Five Minute Friday :: Run

• Five Minute Friday :: Run Linkup

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. John 20:1-4

"Run come see! The stone rolled away!" Like the first creation, the new creation began in primordial darkness, before first light of the first day of the new week. Biblical religion is fully embodied and sensory; it's a way of being we can touch, hear, see, smell, and taste. Yet both Judaism and Christianity put hearing first. We read scripture aloud; our preaching and teaching interprets scripture in ways people listen to, hopefully hear, learn, and take to heart, so like Moses' exodus assembly we will do all the Words God has spoken.

Reformer Martin Luther insisted "the eyes are hard of hearing" because we can't quite trust what we see. Therefore (among other reasons), he spent a lifetime in a monumental struggle for the primacy of God's Word written and spoken and heard, to recover the bible for ordinary everyday people—to bring back the Good Book he described as "the cradle in which Christ, the [Incarnate] Word of God, is laid."

In the evangelist John's Easter account everyone runs in a hurry to tell the good news of Jesus' resurrection. Can't wait! Don't want to be late! Maybe our legs won't carry us as fast as we'd like, but are you still ready to run and tell the world about the empty tomb? Does everyone know death is not the end? Are you running to say God's final answer always is new life? Jesus is not here! He is risen!

Run come see the stone rolled away and then run and tell everyone you see!

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