Jesus’ Resurrection from among the
world’s crucified
The resurrection of
Jesus is the fundamental event and truth of Christian faith. The author in the
article tries to show that the risen one is the same one who was crucified,
‘Jesus of Nazareth’. The author is trying to be faithful to the New Testament
and tries to be honest to the reality of millions of men and women.
We should remember that
the risen one is the crucified one, because, it is in this manner New Testament presents Jesus’ Resurrection
Author
gives a subtle idea of the context in which he is writing, when he says, ‘ In
the human race today, especially where I am writing, many men and women, in
fact entire peoples are crucified. These crucified people make us recollect,
the one who was crucified. This
recollection makes the Jesus’ recollection concrete, Christian good news. These
crucified of the history in fact furnish a special lens to understand the
resurrection of Jesus, ‘Chritianly’.
Triumph of God’s Justice
Through
the believing process, what happened to Jesus’ resurrection was universalized. Cross and resurrection started
to function as death, the
lot of all human beings and immortality as their aspiration and hope.
God’s power to raise from the dead, was presented as the warranty of that hope
and counter to the power of death.
In
the first Christian preaching, ‘You… made use of pagans to crucify and kill
Jesus. God freed him from death’s pangs and raised him up again ‘( Acts2,
23-24)
Two things are stressed
here. 1. God raised him 2. He was raised.
Jesus
of Nazareth who according to the gospel had preached the coming of the kingdom
to the poor, denounced and unmasked the mighty, was condemned to death and
executioned, maintaining all the while a radical fidelity to the will of God
and radical trust with which he obeyed God. In the first discourse he’s
projected as ‘the just and the holy one’ (Acts 3,14) and very shortly his death
is interpreted as the lot of holy prophets ( 1 thes 2,15)
One
who lived was thus crucified, has been raised from the dead by God. Jesus’
resurrection is presented as God’s response to the unjust, criminal action of
human beings. God’s response was provoked by human activity; that is the murder
of the just one. Resurrection of Jesus is the triuph of the justice over
injustice. It’s the triumph not only of God's Omnipotence but also of God's
justice. Therefore, once and for all justice has triumphed over injustice and
the victim over the executioner.
Scandal of Death Dealing Injustice
God's
victorious act in Jesus’ resurrection must not let us forget, the gravity of
the action of human beings, to which it is a response. First Christian
discourse says, ' you killed him' .
We also have, “Yet I know brothers, that you acted out of ignorance'. (Acts 3,
17) This phrase is to console and to
move conversion, doesn't reduce the gravity of the murder of the just one. St
Paul says, ' where sin has abounded,
grace is superabundant’.
The
unilateral concentration on the activity
of God in raising Jesus from the dead
frequently means that the great scandal of history is, when all is said
and done, one's own future death.
What
makes the resurrection of Jesus necessary and possible is the courage to hope
for once own personal survival. The resurrection places before us the question,
whether we too are not participators in the murdering of the just one – whether
we are on the side of the murderers or the life giving God.
Jesus'
resurrection tells us that we need to deal with our own future death and even
more with the death and life of others. This emphasizes that here and now,
there exist immense injustice that deals death in history and the way of
confronting that scandal is the Christian way of dying to oneself.
Hope
for one's own resurrection = one must forget oneself to gain oneself,
“Christianly”. Someone for whom his own death is a scandal and the hope of his
own survival is a problem, would not have a Christian hope, and would not have
a hope sprung from Jesus' resurrection. Such one has hope centered around
himself, which is not a Christian hope.
Hope for the Crucified
Amidst
so many other symbols of hope in the world, theology has pointed out that its
symbol has better reputation, because it combines corporeal, social and even
cosmic aspects of resurrection.
When
we are honest to the Jesus' resurrection and not only reading the texts
fundamentally, first and foremost Jesus' resurrection is hope for the
crucified. God has raised the crucified one and from this moment on there is
hope for the crucified of the history. In reality, they see in Jesus the elder
brother and not merely intentionally. This gives them the courage to hope for
their own resurrection and even to show their mettle in history.
The
mutual relationship between the resurrection and the history’s crucified is
analogous to the kingdom of God and the poor that Jesus preached to. Let's not
forget, before being the cross
we used to say, Jesus' cross, a
cross, one among so many crosses carried before and after him. We
must not forget that there are so many people in the world, who do not simply
die, but in various ways die as Jesus died, in the hands of ' pagans'. Many men
and women really die, crucified, murdered, tortured to death or ' disappeared'
for justice' sake. Many die a slow crucifixion today due to structural
injustices
From
a quantitative point of view, what lends credibility to Jesus’ resurrection
today is that it can be hope for the immense masses of humanity. From a
qualitative view point Jesus’ resurrection is transformed into a universal
symbol of hope to the extent all men and women share in some form of
crucifixion. In order to have Christian hope, one should participate in some
way of crucifixion.
