7 April 2010
Psalm 97, 99; Exod. 12:40-51; 1 Cor. 15:29-41; Matt. 28:1-16

The Passover is a believers sacrament, only for those who have accepted the covenant as evidenced by the circumcision of the flesh. It is to be celebrated by the people every year in remembrance of the great work God did for their ancestors in Egypt. It is important for God’s people to have long memories and celebrate His goodness and His lovingkindness towards us. Our worship is built around remembering the work of God in the past, bringing it into the present and proclaiming the future promises. The Passover itself was redemption from slavery in Egypt, but the work of Passover wasn’t complete in that night, it began their journey towards the fulfillment of the promise of the Land. We too are pressing on towards the fulfillment of the promise of a new creation and eternal life in an even better land.

Matthew’s account of the morning of the resurrection is the most detailed of all and accounts for the soldiers’ story that the disciples had stolen the body. That they could possibly have rolled away the stone, retrieved the body and then stolen away with it while not awakening the guards is a ludicrous story yet better ones don’t really present themselves. Today we have people who suggest that Jesus wasn’t resurrected bodily at all, that it was a “spiritual” resurrection that helped the disciples make it through the day. This makes less sense in that the body is what matters. The other option is simply that this life doesn’t really matter other than the spiritual life and there is no room in the Gospel for this sort of dualism of body and spirit. That Jesus took on bodily form tells us that idea won’t work, God could simply have poured out His Spirit without the necessity of taking on flesh. The body has to be accounted for and the people of that time knew that better, it seems, than some people today.

Paul notes that some were baptized for the dead without giving context for the practice and without approving it. We never see Paul teaching this anywhere in his writings so we can only assume it was a superstitious practice rather than a practice of the church proper. Paul speaks to basic objections about the resurrection, our bodies decay therefore what is raised? Paul says that there are two different kinds of bodies, the earthly and the heavenly, this one is clearly destined to wear down and wear out so it is not fit for eternal life, we need a new body, an imperishable one. He does not tell us what particular form this is, only that it has a different “glory” than the one in which we live now. In saying this, Paul affirms again that Christians aren’t dualists as we saw yesterday, this body has a glory of its own, and in it we are to glorify our Father, our creator, just as Jesus glorified Him in this mortal flesh.

The LORD reigns; let the peoples tremble!
He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!
Let them praise your great and awesome name!
Holy is he!