#disciplemaking
#adventcalendarday24
#willyoujoinme

Have you ever gone to open the final door on your advent calendar and someone’s already opened it? Join with me and read Luke chapter 24 and we’ll find someone’s already opened the most important door . . .

I’m always struck by the devotion shown by some of the disciples, especially the women, even after Jesus died. Even after he was dead, those disciples still served him.  And due to their devotion, the women make the puzzling discovery that the stone has been rolled away and Jesus’ body has disappeared.

Luke is at pains to point out that the disciples should have expected this result. The angels and then Jesus himself reminds them that the prophets foretold this. In fact we know from our readings that Jesus had said on three occasions to the disciples that this would all happen. I guess the truth is (for most sensible humans), that dead people don’t come back to life. Even though they had seen Jesus raise others back to life, after all they’d witnessed over Jesus’ trial and death, and now it was the third day after, they simply couldn’t in their grief, dare to believe that what Jesus had said about this would come true. After all, who was left to raise Jesus?

Thinking about the way Luke has constructed this account of Jesus’ life – deliberately historically accurate, verified by eyewitnesses and careful to show how Jesus intentionally went about his business: unwaveringly authoritative over sickness & death, disability and the forces of nature, (and the enemy of God); captivating by his unmatched understanding of God and how people should live with each other in response to God; carefully yet provocatively confrontational with the religious leaders;  and finally the instructions he gives to the disciples to carry on the ‘family business’  – leaves me with a renewed sense of God’s engineering according to his sovereign plan, and as Jesus, his total commitment to willingly sacrifice himself as the pivotal action in that plan.

How wonderful, amazing, surprising and fully engaging for us to discover, along with the first disciples, that the final door has been opened! That actually there is someone left to raise people from the dead! That our lives are swept up in the cosmic purposes of the creator of the universe because WE ARE LOVED! And we are loved so much that despite our almost constant rebellion, God has both carefully and astonishingly engineered a way for our relationship with him to be restored forever.

There’s no need for further questions today – everything has been asked and answered in Jesus!

Maranatha!