Christchurch Parish News, April 2019.
What the theme of Exodus and Resurrection can mean for us all this Easter.
When we say we believe in God, first and foremost what we mean is that we trust in God.
But how do we know that God is trustworthy? After all, just because we’re speaking of someone we refer to as God, it doesn’t necessarily follow that trustworthiness is one of his characteristics. For example, both Greek and Norse mythology is full of stories where the gods are of very dubious character, scheming and lying as they pursue their various ends; in Ancient Greece, the religion called Epicureanism held that the gods did exist but weren’t in the slightest bit interested in us. In either scenario, it’s hardly the basis for a relationship built on trust.
Exodus and Resurrection
So how do we know? As the church we begin to answer this question by turning to the Bible. There we find three defining events, all of which are brought together in the readings appointed for the Easter Vigil service (8pm, 20th April, Christchurch Priory). In these passages from Scripture, we learn that the God in whom we trust is a God of exodus and resurrection.
In the story of the exodus, we travel with the Israelites through the Sea of Reeds, passing from slavery in Egypt, pursued by Pharaoh and his chariots, to the freedom that lies beyond (Exodus 14.10-31; 15.20, 21).
In the story of the resurrection, we stand in the garden with the women outside the tomb of Jesus, where two angels tell us ‘He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ Then we return to the tomb with Peter, stooping down to see ‘the linen cloths by themselves’ and we, too, are amazed at what has happened.
With the Easter Vigil’s readings speaking of exodus and resurrection, it is important we realise that it is not a case of either/or. In other words, it’s not a question of understanding God to be a God of exodus or resurrection. Instead, crucially, it’s both: God is a god of exodus and resurrection.
By putting the two stories together, we learn to interpret Jesus’ resurrection as the new exodus. It’s the new act of liberation miraculously brought about by the God of Israel in history. Not only that, we’re also shown that Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of liberation for us, too—from all that enslaves and holds us captive.
Of course, in a sense this is not unexpected. On Maundy Thursday, when we remember Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, the echoes of passover—when the angel of death killed all the firstborn in Egypt except those of the Israelites—are there throughout. But we often don’t then continue the parallel and see Jesus’ resurrection as in fact being the new exodus.
Earlier in the gospel, when describing Jesus’ transfiguration—the moment when Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah about the ‘departure that he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem’ (Luke 9:31)— the Greek word Luke uses is exodus. Well in advance of Passiontide and Holy Week, Luke is encouraging us to see Jesus’ death and resurrection as the new passover and the new exodus.
But the interpretation of course doesn’t just work in one direction. We’re not only to think of Jesus’ resurrection as being the new exodus. By bringing these two events of the Bible into such close thematic proximity, we’re also to understand Israel’s exodus as a type of resurrection itself. The late theologian, Robert Jenson wrote, ‘God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead having before raised Israel from Egypt.’
Who God is
In this wonderfully compact yet theologically rich statement, Jenson is saying something of the utmost importance for our understanding of God’s steadfast character and thereby his trustworthiness: God’s identity is revealed in the act of raising Jesus from the dead having before raised Israel from Egypt. For all time, past, present and future, God is the One who raises.
Back to the beginning
We see this pattern of raising throughout the Bible, for it’s rooted in God’s generative character. Whilst Jenson draws our attention to the raising of Israel, we can in fact go back to the very beginning of the Bible, this being the third event that I referred to earlier; it is the one which sets the pattern for all that follows thereafter in the Scriptures. ‘In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void’ (Genesis 1:1-2). Out of this formless void God raises creation. Then secondly, from out of Egypt, a land which is devoid of hope for the Israelites, God creates an avenue of salvation, with once again a wind from God sweeping across the waters, creating the dry land through which he will bring his people into new life and freedom, no longer shackled to the tyrannous Pharaoh. And thirdly, from out of the crushing void of the cross— ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ cries Jesus—God raises new life, His unstoppable generative impulse beginning the onset of the new creation with the resurrection of His Son.
For Christians, Jesus’ resurrection is the lens through which we can understand all of creation and all of history. This pattern of raising from the void has been the experience of the church down the ages. In the raising of creation, Israel, and Jesus we have cosmic, political, and personal raising to new life. And the last of these, Jesus’ resurrection, encompasses all of these. It is the first fruits of the resurrection that lies ahead for all of creation.
