"Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen."

What a contrast Jesus’ resurrection is to the raising of Lazarus: "When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, ‘Take off the grave clothes and let him go.’" (John 11:43-44) Lazarus arose from death with the wrappings of death still upon him. Jesus arose from death with the wrappings of death completely left behind, so far behind they were folded up by themselves. Lazarus was not resurrected. Lazarus was resuscitated. Jesus was not resuscitated. Jesus was resurrected.

Resuscitation is restoration to an earthly life. It’s miraculous, certainly, but resuscitated people will die again. Jesus was resurrected. He entered into a new realm of existence, or rather, He resumed the realm of existence He left to be incarnated. Jesus will not die again. Those who die joined to Him will also enter a new realm of existence, from which they cannot die.

In my post for February 22, I talked about what Luke Timothy Johnson calls "cognitive dissonance" as an experience of the first Christians. It is the tension one feels when there is conflict between our convictions and our experience. Please read that post to make sense of this one.

The first Christians resolved the tension of cognitive dissonance by reinterpreting the convictions that came from Torah. A good example is found in today's reading from Hebrews 10:1-25, expecially verses 5-7, which read:

5Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; 6with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. 7Then I said, 'Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll— I have come to do your will, O God.'"

This is a quotation from Psalm 40:6-8 taken from the 2nd century B.C. Greek translation known as the Septuagint (often abbreviated LXX, or 70, in our Bible footnotes). If you look up Psalm 40:6-8 in your Bible, it will be a bit different:

6Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced; burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. 7 Then I said, "Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll. 8 I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart."

The writer of Hebrews is reading Psalm 40 Christologically, i.e., as if it is Christ speaking to God. This is typical of the way first Christians reinterpreted Torah to resolve their cognitive dissonance. OT scripture -- read in the Septuagint version -- suddenly appeared to foreshadow Christ at every turn. In v. 5, "a body" is from the LXX, which understands the Hebrew "ears you have pierced" (or, "ears you have dug for me" literally) as the creation of a body out of clay, as of Adam in the beginning. Here, our author finds a reference to the incarnation. It is not likely the author of Psalm 40 had that in mind originally, but now Christians are finding references to Christ everywhere. This is apparently what Luke understood, too, as in Luke 24, Jesus opens up the Law and the Prophets to the travelers on the road to Emmaus.

The same can be said when the author of Hebrews quotes Jeremiah 31:33-34, which he uses in 8:8-12 AND in 10:15-18. He understands that the coming of Christ makes further sacrifices unnecessary.

Cognitive dissonance. A sociologist's fancy word for the tension we call "doubt." Yet, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it became the source of new faith for the first Christians and all who followed. We need not fear our doubts!

During Jesus' trial before Pilate, John's Gospel reads in 19:13, "When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down (GR: ekathisen) on the judge's seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha)." The word translated here "sat down" is the Greek word ekathisen. This word can be interpreted to mean either "Pilate sat on the judge's seat" OR "Pilate sat him (Jesus) on the judge's seat."

The synoptic gospels clearly have Pilate sitting on the seat, as do most translations of John. But John may be playing off the double meaning here. It is in keeping with the mockery of 19:1-3 and Pilate's taunting of the religious leaders in 19:4-5 for Pilate to seat Jesus on the judge's seat.

This lends a profound irony to this final scene of the trial of Jesus. Pilate intends to mock Jesus and the Jewish leaders by placing Jesus, their "king," on the judge's seat, but he unknowingly places Jesus in His rightful place as judge. (Other characters in John's Gospel unknowingly reveal truth about Jesus. See Caiaphas' statement in 11:50-51.) The world attempts to judge Jesus, but in the end, Jesus judges the world.