After the Resurrection

00:00
Rich Rudowske
At some level that we won’t understand. I think this side of eternity is the hinge on which the rest of history returns. After the resurrection, things can be set right with God. Reconciliation can happen, and it all finds its place in the resurrection. Welcome to the essentially translatable podcast, brought to you by Lutheran Bible translators. I’m Richardowski. 

00:28
Emily Wilson
And I’m Emily Wilson. 

00:29
Rich Rudowske
And before we kick off the episode here, we want to make sure that essentially translatable is available wherever and whenever you want. So Emily’s here to tell you how you can make that happen right now. 

00:40
Emily Wilson
Right now. Yeah. We would love for you to subscribe. You can find all of the podcast content@lbt.org. Slash podcast. Or preferably, because then you’ll get an alert every time a new podcast comes out. Finding us on Google Podcasts or Apple Podcasts. Spotify is a common one. We would just love for you to follow all of the episodes right when they happen. 

01:10
Rich Rudowske
All right, we are here back in the studio. Hooray to talk about Easter and the resurrection of Jesus. 

01:18
Emily Wilson
Going to say, maybe I shouldn’t have said hooray. Technically, it’s good Friday, but hooray with the hope that we know we are remembering Good Friday, but then also looking forward in hope, because we are, in fact, Easter people. 

01:32
Rich Rudowske
That’s right. 

01:32
Emily Wilson
And we are wanting to dive into what the resurrection actually means to us as christians, as Christ followers, because it’s often overlooked. And that sounds strange, but I think that we’re so into the story of the nativity and Jesus’miracles and his death, and then the resurrection is there as an event. But what this means for us is sometimes skipped over. So we’re wanting to dig into that. 

02:03
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, for sure. The concept is so familiar to us, I think, and in our culture and in christian culture, and Christianity informs a lot of western culture. So this idea of resurrection just doesn’t seem surprising. But it was really surprising. 

02:16
Emily Wilson
Right. 

02:16
Rich Rudowske
And really altered the trajectory of everything when you talk resurrection. 

02:20
Emily Wilson
So can we back that up into the Old Testament? What does that look like? What are some examples? 

02:28
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, the resurrection itself is not necessarily a super clear idea in the Old Testament scriptures, thinking of sacrifices. I mean, the closest sacrifice associated with Easter and resurrection is the Passover. And that has its idea in God protecting his people. The term for Passover in Hebrew is Pasak, and that’s a festival. The festival in Exodus 1211 is called a festival of Pasak, which has some interesting origins as a festival that was celebrated by other folks, too. But this one is the Lord’s pesak, the one that is going to remember a certain thing, the way he redeems you. And then in verse 13, he says, when I see the blood over the doorposts and I come, I will passak you, which is to pass over or to just go on by. 

03:18
Rich Rudowske
It’s even kind of got some connotations of like, I’m really powerful, but when I see that blood, I’m just kind of scoot on by and cover you with. And that’s some of the imagery there. But resurrection, it’s like the scripture as you are in the Old Testament, you have to kind of look at it of God revealing and then revealing a little more as time goes on. And you do have resurrections in the Old Testament. I think both Elijah and Elisha raised someone from the dead, so that happens before Jesus comes. And certainly those are both figures that point to Christ. Elisha means my God saves Elijah, as Yahweh is God. 

03:59
Rich Rudowske
And there’s even an interesting one in after Elisha’s been dead for quite a long time, there’s a funeral happening, and the guys are trying to bury this guy, but the raiding party from the Philistines comes, and so they quick throw his body in the tomb where Elisha’s bones are, and it touches Elisha’s bones and the guy comes back to life. So there’s some resurrections in the past, but not a real clear part of, like this is what it’s going to mean to have a messiah necessarily. 

04:27
Emily Wilson
Right? So this idea of the widow’s son and what does that mean exactly? Like theologically, if we’re going to break that down of why is that significant? 

04:42
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, I guess you could go at it a couple of different ways. Resuscitation, these are like english words, right? Resuscitation generally has to do with somebody hasn’t been dead long and resurrection could be quite some time later. And in the case of the Old Testament examples, these aren’t people who have just died like they’ve been dead for a little bit. 

05:00
Emily Wilson
Right? 

05:00
Rich Rudowske
That’s one know. The resurrection of Jesus is the only resurrection that ever happened, Old or New Testament, where Jesus is still alive. The resurrection is a completed thing that continues to happen, where other people raised from the dead eventually died again. 

05:15
Emily Wilson
Yeah, that’s exactly that. Even though there’s like Lazarus in the New Testament that he’s raised, he eventually passed away. Whereas Christ, the resurrection is eternal, his life goes on. So the prophetic claims that he had for rising, because it wasn’t really within their frame of reference per se, how would that have been interpreted? 

