RAISED FROM THE DEAD

Part of the ministry of Jesus was to raise the dead. That is, to restore back to life those who were dead. This has an interesting spin to those who are alive as well as those who are raised from the dead.

Luigi Santucci (1918-1999) wrote, “So the three restored to life in the gospel were really more than three: their names were not just Lazarus, the infant daughter of Jarius, or the fatherless child from Nain: they were also Martha and Mary, they were Jarius and his wife, they were the widow who accompanied her son to the cemetery, and they were Jesus, the friend, who in the end had pity on himself. Neither the lepers, nor the blind, nor the possessed caused such pain on the face on the earth as those dead people dressed in mourning, those living corpses bathed in tears who, by bitter fate, remained behind. Overwhelmed with compassion, Christ pronounced his miraculous command with all-powerful spirit that could only come from God, but in the hoarse and frightened voice of someone who was merely a man.”

We know if we believe in Jesus as the Son of God we will live forever in some state. The compassion of Jesus in these stories is not about later life but about the pain of death for loved ones while we are still on this earth. Part of raising the dead is to raise the deadness in our hearts and minds high enough to go on living after someone dear to us has died. It is to know we have been raised from the dead.

“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” Jesus