The strangeness of our faith

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/040218.cfm
Acts 2:14, 22-23
Matthew 28:8-15

The strangeness of our faith is complete. Our God disregards, indeed completely dismisses, our expectations of his almighty domination. God is capable of anything, and everything, and he chooses instead to do things like send an angel to move a stone, sit upon it and wait, and then speak to a couple of distraught women. This is God’s formula to announce to the world that death will never have dominion over creation again.

I know, the angel lands with an earthquake arrival through the portal of heaven, but that was probably just a last minute flapping of his wings, performing a bit of stretching out his muscles before single-handedly rolling a stone the size of an SUV. Jesus could easily have extricated himself from the tomb, but protocols that we don’t fully understand demanded that an unnamed angel open the door from death’s dungeon into the light of day. This is God at work. 

Our Trinitarian, Hebraic, and interactive Christian grasp of divinity, something no one can figure out all by themselves, requires a personal, intimate revelatory infusion of insight. As some have said it better, “It’s gotta be true. You can’t make this stuff up.” God’s ways aren’t just mysterious. They’re downright peculiar. That is, until you personally become part of the peculiarity of God’s methods. At that point it all becomes fascinating, invigorating, and super cool. It’s hard, though, to explain how. 

With an odd mix of humility and wrath our God trumps all other divine constructs. His love allows us to be OK with anything he does. That’s after the fact. Before we become believers, we are not OK with God. The strange, biblical and ongoing revelatory witnessing of our faith displays a controversial operation of divinity on parade. This is what we our faced with as witnessing believers. 

“Yes, It was really an angel that rolled the stone away. Jesus could have done it by just making it disappear, sure, but the angel makes this a cosmic event. It’s made even more incredible because the angel arrived with earthquake flair, and then calmly sits down and waits for two grieving women to show up. Get it? Jesus left the tomb, running ahead just a bit away from the tomb to pop out and say hi to those two women. He tells them he’ll meet up with the disciples later and he’ll explain what this all means, which is that he’s conquered the consequences of sin — death itself. It sounds kind of odd, and maybe underwhelming, but the whole thing is incredible!”

I probably need to work more on the delivery. It’s a tough tale to make exciting, even though it describes the end of death’s hold on creation. Death can no longer be the final answer. And, we have to make that point with a rolled stone, an angel, Jesus waiting behind a tree somewhere, and two grieving women.

With only incremental adjustments to sin’s breath-taking disdain for him, God often chooses to reset the course of creation back towards himself with minor flair, almost ridiculously low key, but always with fantastical players on the stage — eunuchs, angels, ignorant fishermen, prostitutes, wealthy folks, lepers, and more angels. That’s how it looks from the outside to unbelievers, and that’s also how it looks from the inside. The difference is how you view the mix of ominous, frightful, charming, scientifically challenging, and sometimes comical collection of behaviors, people, and events.

To believers, God interacts with incredible passion and grace. It’s how we interpret our daily interactions with him. His oddball concoction of folks and angels and stars and saints and even animals makes sense, in an incomprehensible way. God continually stuns those who are privileged to hear him, house him, see him, and feel his touch, but that’s because we know it’s him at work. How do we know? He gathers us together to share our interactions with him (both for confirmation and for witness), and then we sacramentally get blown away by his Spirit that lives within in us. It’s the most dagnab fabulous set of co-incidents imaginable. And rather difficult to sell.

God waited patiently several millennia to join our world as an incarnated member of his own creation. When he chose the moment for his entry he gathered and involved every element of creation to celebrate his birth, but held the event in a barn. And then, a king killed an entire generation of male children to ensure that he eradicate this prophesied birth of another king. God sidestepped the horror for Jesus amidst the tragedy for hundreds of devastated families. The trust that God knows what he is doing in these highly conflated types of exchanges cannot be reached easily.

We believers know, however, the context of that infanticide. Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah written about in detail over several thousand years, was not just to be rejected by the world, but hunted. Jesus, filled with the Spirit in union with the Father, grasped the appointed time for his death. That’s when he stopped hiding and confusing his enemies. He died without mercy on an executioner’s hill among criminals. With willing submission, Jesus suffered horribly at the urging of his chosen people under the thumb of history’s most insulting empire. Then, he rose from death, blasting through death's terminal hold, and the world largely considers his accomplishments a fantasy. 

What does such a miserable chain of events tell us about God? 

He’s an intricate planner.

Today’s readings confirm that God moves along a path who’s trajectory rankles every human sensibility. After his death, his followers are crushed in their grief and depressed at their prospects. And what does God choose to reawaken their minds and comfort their hearts? He sends an angel to explain to two women that he has conquered death, and then shows up to reveal his risen self.

This is the most difficult story to tell to an unbeliever. We rely upon our wit and skills when any of us tell the truth, but this truth is fraught with more than just objectionable elements. 

Scriptures tell us that God will eventually crush all competition for his kingly leadership. But, not now. Inter-dimensional beings, angels of unfathomable abilities, appeared rarely in the thousands of years before the incarnation. They show up often during Jesus’ life, and their last sighting was at the ascension. The Book of Revelation projects that the end of this age will be peppered with a wholesale invasion of angels. Who could believe this stuff other than revelatory awakened believers inspired by a convincing God? 

God continues to allow conspiracies to abound, even lies that he died and his body was stolen by the apostles. And, despite the appearance of saints and Jesus himself over the last 2,000 years, neither science nor the fourth estate (the journalists) can accept eyewitness reports. It’s hard to blame them.

The world cannot easily grasp God’s ways. And neither can its governments and judiciaries. Those in the medical professions and in military, prisons and police organizations, however, have often been presented with their own undeniable proofs of God’s interventions, whether by intermediaries, the Holy Spirit, or Jesus himself. 

As we individually find ourselves confronted with evil, we quake as believers, unsure of what God will do with us. God knows this to be true, I am sure. As he encountered the Mary Magdalene and another Mary (perhaps the sister of Martha, but likiely not the mother of Jesus) his first words were, “Do not be afraid.”

At every moment of necessary cosmic shifts orchestrated by God these are the words we should remember. “Do not be afraid.” We do not want to respond as the guards at Jesus’ tomb did when they saw the angel. 

“(The angel’s) appearance was like lightning and his clothing was white as snow. The guards were shaken with fear of him and became like dead men."

Even as we get excited about what will come next, we shiver. And yet, “Be not afraid.” Do not fear. Do not be afraid.