Andrew Peterson, Resurrection: Day 8 (April 8, 2007)
The blue-green earth turns on its axis, rolling Jerusalem into the light of the sun. It turns like a door swinging open, pouring light into a dark place.
Jesus inhales. His flesh and blood lungs expand, retract, the pupils of his eyes adjust to the buttery light unveiled by the trundled stone. The muscles in his shoulders flex, his fingers open and fan once, curl into a fist, then relax. His heart pumps steady and strong in his chest, and the stuff of miracles crackles in the air about him. The Father is pleased with him, and the angels tell him so.
Two of them, speaking in hushed voices, welcoming the Son back to the land of the living with words of praise no human could utter. They bow to him, marveling. Though they've spent eons in the presence of God, this revelation of his love and power is like nothing they've seen before. The way God stepped into Time and subjected himself to its laws, laws he himself created, the way he allowed his creation to treat him with disdain, apathy, even hate, is more than these angels could've imagined.
A wide grin breaks over Jesus' face, in anticipation of the looks on his friends' faces when he materializes in the room without deigning to use the door. He swings his feet to the floor, seeing the scars in his flesh and smiling again at the beauty of it all, if he does say so himself. Freedom for the captives. Hope for the bedraggled. The bright unraveling of the curse that man brought upon himself.
Up the steps he walks, trailing his fingers on the damp stone walls, into the light of the new day. He is pleased with the story he's telling. He is satisfied with the price he paid, with the cup he drank, bitter as it was, and most of all he is satisfied that he can now love his weak and wayward children with all of himself. The holy part of his nature that could bear no iniquity from man has been satisfied by blood and death; the enmity between God and man is no more.
The morning warms his face. He closes his eyes for a moment and feels in a flash the hearts of all men and women from the beginning of things to the end, and with each thump of the holy heart in the frame of his ribcage he loves enough to overwhelm them all. Love set loose on the world. Love like a roaring lion, like a storm of deep laughter.
From the moons of Jupiter to the center of our boiling sun, out across numberless galaxies to the black time- and space-winnowing walls of the universe, that laughter resounds and makes its way back to the ears of the figure standing at the mouth of the tomb where the fainted Roman soldiers are snoring in the dirt. "It is finished," he had said in his agony on the cross. Stepping over the prone bodies on the ground Jesus smiles to himself and agrees with the Father.
"It is just beginning."
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This past weekend i was blessed with the opportunity to attend my second