have come to believe that many churches simply throw Easter away year by year; and I want to plead that we rethink how we do it so as to help each other, as a church and as individuals, to live what we profess...

But my biggest problem starts on Easter Monday. I regard it as absurd and unjustifiable that we should spend forty days keeping Lent, pondering what it means, preaching about self-denial, being at least a little gloomy, and then bringing it all to a peak with Holy Week, which in turn climaxes in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday . . . and then, after a rather odd Holy Saturday, we have a single day of celebration.

All right, the Sundays after Easter still lie within the Easter season. We still have Easter readings and hymns during them. But Easter week itself ought not to be the time when all the clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday. It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before., with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom? It’s long overdue that we took a hard look at how we keep Easter in church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the system. And if it means rethinking some cherished habits, well, maybe it’s time to wake up. That always comes as a surprise.

And while we’re about it, we might write some more good Easter hymns and take care to choose the many good ones already written that celebrate what Easter really is rather than treating it as simply our ticket to a blissful life hereafter. Interestingly, most of the good Easter hymns turn out to be from the early church and most of the bad ones form the nineteenth century. But we should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children’s games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind. This is our greatest festival. Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have a Christianity; as Paul says, you are still in your sins. We shouldn’t allow the secular world, with its schedules and habits and parareligious events, its cute Easter bunnies, to blow us off course. This is our greatest day. We should put the flags out.

In particular, if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up. Champagne for breakfast again—well, of course. Christian holiness was never meant to be merely negative. Of course you have to weed the garden from time to time; sometimes the ground ivy may need serious digging before you can get it out. That’s Lent for you. But you don’t want simply to turn the garden back into a neat bed of blank earth. Easter is the time to sow new seeds and to plant out a few cuttings. If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering, and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming , filling the garden with color and perfume, and in due course bearing fruit. The forty days of the Easter season, until the ascension, ought to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up , some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving. You may be able to do it only for six weeks, just as you may be able to go without beer or tobacco only for the six weeks of Lent. But if you really make a start on it, it might give you a sniff of new possibilities, new hopes, new ventures you never dreamed of. It might bring something of Easter into your innermost life. It might help you wake up in a whole new way. And that’s what Easter is all about. - NT Wright

Jesus Stands Over the Church

“There is at Easter no Christ who simply seals our righteousness and innocence, no guarantor of our status, and so no ideological cross. Jesus is alive, he is there to be encountered again, and so his personal identity remains; which means that his cross is his, not ours, part of the history of a person who obstinately stands over against us and will not be painlessly assimilated into our own memories.” – Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, pp. 71-72.

Again, h/t Michael

Resurrection and Renewal

“In proclaiming the resurrection of Christ, the apostles proclaimed also the resurrection of mankind in Christ; and in proclaiming the resurrection of mankind, they proclaimed the renewal of all creation with him. The resurrection of Christ in isolation from mankind would not be a gospel message. The resurrection of mankind apart from creation would be a gospel of a sort, but of a purely Gnostic and world denying sort which is far from the gospel that the apostles actually preached” - O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, p. 31

h/t Michael

Resurrection and Science

"By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it..." Rev. 21.24

I studied an Arts degree at Sydney Uni. To be more precise, I majored in Ancient and Modern History. So, as I'm back at uni now serving alongside the postgrad/staff faculty of the SUEU, I don't pretend to know much of what the science guys I meet with are saying when they start talking physics. An I'm often annoyed and frustrated by the arrogant, modernist faith placed in scientific knowledge and achievement. It's a mean metanarrative right?

However, a fascinating thought was explained for me tonight as a talked to a friend. Is the resurrection's affirmation of creation (c.f. Oliver O'Donovan's Resurrection and Moral Order) also an affirmation of scientific inquiry into creation? My friend has written a 2000 word paper on this topic, which I'm yet to read, but if anyone else has thought more seriously about this than I have, I'd love to hear what you think. Especially if there are any scientists out there.

Christ is risen from the dead: A Paschal Hymn

Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered; let those who hate Him flee from before His face.

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish; as wax melts before the fire.

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

So the sinners will perish before the face of God; but let the righteous be glad.

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

This is the day which the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling down death by death,

And upon those in the tombs

Bestowing life!

- From the Byzantine Rite.

Resurrecting the Gospel

A few years ago when I was at uni, the EU was using Easter as an opportunity to witness to the university. We gave out hot cross buns, books about Jesus, and had lots of good conversations. But the center-piece of this event was a large banner, which in giant letters stated ‘We believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.’ The banner also bore the names of hundreds of students and lecturers who agreed with the statement and wanted to proclaim it to a doubting and skeptical university. We were declaring the Christian gospel –Jesus Christ is Lord and God has raised him from the dead (Romans 10.9). As the Evangelical Union, the gospel union, we were committed to declaring the same gospel that the Apostles had declared thousands of years earlier. It is from their eyewitness accounts that we believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The very shape of Christianity is determined by the events that first Easter – a fact that the Apostles were acutely aware of. For the Apostles, the resurrection was the core foundation of their gospel: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…” (1 Corinthians 15.3-4). In his resurrection, Jesus is designated as the Son of God, the King of Israel and true heir of David (Romans 1.3-4, also 2 Timothy 2.8), and is marked out as the one who will judge the world: “…Now God commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17.30-31, also 10.39-43). As the one who is to judge, the apostles believed that Jesus was not just the King of Israel, but the Lord of all creation and to him belongs obedience from all nations (Romans 1.5, 15.12).

