MATTHEW 28: 8-15a 

Matthew in the Margins…Easter 3… Revised 2017

(for LK 24:13-35 see laterallyluke.blogspot.com.au)

Differing accounts of when & where & to whom Jesus appears reflect a variety of earliest Christian traditions passed down within their circles by a number of spiritual leaders. Here, the two Marys flee in a mixture of fear & great joy. Then Jesus Himself greets them with, “G’day!” Or, He would have if this had happened here in Oz! Does it matter whether we meet Jesus in the garden, in Jerusalem, in Galilee, so long as we meet Him meaningfully, somewhere, somehow? Jesus, in Person in Spirit? Depending upon the kind of meeting we ‘experience’, we, too, may feel conflicted responses as our Marys do here. Uniformity isn’t a requirement of discipleship!

Charles Elliot¹ says ‘God offers us a companion whose joy is infectious, whose laughter is never long silent, & who knows better how to dance than to hobble’. That’s the kind of God, the kind of Jesus I’d choose to meet up with any day. Sydney Carter’s ‘Lord of the dance’² enlarges on that same theme of God’s joy in a Jesus who lives for us & is prepared to die for us. Think on his words, or, better still, sing them! Dance them! ‘… they buried my body & they thought I’d gone, but I am the dance & I still go on…I am the life that’ll never never die…I’ll live in you if you live in me, I am the Lord of the dance said he’. The Jesus in these examples is a more appealing One than many of the other ways He’s presented to us. Or, we present Him to others. The above portrayals appeal to me because they invite us to join in a continuing victory dance. In the present. In ‘now’ time! It appeals, too, because they say to us, ‘You can’t keep a good God down! You can’t keep a good God from dancing the dance of life’. And, ‘the good God needs partners to dance Him. As we dance Him with others. As the first Christians learn to do in their own various ways.

The story about the guards, like the differing descriptions of Jesus’ post-Resurrection appearances, reflects how stories can ‘change shape’ in re-tellings. Anyone involved in researching family history will have come upon this & made allowances for ‘in house stuff’ told from different angles. Often with good motives, not really as ‘alternative facts’! If the disciples had, as alleged, engaged in body-snatching, wouldn’t the authorities have ‘sniffed that out’ in no time? On the other hand, if the Jewish leaders, or the Romans had removed Jesus’ dead body, all they had to do was produce it to kill the Jesus movement stone dead in its tracks! They never did. But none of this proves anything. Only meeting up with Christ raised from death can do that for us & to us.

The strongest evidence for the Resurrection remains the Jesus who appears to His followers back then meeting us, in Spirit, now. Somewhere, somehow, sometime. Saying “G’day” in some way, & inviting us to join the dance of Resurrection life with Him.

  

¹ Comfortable Compassion, H & S, 1987 ²  242 in Together in Song