This morning we continue with the Acts of the Apostles, capturing the remarkable dynamic lent to the church in the wake of the resurrection. The apostles are imprisoned ‘but during the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors, brought them out, and said, "Go, stand in the temple and tell the people the whole message about this life”. Christ is risen and puts into gear this life - the eternal life he promised Nicodemus in today’s Gospel: ‘for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (John 3:16). As believers we possess that life, sealed by baptism and confirmation, divine life gifted from out of the tomb, revealed over forty days and from Pentecost sent deep into the hearts of believers by the Holy Spirit.
‘The message about this life’ is rooted in the event we celebrated ten days ago. Christianity takes us beyond this world but it does so from the axis of time, from history, that of Christ and that of our own. In sharing ‘the message about this life’ we begin with the events arguing for their historicity. In weighing up the New Testament accounts one problem is that the references to the tomb are in the Gospel accounts written at least 20 years after the first letters of Paul which give little reference to the tomb save reference to Christ’s burial. Paul’s witness to the resurrection builds from his later encounter with the risen Lord Jesus which he associates with those of the apostles at Easter. So central is the resurrection to Paul’s thought that Acts 17:18 relates ‘he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection’. Just like the angel bidding the apostles in today’s reading Paul hands on a message of divine life. Opponents of Christianity see this preaching as built on Paul’s subjective visionary experiences and not on the history of Jesus. The Christian defence is to point to Paul’s many repeated references to Christ’s dying and rising as the objective side of the personal relationship believers enter into. This is linked to our subjective dying again and again to sin and rising again and again to new life in the Spirit. Death and resurrection is the pattern of Christian experience because it was the experience of Jesus.
On Easter Sunday we renewed our baptism vows with this in mind, turning afresh to Christ as Saviour and inviting the Holy Spirit into our lives afresh. ‘The message about this life’ which is Christianity is inseparable from the ongoing drowning of our old sinful nature and our ongoing receipt of the new nature given by the Holy Spirit. As we prayed in the Collect, ‘grant us so to put away… malice and wickedness that we may always serve God in pure ness of living and truth’. So be it! More at https://elucidatingcontroversy.blogspot.com/
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