As the King that Israel had long waited for, the apostles knew that Jesus’ resurrection was significant for understanding the purposes of God. When Paul states that the gospel was “promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures”, he doesn’t have a couple of proof-texts in the back of his mind. The gospel – the death and resurrection of Jesus – is the climax of God’s covenant with Israel. In raising Jesus from the dead, God has shown himself faithful to his promises to Abraham and David, and has ultimately triumphed over sin and death – the evil powers that have held the world captive since Genesis 3. Jesus is the Christ promised by God to Israel in scripture. His death and resurrection reveal God’s plan for Israel and the world.

For the Apostles, this meant two things. Firstly, forgiveness of sins was now possible for both Jews and Gentiles through Jesus (Acts 13.37-38, 5.31). All people every where must now repent and follow the true king. Secondly, the resurrection of the dead, which Israel didn’t expect until the last judgment, had already happened to Jesus. The newly risen Lord now reigns over creation and guarantees us a resurrection like his when he returns (1 Corinthians 15:20ff). This was the gospel the apostles proclaimed – Jesus is Lord and he offers forgiveness for all and a living hope of a future resurrection.

Our challenge today is to continue announcing the resurrection of Jesus and allowing it to shape our lives. Despite living amongst many competing world views including post modernity and materialism, the resurrection of Jesus, God’s King, shows these up as idolatry by announcing the reality of Jesus’ Lordship. Like the apostles, evangelicals today must keep the resurrection central in our understanding and proclamation of the gospel.

Christos Anesti!

CHRIST IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED!

Aleut: Khristus anahgrecum! Alhecum anahgrecum!

Aleut: Khris-tusax agla-gikux! Agangu-lakan agla-gikux!

Albanian: Krishti U Ngjall! Vertet U Ngjall!

Alutuq: Khris-tusaq ung-uixtuq! Pijii-nuq ung-uixtuq!

Amharic: Kristos tenestwal! Bergit tenestwal!

Anglo-Saxon: Crist aras! Crist sodhlice aras!

Arabic: El Messieh kahm! Hakken kahm!

Armenian: Kristos haryav ee merelotz! Orhnial eh harootyunuh kristosee!

Athabascan: Xristosi banuytashtch'ey! Gheli banuytashtch'ey!

Bulgarian: Hristos voskrese! Vo istina voskrese!

Byelorussian: Khrystos uvaskros! Saprawdy uvaskros!

Chinese: Helisituosi fuhuole! Queshi fuhuole!

Coptic: Pchristos aftooun! Alethos aftooun!

Czech: Kristus vstal a mrtvych! Opravdi vstoupil!

Danish: Kristus er opstanden! Ja, sandelig opstanden!

Dutch: Christus is opgestaan! Ja, hij is waarlijk opgestaan!

English: Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!

Eritrean-Tigre: Christos tensiou! Bahake tensiou!

Esperanto: Kristo levigis! Vere levigis!

Estonian: Kristus on oolestoosunt! Toayestee on oolestoosunt!

Ethiopian: Christos t'ensah em' muhtan! Exai' ab-her eokala!

Finnish: Kristus nousi kuolleista! Totistesti nousi!

French: Le Christ est ressuscite! En verite il est ressuscite!

Gaelic: Taw creest ereen! Taw shay ereen guhdyne!

Georgian: Kriste ahzdkhah! Chezdmaridet!

German: Christus ist erstanden! Wahrlich ist er erstanden!

Greek: Christos anesti! Alithos anesti!

Hawaiian: Ua ala hou 'o Kristo! Ua ala 'I 'o no 'oia!

Hebrew: Ha Masheeha houh quam! Be emet quam!

Hungarian: Krisztus feltamadt! Valoban feltamadt!

Ibo (Nigeria): Jesu Kristi ebiliwo! Ezia o' biliwo!

Indian (Malayalam): Christu uyirthezhunnettu! Theerchayayum uyirthezhunnettu!

Indonesian: Kristus telah bangkit! Benar dia telah bangkit!

Italian: Cristo e' risorto! Veramente e' risorto!

Japanese: Christos fukkatsu! Jitsu ni fukkatsu!

Javanese: Kristus sampun wungu! Tuhu sampun wungu!

Korean: Kristo gesso! Buhar ha sho nay!

Latin: Christus resurrexit! Vere resurrexit!

