Week 16—Thursday Mark 15:33-34
Mark 15:33-34
HIS TWISTED BODY A VAST QUESTION MARK
If the cross is inherent, is the Resurrection also inherent? Or is it the attempt of loving hearts to read back into the tragedy of the cross a resurrection from the dead so that the tragedy becomes triumph? Or does the Resurrection fulfill something that is seeking to come to birth everywhere in nature and in us?
Tagore, the great Indian poet and philosopher, said, “Everything from the lowest cell to the highest man is lifting up strong hands after perfection.” The religious urge is this life urge turned qualitative. We want to live, but we also want to live better, more fully. So as long as we want to live better, we will be religious, incurably so. But apart from the Resurrection death puts an end to all this upward longing and striving. But with the Resurrection this striving and longing is fulfilled, gloriously so.
But, objects someone, why the physical Resurrection? If Jesus were raised in the spirit, that would be sufficient. Would it? All the problems Jesus raised were raised while he was the Incarnate, while in the body. When he hung upon the cross, his twisted body against the skyline seemed like a vast question mark against the heavens. And in his cry of agony, “My God, why?” he seemed to gather up all the agony of the ages—agony that makes us cry, “My God, why?” He raised in his tortured body all the questions that have haunted people’s minds and raised them in an acute form—in his own body. It wasn’t a philosopher’s discourse on the why of unmerited suffering—that would be the Word become word. This was the Word of haunting questions become flesh. Suppose he had raised these questions in the flesh and then answered them in the spirit by a spiritual resurrection, would that be an answer? No, he raised them in the flesh and must answer them in the flesh.
O Jesus, you are not an evader, a by-passer of our problems. You faced everything, yes, everything, including death. And you went through death, not around it. You conquered death—death spiritual, death physical. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Let me not be one who evades or just gets by with things—let me go through them victoriously.