Savior’s resurrection and commission
Key Verses: 4, 7, 15, 18-20
“Special Forces Soldiers Scared by an Angel” the headline might read today. Not the best publicity for the troops. The follow-on article might talk about the women who talked to the angel. The news they deliver is confirmation of what Jesus had said numerous times before, that He would rise again. And they get the first encounter with Jesus face to face.
Jesus raised the status of the women of His day. In fact, everywhere His message has spread, the status of women has risen. Even in this country, the great voices for women’s rights, for ending slavery, and for children’s rights have been Christians. In Christ, people can realize their god-given potential.
These women are the first messengers of the full gospel. They carry the news of the resurrection. Someone dying for another is OK news, but someone coming back to life after he predicted he would: unprecedented. But that is exactly the news Jesus gave to these women to carry. And it is the news we carry today. In my lifetime there have been several people who claimed they would come back to life shortly after their death, but they all stayed dead (at least for the moment).
I find that the soldiers are in quite a difficult position. They have failed at their duty. Period. Death awaits them. They go to the priests who cook up a story. I can’t imagine the ribbing they took in the locker room after telling their fellow soldiers their story. The laughter had to have shaken the foundation of the building. There is no way a band of untrained disciples could have pulled off the covert operation. Did they put sleeping pills in their night time hot chocolate brought to them by a scantily clad servant girl? These other soldiers would have smelled this hoax in an instant. Their body language would have betrayed their words. It is almost impossible to tell a lie without giving yourself away.
But when you want to believe something, a lie is exactly what you will swallow. And the swallowing continues to the present day. People will believe almost anything except the resurrection of Jesus. They will believe aliens planted life on this planet, without ever answering where the aliens came from. They will believe there are hundreds of millions of gods, but not the One True God. They will believe that all roads lead to God, even though the roads go in completely different directions, and individually disavow any similarity of trajectory.
That is why the Great Commission is necessary for the Gospel. The Gospel is so unlikely, so impossible, so unbelievable, that if Jesus hadn’t commanded us to go, we would probably stay. That God would leave Heaven, take on all the limitations of creation, live a perfect life, die and rise again all for His sinful, rebellious, ungrateful creatures is just too hard to believe. But the Spirit awakens our faith and we are able to see God’s love in the most unlikely event.
The Arnold Journey 