(Audio)
In these times of Easter joy, Jesus wants to help us understand and even appropriate what took place in his Paschal mystery. We ourselves were like the crippled man, unable to move forward spiritually until he was cured. But Easter changed that. Easter put us in touch with the power of Jesus, risen from the dead. It was this power that allowed the crippled man to walk. It is this power within us that allows us to live and to grow spiritually.
“You children of Israel, why are you amazed at this,
and why do you look so intently at us
as if we had made him walk by our own power or piety?
Jesus wants to reveal that concrete historicity of his resurrection to us, just as he did to the disciples.
Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled?
And why do questions arise in your hearts?
Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.
Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones
as you can see I have.”
Since Jesus is both divine and human it is hard for us to keep all aspects of him in mind at once. The suffering and death seem very human. They fit into all that we know about the broken world in which we live. The resurrection and glory of Jesus seem to pertain more to his divinity and Godhead. We easily lose the thread of connection. We understand the before and the after. But Jesus was God and man from the moment of his incarnation, to no less a degree at any point along the way.
“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,
that everything written about me in the law of Moses
and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.”
Jesus wants us to encounter him in his resurrected humanity, not simply as some ghostly spiritual presence, but as one who is human in all the ways that we are except sin. The risen Christ is human like we are human, but in his humanity death itself is conquered.
You denied the Holy and Righteous One
and asked that a murderer be released to you.
The author of life you put to death,
but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses.
Jesus absorbed and took upon himself all the destructive impulses, all the hateful desires, all the sins of each one of us in order that those things might be killed. His, however, was a life that could not die. That is why sin did not have the last word, precisely because of who he was. Understanding the humanity of Jesus goes hand in hand with understanding how humanity had failed up to that point, and how it continues to go wrong and those who are not connected to him.
When we encounter Jesus we are invited to faith in him. In place of our sin we receive sanctification. In place of sickness, health. In place of death, life. All this, if we surrender ourselves in faith to him.
And by faith in his name,
this man, whom you see and know, his name has made strong,
and the faith that comes through it
has given him this perfect health,
in the presence of all of you.
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