Once we see this pattern, we come to realise that no part of creation, be it at the individual level or at the level of society, or for creation as a whole, is beyond the potential orbit of God’s raising power.
In our time
Given this pattern, a question follows: what would it mean for us to be raised this Easter?
This question presupposes that the pattern of raising that we see in the Scriptures will also find expression in our own lives, of those around us, and more broadly in creation, too. For if the pattern of God’s activity in creation is a pattern of raising, we should expect to see acts in our time that bear that same hallmark, of something new being brought out of the least promising situations: from out of the despair of the void, the hope of new life.
The obvious example we see all around us is the natural world with new life coming into being every spring out of the death of winter. And at the human level, elderly relatives greet the news of a newborn baby in the family with tearful hope.
But such examples can slip into sentimentality. This is where understanding the exodus as an act of raising is important because it ensures that we see the socio-political ramifications of Jesus’ resurrection, which operate at three key levels: the personal level of the individual, one’s own being; the corporate level of the ‘we’ — our society; and thirdly, the cosmic level of the ‘all’ — everything in the cosmos.
As individuals we will be raised, not only come the resurrection after our deaths, but during our lives in ways that both echo Jesus’ resurrection and anticipate the resurrection at the end of the age. This can happen in the simplest of ways, yet which are of huge consequence. For example, a rough sleeper finally gets a flat that he can call home; a single mum struggling with zero hour contract work gets a steady job which changes everything for her young family; a thirty-something drug addict enters a recovery programme, gets clean and begins to build a new life.
Likewise, in advance of the resurrection, our society, too, will experience events which will anticipate the resurrection. To take a notable example, the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. This marked a moment when men and women were raised from the void of chattel slavery to the hope of new life and freedom. In our own time, when charities such as A21 and Hope for Justice liberate women who have been sold into sex trafficking, this isn’t just an act of raising for the individual concerned, it’s a step of healing liberation for our society as a whole—for who would want such trafficking to continue, other than those opposed to God’s good purposes for society’s flourishing.
The third exodus
Thirdly, resurrection will happen at the level of the ‘all’ when the created world around us will be raised. This, if you like, is the third exodus. In the meantime, we are called to return to our original calling to be stewards, the gardeners of creation, and thereby bring partial, anticipatory healing to the world around us. A clear example for us now lies in our oceans, as we come aware of the consequences of our plastic waste as it gathers into small islands of detritus, wreaking havoc for marine life. Efforts to remedy such ecological problems are right not simply because they address the damage of pollution in the here and now. More fundamentally, and therefore hopefully, such actions are anticipations of the raising of the entire cosmos, when the resurrection that has begun with Jesus is brought to fulfilment for all of creation.
With these last examples, note the shift of focus. The earlier question of what would it mean for ourselves to be raised this Easter can often be surprisingly tricky to answer. Although, if you’re in need of healing, be it mental or physical, then it won’t be, and nor will it be if you’re in need of a job and you don’t know where the next meal’s going to come from. But if that isn’t the case for you at at the moment, then thank God. Having done so, ask God what would it mean for those around us to be raised? What would it mean for our church to be raised? For our town to be raised? And our world?
The question then goes that one final step further: how can we become ‘raising agents’? (And, yes, Jesus’ yeast metaphor was most deliberately chosen!) How can we be people by whom God brings about the raising in the lives of those around us, in our church, our town, and our world?
Our answers will find their root and their hope in the pattern of God’s raising to new life. Our efforts—and we don’t undertake any of this on our own, for Jesus is ascended and we are empowered by the Holy Spirit—are set within this overarching context of God raising from the depths of the void new life, and with it new hope and new possibilities.
A leap of trust
So to return to our first question: how do we know that God is trustworthy? Well, it’s not just a question of looking back to events that took place in the past. It’s seeing that the same pattern of God raising to new life happens over and over throughout creation and across history. Having understood this, it’s then for us to act in harmony with this pattern ourselves.
For in truth, we learn that God is indeed trustworthy only in the act of trusting Him. To find out, we ourselves have to take that step. Easter is the perfect time to do so.
The quote from Robert Jenson is in Volume 1 of his Systematic Theology (OUP). The first time I heard of the resurrection at the end of the age being thought of as the third exodus was in N.T. Wright’s New Testament and the People of God.