Bryan Richardson

Possible

Re:Verse passage – John 21:1-19 (day three)

“None of the disciples ventured to question him, “Who are you?” knowing that it was the Lord.”

One might capture the disciples’ experience with this question: how is this even happening right now? They were grappling with the dawning of this long-promised age of history. Once, dead people stayed dead. Now, they no longer do. What was once impossible is now possible. If Jesus — publicly condemned, sentenced, and executed — now lives and breathes, what else that was hopeless now has hope? Indeed, what good thing is ever beyond reach again? It has taken 2000 years to take it all in, and even now it seems unreal sometimes. But 2000 years has also shown that this gospel will not fade. You really can count on this good news.

Raised

Re:Verse passage – Luke 24:36:-43; John 20:26-29 (day three)

“See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.”

The first disciples believed in God, whom they had never seen, so they did have the ability to believe without sight. And Elijah’s and Elisha’s bringing back the dead, and a dead man living again after grazing Elisha’s bones – they believed these accounts. They had seen Jesus raise Lazarus and the son of the widow in Nain. So resurrection wasn’t off limits in their belief system. But this experience with a person they had known and loved and who had upended their lives for three years – this brought resurrection fully into the mainstream. Resurrection wasn’t just a rare miracle anymore. It was now the only way the human race would go on. All who count on Christ will be raised. Good news takes a while to sink in.

Slow

Re:Verse passage – Luke 24:13-35 (day three)

“And they stood still, looking sad.”

Wherever there were broken hearts resulting from his absence, the pain of those hearts reached the sensitive soul of the risen Savior like an SOS beacon, and he drew close. As the two men on the Emmaus Road paused their stride to update this stranger on the substance of their conversation about the chaotic reports of Jesus sitings, Jesus could see their downcast faces, feel their deep sense of loss. He responded tenderly: “And you feel like you’d be fools to believe these reports, even though you yearn for them to be true. You’re trying to slow your heart from running to embrace what the scriptures have said, afraid that it might not be real.” Jesus’s compassion tracks your sorrow, slowly opening up your life to possibilities you had not previously let yourself believe.

Powerless

Re:Verse passage – John 20:1-18 (day three)

“They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

Mary’s statement here radiates helplessness. She had grown accustomed to living as a powerless, insignificant, unnoticed person of little value in her society. That is, until Jesus saw her. For the first time in her life, she had felt what it is like to matter, to live as something other than a cipher. But now the one who had seen her was apparently gone, himself the victim of that same uncaring world which had tried to teach her that she had no worth. “They have taken him away” mourns that the world has reasserted its position as an overwhelming force that swallows hope whole. In short order, Mary would encounter Jesus and find that the world is powerless after all.

New

Re:Verse passage – Luke 24:1-12 (day three)

“These words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe [Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James, and the other women].”

The roil of emotion as the injurious cascade of events crashed into these believers overwhelmed them. To hear that what had hammered their souls might not be what they thought it was sounded to them perhaps as though their fellow disciples were at best trivializing these occurrences or at worst denying them. Can anything become unlost, unagonizing, or untrue? The categories of pain are fixed and unmoving. Only immersion into a new way of being in the world will alter those categories. Mary and company had encountered such a new way. Those encounters would so drastically re-form their lives that succeeding generations wouldn’t need to behold what they had beheld in order to experience the same shift.

Vulnerable

Re:Verse passage – Luke 19:28-44 (day three)

“The Lord has need of it.”

Jesus’s way of living in this universe never took an adversarial stance. You know what that is: You fight traffic; you slog through the day; you endure meetings; you gear up for a conversation; you avoid that issue. Fighting, slogging, enduring, gearing up, avoiding – these are not open-hearted, vulnerable, curious, and connected positions in interacting with the world. They are instead protective, apprehensive, and guarded. And there are good reasons you would approach life that way. When something appears harmful, you’ll do what it takes to steer clear. But Jesus lived differently. He says, “Ask and you will receive.” He says, “Let your yes be yes.” When he had need for a donkey, he instructed his disciples to state that need plainly. This seems simple, exposed, even dangerous. Yet it begets peace and provision. Learn from him.

Police

Re:Verse passage – Mark 7:1-23 (day three)

“You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition.”

Jesus and the Pharisees agreed on at least one thing: their standing as experts. They touted their expertise in the law; Jesus pointed out their expertise in setting aside the law. It seems that often within the spiritual and moral realm there exists a drive for assurance that one is properly spiritual and moral. Assurance-seeking will always involve self-policing and then expand to the policing of others. Righteousness-policing becomes the touchstone of assurance rather than, you know, actual righteousness. Jesus declared that his disciples were experiencing an immersion in the pursuit of righteousness, while the Pharisees were immersed in the pursuit of assurance of righteousness. The former flows from a state of wonder at God’s goodness, the latter from a state of fear of God’s rejection.

Help

Re:Verse passage – Mark 6:45-53 (day three)

“Seeing them straining at the oars, for the wind was against them, at about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea; and he intended to pass by them.”

What to make of Jesus’s apparent non-interactive close encounter? There are various viewpoints on this, but perhaps Jesus intended merely to look in on them to see how they were handling a potentially dangerous situation, not necessarily intending to interfere if things were fine. If so, that action would indeed be in keeping with Jesus’s tender shepherding. Where there is danger, the Savior is near. But he also desires us to the greater things – he says so elsewhere in the gospels – and so he leads us to live with power and ability. His nearness, though, means that in our cries for help we can discover he’s already there.

Incarnate

Re:Verse passage – Mark 6:30-44 (day three)

“He saw a large crowd, and he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

When did compassion well up in Jesus? When the people’s anxious experience of life washed over him. He felt in his body the emotions at work in their bodies. That’s empathy – remaining with people in how they’re experiencing their circumstances, witnessing how hard it is for them, feeling the weight they feel as they show you how it is for them. And empathy gives birth to compassion, always. Where there is no compassion, there’s no empathy, and there’s no seeing another person – not really. There’s only agenda and disdain and shaming. The Incarnation forever puts the lie to the claim that empathy is a fancy word for coddling. The Incarnation is itself the ultimate empathy. And so we now follow the Savior’s lead.

Lost

Re:Verse passage – Mark 6:14-29 (day three)

“But when Herod heard of it, he kept saying, ’John, whom I beheaded, has risen!’”

Herod had a bad feeling about executing John. Not bad enough to keep him from killing him, though. And now his life became a nightmare. This wasn’t superstition, as if his first-century mind didn’t know that people who are dead tend to remain that way. No, this was much more serious. It was reality. Not that John had risen from the dead, but that Herod’s sins were finding him out. Herod was running out of room to maneuver. The man with so much power grew weak-kneed at the enormity of his transgression. Herod could save face in front of his dinner guests. He couldn’t save his soul in the face of God’s judgment. He couldn’t bring himself to humble his body and soul before God.