Twelve Words

Before heading out to church this Easter morning to celebrate Resurrection Day, while having my morning coffee time with God I reflected on the essentials of the Christian faith, beginning with the ancient formula of the church: "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again."  Then I thought of the creeds, and their focus on a few aspects of the faith that were most contentious back in the day when the creeds were written, and so needed to be locked down.  

In these formulations, Jesus was: "conceived by the holy spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.  He descended into Sheol.  On the third day He rose again from the dead, in accordance with the Scriptures.  He ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead."

N.T. Wright has recently written (in his book "When God Became King") that the creeds are insufficient to teach theology or even learn adequately about the Christian faith, in large part because they have this enormous gap between "born of the virgin Mary..." and "... suffered under Pontius Pilate".  And in that gap lives everything about the Kingdom of God - both Jesus' announcing that it was here, and His living it out as we watched.

So it seems to me that the story of Jesus cannot be simply reduced to Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection, but that it needs a fuller list of words ending in "..tion".  A dozen should do, I think.  This dozen right here:

Jesus' life story is this, in twelve words:

Incarnation
Maturation
Proclamation
Demonstration
Acclamation
Opposition
Persecution
Crucifixion
Resurrection
Confirmation
Ascension
Restoration

Each is important in telling His story (telling His-tory).  Each has a place and a point and a purpose.  I'd be happy to elaborate on them sometime.  Just ask.  :)



Oh, and... putting my teacher hat on for a minute... as I teach REL 120 - World Religions, for Upper Iowa University, I am aware of the aspects of different religions that overlap with one another, including with Christianity.  Other religions have notions of the first four ideas in the list, several have stories involving the next three.  But the last five?  ..not so much.  The Resurrection of Jesus is unique among religions (even considering those who put forward a cycle of death and rebirth - they are not like it at all).  And so, St. Paul was right when he said (in 1 Cor. 15:17):  "... if Christ was not raised, then your faith is futile - you are still in your sins!".  Resurrection Day celebrates that lynchpin of the Christian faith, for without it there is nothing worthy of our faith.

Happy Easter!  He is risen!