Resurrection account: implications for manchester?

I suspect that there are some implications for the accounts of the resurrection that have not been yet rightly understood. Firstly, let's see what John has to say:

Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus ' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. (John 20:6-7 ESV)

I propose that there are two exegetical implications for this passage:

1: Making one's bed is entirely unnecessary.

Now of course some will protest that Jesus wasn't going to sleep there again and so this principle isn't transferrable to non-necrotic settings. This, I propose, is negated by Jesus' knowledge that the angels and even some disciples would see the tomb in its unkempt state. If Jesus is happy to have beings, spiritual and corporeal, witness his room in a certain state then I'm happy to leave my room in that state while it's private. (This also provides assurance that if an angel did visit my room through the day that it'd be cool.)

2: You do need to have your pillow in its correct spot.

Now in saying this, I'm not suggesting that one needs to do this oneself. From the passage it's impossible to tell whether Jesus folded the face cloth, or whether his angelic minions did that for him. Hooking up some sort of spiritual housemaid would be heaps cool. But, failing this, you should probably pick your pillow up off the floor.

Does anyone else have any more neglected exegetical principles from the resurrection accounts?

The agony of choice

Back from mission, but no blogging impetus to speak of. I'm completely wrecked after a week of firstly being nervous about a kids' talk that went well and then worrying about an evangelistic talk which didn't go so well.

The kids' talk was made considerably easier by the fact that I used one of the excellent Kidswise talks by Sandy Galea and some awesome props made by my wife.

The sermon on the other hand, was agony!

The loose theme we'd been given was 'Life Matters'. I had initially wanted to do a talk about the tension between life and death in Ecclesiastes. The tension is created by death's ending of life and thus frustrating and cutting off all humanity's work and relationships. Hence, they are in vain. The talk would finish in 1 Corinthians 15 with the resurrection and its result: your labour in the Lord is not in vain.

The problem, though, is that I wanted to explore some different ways of dealing with this tension between life and death. Options such as denial, religiosity and acceptance. After a couple of weeks agonising over preparing this kind of talk, I gave in. I can't do a talk like that well enough yet. To be able to connect that philosophical stuff to real life in an engaging way in a 15 minute evangelistic talk to your average person from the street was a bridge too far.

So I decided to do an exegetical talk on John 11 (Lazarus' resurrection). But by then I only had a couple of days to prepare, and I wasn't really 'feeling' the passage as an evangelistic talk. So it wasn't so crash hot.

I'm not sure if any non-Christians were there. Very few people at church at all on that rainy day.

Still, it was good to stretch myself. Now I've got some thoughts about my limitations as a preacher to explore.

A break in transmission

Sorry. Can't blog. Missioning.

Still, Some bits of my preaching prep for Sunday morning. Prayers appreciated.

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John 11

The two different responses to Jesus.
You can see the miracles themselves, even believe that they’re real, and still not believe that Jesus is the Son of God. The issue isn't believing the miracle. The issue is: "having seen the miracle, would you believe that Jesus was the Son of God?".

The bloke who wrote this down was there. He saw it happen. He saw Jesus do heaps of amazing things. But why did he write this episode down? Why was this one recorded?

He tells us. Right at the end of his book he tells us why he chose this particular sign to record. “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

John wrote down what happened that day for you. In fact he wrote the whole book hoping and praying that you would believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Why? Because he wants you to have life. He doesn’t want death to be the end for you.