A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY

June 2021

Mulling on the stories of Jesus Resurrection appearances in all four Gospels a number of themes emerged:

[1]        Those who go looking for the dead body of Jesus don’t find Him.

[2]        They mostly find its absence frightening.

[3]        The Risen Jesus appears unexpectedly to others who were not looking for Him, although often they don’t initially recognise Him 

[4]        When those who have been met by the Risen Jesus, tell others who have not, they aren’t believed.

[5]        But when those who have seen the Risen Jesus meet with others who have also seen Him they affirm each other..

[6]        Doubting may be a prelude to faith in the Risen Jesus.

[7]        The Risen Jesus forgives, restores, & feeds His followers, and goes on to commission them to continue His ministry.

[8]        There is no mention of a message about Jesus followers themselves being raised from death.

The overall message is that if you go looking for Jesus, as the women did, you won’t find Him, and you may well be frightened by His absence.  If others tell you of Him, you won’t believe them. But, if you wait He may find you…..although some will be doubtful.  You will feel a deep bond with others who have had similar experiences. In the meantime meet together & remember His teaching & His actions, and continue with your usual daily life.  You will be commissioned to carry on His mission. It’s a message that is always contemporary.  

Moreover it describes a pattern that I recognise. It mirrors a number of experiences I’ve had over the years, in which I have been encountered by a dead or divine person, or felt a sense of oneness with creation.  They often occur at times of stress and anxiety, when God can have seemed silent or even absent. They came out of the blue & took me by surprise. Others are dismissive of them, unless they have had one themselves. They are subjective and deeply personal experiences, but of such authenticity that their objective reality is difficult to deny. They are invariably affirming, encouraging, and life changing if taken seriously and trusted.   I’ve also learnt that far more people have had such experiences than I had imagined.

The first time it happened I understood it as a personal word from God, there seemed to be no other explanation. But with the passage of time I’ve come to see it as an encounter with the Risen Christ.  In essence the two understandings are the same, but the latter enables me to affirm that the Risen Christ Who appeared after His death to His followers has also appeared to me and that He continues to appear to people seemingly irrespective of their faith tradition or lack of one. The problem is not that it doesn’t happen, but that we mostly fail to recognise & name it for what it is.  If we did it could be life-changing for us as it was for those first followers. It encourages us:

to take “ up my part in the unfinished tale

of Jesus ‘ risen life, once more renew

My little role within the coming kingdom.” 

Malcolm Guite, in his poem response to Psalm 56 in his book ‘David’s Crown’:  

In doing so we are following John in not being so much concerned with Jesus being physically restored but with the fact that He restores us his followers, filling us with confidence and hope, and then commissioning us to continue the ministry that he had begun, under the guidance of His continuing presence.