Keeping Up Appearances

Hyacinth Bucket (I do apologise ‘Bouquet') in the popular BBC sitcom ‘Keeping Up Appearances' is a fearsome women indeed! Everywhere she goes she spreads terror – especially into the hearts of her neighbours, her postman, deliverymen and, most of all, her parish priest. The aforesaid clergyman pales noticeably when he either catches sight of her or hears her shrill voice calling him: “Oh Vicaaar!” I would imagine that these people's fears lie in the unpredictability of what she might ask of them next – especially if she were to invite them to one of her candlelight suppers!

In our New Testament reading from the First Letter to the Corinthians [1 Corinthians 15:1-11], Paul tells us about some of the resurrection appearances of Christ. Jesus appeared to Peter and then the rest of the disciples. Then he appeared to more than five hundred other people and then to James and the rest of the Apostles and lastly to Paul himself. Jesus certainly was (like Hyacinth Bucket) keeping-up-appearances after he had been raised from the dead. And if we study the gospel accounts of the resurrection a little more widely we find that people's reactions to the appearances of Jesus were equally as manifold. Fear, incredulity, confusion, disbelief, amazement, faith and joy were a mishmash of responses all fighting for answers [Matthew 28; Mark 16:5-8; Luke 24:3-43; John 20ff].

Earlier in the garden of Gethsemane, when the lynch mob had arrived and arrested Jesus to take him away, the disciples fled. And as far as we know only Peter and John kept tabs on what was to unfold. Peter, and possibly John, followed the lynch mob at a distance into the courtyard of the high priest and John later witnessed the crucifixion itself [John 18:15-16, 19:26-27]. The next we hear of the disciples back together is after the Lord had been crucified and his body placed in the tomb. They had locked themselves away in a house in the fear that they too were on the Sanhedrin's hit-list and would meet an equally gruesome end. We can only imagine what it must have been like for them. Their master and teacher, a man ‘full of grace and truth' [John 1:14] who performed such wonders and loved them with a love like no other, had been snatched from their very midst, been beaten and scourged and then put to death! No wonder their world had caved in! Dread and hopelessness had frozen their minds with fear so that they hid themselves away in the house [John 20:19].

Yet less than two months or so later these same disciples were to be found standing publically on street corners and in the temple in Jerusalem proclaiming the kingdom of God and that the rabbi Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead! The disciple's fears concerning persecution were indeed to be realised many times during the course of their ministry. They would be arrested, imprisoned, beaten and, as the apostle Paul says, ‘brutally treated' [1 Corinthians 4:11]. According to fact and tradition, the original disciples were all to be martyred with the exception of John (yet even he suffered exile for a time on the Greek island of Patmos). And likewise the great teacher of the Gentiles the Apostle Paul was to be martyred in Rome. They all risked everything in preaching the good news!

Something extraordinary though must have happened to have allowed the early Church to gestate and grow in the midst of such brutal persecution. What could transform such people from those seeking to save their own lives to those who were willing to lose them for gospel's sake? I believe it simply was that they had truly encountered the risen Lord Jesus in his glorious resurrection body: not as a ghost or vision, but in his awesome new body; a body which did not conform to the normal laws of physics of this universe or of the present age! [John 20:24-29]

If we examine the credibility of what Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians we hear not only of the testimony of a man who saw the Lord Jesus in a glorious vision on the road to Damascus, but also the testimony of a man who spoke with Peter and the other Apostles who had actually witnessed Jesus' post-resurrection appearances. Incidentally, it is interesting for us to note that according to the book of Acts, Jesus appeared to Paul after he had ascended into heaven – admittedly in a different way from the other Apostles. [1 Corinthians 15:8]

As we sift through the wealth of literary Church history we find that Jesus' ‘visionary' appearance to Paul is by no means unique. Saints great and small, pious and quite ordinary have witnessed appearances of Christ similar to Paul's, and also John's in the book of Revelation [Revelation 1:9-20]. In the contemporary world many people in countries where Christianity is illegal and the preaching of the gospel is punishable by imprisonment (or worse) have been converted to Christ because they claim that they have seen him. In dreams and visions the risen Lord appears to these people extending his love and forgiveness and ushering them into his kingdom. Even though the price they pay through the persecution that they suffer afterwards can be high, such is their conviction that they have met with the risen Lord that they faithfully journey on in their life of discipleship.

It may seem incredible to some today that the risen Lord Jesus is still keeping-up-appearances and is about his business of calling people to himself, forgiving their sins and fitting them for a new life here on earth and also for the life to come. But why should it be incredible when the letter to the Ephesians states ‘God put [the immeasurable greatness of his] power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and domination, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.' [Ephesians 1:20-23] Just because God raised our Lord from the dead who then ‘ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things' [Ephesians 4:10] does not mean that the risen Jesus of today is far and distant from us. On the contrary, he fills the entire universe and spans the ages! Not only does Jesus fill all things - including our very hearts, minds and bodies – but he has been given complete authority over death and judgement. Jesus, in his vision to John, said to him “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see I am alive for ever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and Hades.” [Revelation 1:17-18] We could not be in better hands, than the hands of Jesus, because the creation came into being through him and will ultimately find its purpose and fulfilment in him when he comes in his Father's glory!