Fredrick Nietzsche once said, "There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy." The mind may be able to understand complex philosophical concepts, but it can never experience the joys and sorrows of life as the body can. The body knows what it is like to feel pain and pleasure, love and hate, happiness and sadness. The mind can only imagine these things.
This Sunday's Gospel reading is from John chapter 11, the very heart, center and core of John's witness. Here we find Jesus telling Mary, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." What is resurrected is the Body - in the case of our story Sunday, Lazarus' body. The body experiences what the mind can only imagine.
I know Easter is almost upon us. I know Easter is about the resurrection of Jesus. But this week our story is about another resurrection - that of Jesus' friend Lazarus.
Perhaps you know the Bible verse, "Jesus wept." Yes, it's the shortest verse in the Bible, but it is also one of the deepest in its testimony to the devastation of loss. Read our lesson, John 11:1-45. Note all the words connoting emotion, "weep," "console," "love." These are not ideas, they are actions, bodies in action, people in relationship.
Resurrection is not something we believe in. It is something we experience.
See you Sunday,
Pr. Dave Brauer-Rieke