Latvian: Kristus ir augsham sales! Teyasham ir augsham sales vinsch!

Lugandan: Kristo ajukkide! Amajim ajukkide!

Norwegian: Christus er oppstanden! Sandelig han er oppstanden!

Polish: Khristus zmartwyckwstal! Zaprawde zmartwyckwstal!

Portugese: Cristo ressuscitou! Em verdade ressuscitou!

Romanian: Hristos a inviat! Adeverat a inviat!

Russian: Khristos voskrese! Voistinu voskrese!

Sanskrit: Kristo'pastitaha! Satvam upastitaha!

Serbian: Cristos vaskres! Vaistinu vaskres!

Slovak: Kristus vstal zmr'tvych! Skutoc ne vstal!

Spanish: Cristo ha resucitado! En verdad ha resucitado!

Swahili: Kristo amefufukka! Kweli amefufukka!

Swedish: Christus ar upstanden! Han ar verkligen upstanden!

Syriac: M'shee ho dkom! Ha koo qam!

Tlingit: Xristos Kuxwoo-digoot! Xegaa-kux Kuxwoo-digoot!

Turkish: Hristos diril - di! Hakikaten diril - di!

Ugandan: Kristo ajukkide! Kweli ajukkide!

Ukrainian: Khristos voskres! Voistinu voskres!

Welsh: Atgyfododd Crist! Atgyfododd yn wir!

Yupik: Xris-tusaq Ung-uixtuq! Iluumun Ung-uixtuq!

Zulu: Ukristu uvukile! Uvukile kuphela!

Apparently "it is not uncommon for Orthodox Christians to compile lists of the greeting as it is used around the world, as an act of Orthodox unity across languages and cultures" (wikipedia).

AFES SALT: Resurrecting the Gospel

My article on the centrality of the resurrection in the apostolic gospel has been published in the Autumn AFES SALT magazine. I'm on page 10. Byron also has an article on Heaven: Not the End of the World.

If you don't already receive SALT, you can freely subscribe here.

And at some point I'll probably post my article on hebel.

Resurrecting the Gospel

I'm writing an article for AFES Salt Magazine on 'Resurrecting the gospel – why the resurrection lies at the heart of the gospel (1 Corinthians 15; the resurrection = the centre of the gospel formula of preaching in Acts)'.

What do you think I should say?

"Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel..."


Kudos for naming where the photo was taken.

O'Donovan on resurrection

In proclaiming the resurrection of Christ, the apostles proclaimed also the resurrection of mankind in Christ; and in proclaiming the resurrection of mankind, the proclaimed the renewal of all creation with him. The resurrection of Christ in isolation from mankind would not be a gospel message. The resurrection of mankind apart from apart from creation would be a gospel of a sort, but of a purely Gnostic and world-denying sort which is far from the gospel that the apostles actually preached.[…] So the resurrection of Christ directs our attention back to the creation which it vindicates.

- Oliver O'Donovan. Quoted by Rob Forsyth, AnCon 1998 "Resurrection - the dawning of hope...".

"I can't quite put my finger on it" (or why I'm looking forward to a bodily resurrection)

I've been a bit busy over the last few weeks, so busy that it has curtailed my frequent blogging. They have been a few reasons for this, which are:

1. I finally moved. After 20 + years living in the same house with the same family (my own) in scenic Katoomba, I am now living on my own in Hurlstone Park, Sydney. It's a nice place, on the Cooks River (aka Cooks Sewer), and is close to church, Alison and Uni. Moving has been a fascinating experience, particularly with many people gracefully making the move easier by giving me book shelves, dinner sets, fridges and so forth. This has given me a great opportunity to reflect on our Lord, who came no to be served but to serve and gave his life as a ransom for many.

2. Getting engaged. Finally. After several months of planning, Alison and I announced our engagement last week, with great relief. And many months of possibly stressful planning ahead of us, it is nice to finally stop and think about what marriage is. What does loving your wife look like? How much did Christ love the church? I guess I kind of know these answers, but it is and will be helpful to keep reflecting on them this year.

3. I chopped my finger off last night. I was making a fold-out bed last night when it collapsed, crushing my left index finger under the bed and severing the tip of my finger. After 4 injections, working out that I'd lost a bit of bone, 7 stitches with the drugs not working, and losing a fair bit of blood, I had a skin graft on my finger which has a 50/50 success rate and leaves my finger almost at normal length. Which gives all the more to look forward to in the bodily resurrection of dead, when evil is judged, the world is renewed and transformed, the body will be raised incorruptible, and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Come, Lord Jesus.

10 points for naming picture and artist.

Medieval Resurrection pictures

Tee hee, Alison's (aka Spally) parents came back from Scotland today, and quite unexpectedly gave me some presents, including the"Images of Salvation" CD resource - "The story of the Bible through Medieval Art." Here is how our Medieval brothers and sisters viewed the events around the Resurrection of Jesus: