Re-telling the Easter story
Did you enjoy the Easter break this year?
Have you got a story to tell about what you did?
Why not bring Jesus and the resurrection into your personal story?
You already know the bible stories about the resurrection of Jesus, and you will be reading still more in the coming week. But they are not just comfortable stories for you, they are tales to be passed on to touch the lives of other people.
v 21 But when Jesus said “this temple,” he meant his own body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this, and they believed both the Scriptures and what Jesus had said.
The disciples were very slow to catch on to the idea that Jesus was going to be crucified, die, be buried, and then rise again. The whole notion seemed strange and so it went in one ear and out the other. We find in Luke 18 ‘Taking the twelve disciples aside, Jesus said, “Listen, we’re going up to Jerusalem, where all the predictions of the prophets concerning the Son of Man will come true. He will be handed over to the Romans, and he will be mocked, treated shamefully, and spit upon. They will flog him with a whip and kill him, but on the third day he will rise again.” But they didn’t understand any of this. The significance of his words was hidden from them, and they failed to grasp what he was talking about.’
Jesus tried to prepare them for this eventuality, but they just failed to understand. Then, after the event, it all came flooding back. There must have been that light-bulb moment when they realized what Jesus had been saying to them all along.
The all-familiar stories of Easter are shot through with this dawn of understanding. Mary’s failure to recognise Jesus standing right in front of her; the disciples shock on finding the tomb empty; the two disciples who failed to recognise him as they walked and talked with him on the road to Emmaus; the disciples evident shock and fear when they realized Jesus was with them in an upper room; Thomas’ refusal to believe even when the others were adamant they had seen him – and so we could go on. The whole story is about people who simply could not get hold of the idea of Jesus’ resurrection.
Not a lot has changed even today has it!