In our day the resurrection story is no longer a secret. We have the biblical stories. We have decided if we believe them to be true or not. The struggle that I have is what we choose to do with the stories. One the one hand, if they are true stories then perhaps they do have lessons to teach us about how to live and love and work together. If they are more like midrash*, stories to help us learn, then perhaps they do have lessons to teach us about how to live and love and work together.
There – do you see my struggle?
In the weeks ahead we will look at a few biblical stories to see how the resurrection actually brought about change. Not the easy – isn’t that nice – kind of change, but the kind of change that brought about transformation.
We’ll start with my favorite guy, Peter. I have so much to learn from him. We will see that Peter’s life change was a struggle of biblical proportions (that’s a clue about what we will look at later.)
Until next time – I wonder if you would engage in this experiment???? Share with me – briefly – what the story of the resurrection means to you. These topics are already taken, so please don’t use them:
- Life conquers death
- Jesus won for us eternal life
- Love wins
- New life is yours (ours – theirs
- Try to stay away from cliché type of thoughts.
I’m looking for compelling stories that teach us all what resurrection power is all about. Email them to me. I’ll share a couple of the stories with the rest of the East District. Together let’s see what resurrection is all about. Let’s discover its power to change the church as we know it today.
I’m looking forward to the collaboration.
Blessings —
*Midrash is an interpretive act, seeking the answers to religious questions (both practical and theological) by plumbing the meaning of the words of the Torah. (In the Bible, the root d-r-sh is used to mean inquiring into any matter, including occasionally to seek out God’s word.) Midrash responds to contemporary problems and crafts new stories, making connections between new Jewish realities and the unchanging biblical text. This quotation is taken from MJL Staff (n.d.). What is Midrash? Retrieved May, 9, 2017, http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/midrash-101/.
