Risen with Nary a Word of Condemnation

The resurrection the Old Testament anticipates is a double resurrection

Mark and Matthew, Luke and John— the Gospels all agree the very first reaction to news of the resurrection is fear.

• The soldiers guarding the tomb faint from fear.

• The women, come to anoint the body, run away. Terrified.

• The disciples lock the doors and cower in the corner.

The first response to the news “Christ is Risen” is not “He is Risen indeed!” It’s panic. Fear. Terror. Even Mary Magdalene appears deeply unsettled if not scared. Why are they so frightened?

Are they afraid that what Caesar did Jesus might still be done to them? Or do they fear the news that this particular Jesus has come back? This Jesus who harassed them for three years, who called them to abandon their family businesses, and who complicated their lives with talk of cross-bearing. Are they afraid that they’re not finally rid of this Jesus after all?

Is Jesus what’s so scary about the news, “Jesus has been resurrected!”?

Or, is it the word “resurrection” itself that makes them white-knuckled afraid?

Was the Easter word enough to provoke not just awe but frightened shock?

Remember, for Jesus and the apostles the Old Testament was simply the Bible; the Tanakh were the only scriptures they knew.

The primary passage in the Hebrew Bible which anticipates a general resurrection is Daniel 12.

This is not necessarily a text to which the immediate, reflexive response would be “Alleluia!”

Not only was Daniel the last book added to the Hebrew Bible, it was the most popular scripture during the disciples’s day. Prior to the exilic experience, Israel had no substantive concept of heaven. When you died, you were dead. That was it, the Jews believed. You worshipped and obeyed God not for hope of heaven but because God, in and of himself, is worthy of our thanks and praise. Only, when Israel’s life turned dark and grim, when their Temple was razed and set ablaze, when their promised land was divided and conquered, and when they were carted off as exiles to a foreign land, the Jews began to long for a Day of God’s justice and judgement.

If not in this life, then in a life to come.

And so the resurrection the prophet Daniel sees is a double resurrection.

Those who have remained righteous and faithful in the face of suffering will be raised up by God into God’s own life everlasting. Just so, those who’ve committed suffering, they might be on top now in this life but one day God will raise them up too, not to everlasting life but to everlasting shame and punishment.

In the only Bible the disciples knew, then, the word resurrection was a hairy double-edged sword, even scarier than the bunny in Donnie Darko.