When one’s own death is not mere natural, instead
the result of some sort of love for others especially the poor, helpless,
defenseless when one’s death is the result of injustice, then an analogy is
obtained between the life and death and the life and death of Jesus. It is then
one shares in the Christian hope. Good news is for the poor and resurrection is
for the crucified.
He
also adds the community aspect of involvement of the justice.
Credibility
of God’s Power through the Cross
Histories
crucified await salvation and they know that power is needed for this. At the
same time they do not believe in pure power for quite often this is
unfavourable to them. Promises made do not necessarily unleash hope. It is no
more important then to profess the omnipotence of God, “who restores the dead
to life and calls into being those things that had not been”, than it is to be
assured of god's love. We must return to the crucified Lord and acknowledge in
him, the presence of God and the expression of the love of God as St Paul says,
who delivers up the son for love. The power of God in the resurrection is not
only a piece of good news.
On
the Jesus’ cross, in the first moment God's impotence appeared. In itself this
is not the cause of hope. But it lends credibility to the power of God that
will be shown in the resurrection. The expressions God's impotence, God's
helplessness are the expressions of God's absolute nearness to the poor. God
was on Jesus' cross. God shared the horrors of history. Therefore God's action in the history is
credible at least to the one who was crucified. God's silence raises the
question, whether the God was with Jesus in the cross? If the answer is yes
then God's nearness to human beings in
the incarnation, proclaimed and rendered present by Jesus during
his earthly life is consummated. The cross
says in human language that nothing in history has set limits to God's nearness
to human beings. With this nearness the crucified can believe that God's power
is good news.
The
raising action of God and the hope of one's own resurrection continue, to be
the objects of faith and hope. Knowing that God was on Jesus' cross, gives the
hope to the crucified that the God's power is not oppressive but salvific.
The
stubbornness of hope is what resurrection ultimately says to the crucified.
This is not the manifestation only of God's hope but also love.
Jesus' Lordship in the present
A new human
being and a new earth
Jesus' death points to
the absolute future, but it also points to the historical present. Jesus is
already the Lord and the believers are already the new men and women. His
resurrection doesn't separate him from the history, rather introduces him in
new way. And the believers in the risen one must live as risen themselves in
the conditions of the history.
At times in the new
humans, there might emerge a tendency to see the risen one without a cross, an
end without a process, a transcendence without history , a lordship without
service. The path to the new human being is none other than that of Jesus' path
to resurrection. It was said of him that he was made Lord in virtue of his
abasement ( Phil 2, 8-9)
This implies two things: First; Jesus underwent a process
in becoming the Lord. Second: that process was a process of fidelity to the
concrete history that produced that abasement.
There is no other route for human beings. The life of the new human being
is thus still a process. The process is: One must become incarnate in the world
of the poor, proclaim to the poor the good news, come forward in their defense,
denounce and unmask the mighty, take on the lot of the poor and the ultimate consequence of that is the
solidarity, the cross. It is thus retracing the way of the cross in the
history.
Kingdom of God becomes
real, in the measure that there are servants as
he was a servant. Therefore, to be Lord is to serve. It's a Christian
paradox. Jesus' resurrection has not abolished it, rather sanctioned it. This
service I for the salvation of the world. It is giving life tot he histories
crucified.
A new human is a free
man as the scriptures say. Following the crucified one, being radically free
has its own gladness. But let's not forget,
neither freedom nor joy nor any expression of Jesus' resurrection is ' Christianly possible' apart from or
counter to the following of Jesus crucified.
Final
Word to the Church
It is frequently
difficult for the church to proclaim
Jesus' resurrection . It is because, church wishes to proclaim it
directly, without referring to the
crucified one. It may create certain emotions in a liturgical celebration but
it will not be effective to the historical life.
Those who have followed
Jesus' route from the beginning, those who have made his path their own amidst
all insanity and scandals of the cross, will be able to hear from without, when
the resurrection of Jesus is proclaimed- the word that leads within; that
Jesus' life was true life and that is why he abides forever. That life is
mightier than death, that justice is mightier than injustice, that hope is more
real than resignation. In other words they will know that God is drawing this
history of horrors to divinity itself.
Therefore first
question is whether the church is indeed
united tot he cross, when it seeks to proclaim the Jesus' resurrection?
In the crucified of the
history Jesus becomes present, as we hear in matthew25. In them Jesus has
returned, showing his wounds more than his glory.
From
the midst of history's crucified, without any compact or compromise, with their
crosses, Jesus' resurrection must be proclaimed. In those crucified Jesus is
present today. In service to them, the lordship of Jesus becomes present
today. In the stubborn refusal to strike
a pact with their crosses, unshakable
hope becomes present, historically.
Critical Views:
Justitia in Mundo:
1.
Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world
fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of
the preaching of the gospel, or in other words, of the church’s mission
for the redemption for human race and
its liberation from every oppressive situation(#6)
2. Many who suffer injustice are voiceless; the
church should speak on their behalf(#20)
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