05:43
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. So if you back up a little bit in the Old Testament, again in the prophets, they talk a little bit about the day of the Lord, and there’s this coming day of the Lord that is a little bit vague. The further you get into the prophets, the more things they prophesy will happen in the day of the Lord. And it’s a great day and it’s a terrible day. There’s judgment, but there’s also vindication. And so all those things happen on the day of the Lord sometime in the period between the Old and New Testament. The theology, adding resurrection to that does sort of develop. And so by time, if you’re reading in the New Testament, then you’ll see at certain points where it will distinguish the jewish party of the pharisees believe in a resurrection. 

06:20
Rich Rudowske
The sadducees don’t believe in a resurrection, which is why they’re sad, you see. Oh, my word. So there is something that happens there, and you’ll see that as the Pharisees or the sadducees come to test Jesus, they’ll ask him questions and say, well, in the resurrection, how will this be? So there’s this idea of this resurrection that will happen somewhere out there that some people believe will and some people believe won’t. But still it seems pretty distant. So I would say that as Jesus is talking about, I’m going to go to Jerusalem and suffer and die, and then on the third day be like, that’s much quicker than people would anticipate. That’s a category of resurrection that doesn’t seem that people are thinking about. 

07:05
Rich Rudowske
And you can see in every instance, I was going through the mark and the Luke versions of it last night, and every time he says he’ll rise again, it always says that the disciples were confused by it, or its meaning was hidden from them, or something like that. So it just wasn’t the frame of reference that this would be what it means to be a messiah, not to rise again, much less to suffer and die in the first place. 

07:31
Emily Wilson
So for some of us who have been raised in the faith, and this might seem like a really simple question, but there’s a lot of implications to break down of what changed because of the resurrection, what changed for his followers, what changed for us, given this resurrection that completely altered our posture, our relationship with God and the people around us? 

07:59
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. The thing at first for Jesus original followers, with the resurrection, and you think about Easter Sunday, and the big church celebrations that you might have, those are because we definitely informed by the spirit and living well this side of the resurrection, know that this is an event that happened and celebrated. But on the first Easter, nobody expected a resurrection. 

08:20
Emily Wilson
Right. Even though he said, right. 

08:23
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. Or as I’ve heard it said before, nobody expected nobody in the tomb. Right. So they went to the tomb. There wasn’t a big countdown, and when he wasn’t there, nobody thought, you know, what he had been saying, he was going to rise again from the dead. I wonder if that’s what happened. People were genuinely confused and bewildered and afraid. And even after Jesus appeared to them, some had their faith strengthened, some still didn’t believe. If you read the great commission in Matthew 28 preceding that, when it says Jesus appeared to them on the mountain, it says, some still doubted, like, some in the crowd that are seeing him right there. 

08:56
Emily Wilson
Right. 

08:57
Rich Rudowske
Still doubted, like, I cannot believe eyes. And that is how significant resurrection really is. Like, can this actually be the case? But you can certainly see the impact of it as you keep going through the New Testament narrative and the Holy Spirit is given to the apostles and other believers, that they become bold. And the thing they point to most when they stand and talk to the church leaders or those who are accusing them, not the church leaders, but the leaders of the Jews who are accusing them or asking them to stand down, is they always point to that resurrection first. That is the thing. It’s, like, taught a lot of great things. There’s a lot of wisdom there. 

09:41
Rich Rudowske
But the thing that changed it for them is we saw a dead man risen again, and he told us to follow him and tell everybody, and we ask you, is it right to obey you or to obey God? 

09:53
Emily Wilson
So as far as it changed for them, but what does it change for us because of Christ’s resurrection? What are the implications for us as being Easter people living into that hope? 

10:06
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, I’m a church person. I grew up in church. I’m a church insider. But what I see is that we spend the six weeks of Lent and have extra services and extra focus, and then there’s the symbolism of Jesus suffering and death, which are huge, but it is the resurrection that is the thing that changes everything. And just like the God of the Old Testament, there was no real image that you could capture that there’s not really a good image for resurrection. Right. Like, you can wear a cross, but it’s hard to wear a picture of an empty tomb, but it’s the resurrection. Know, if Christ isn’t raised from the dead, then our faith is in vain. So what does it change? Well, it changed everything for everybody, really. At some level that we won’t understand. 

10:50
Rich Rudowske
I think this side of eternity is the hinge on which, like the rest of history turns. After the resurrection, things can be set right with God, reconciliation can happen, and it all finds its place in the resurrection. So I don’t know, there’s a need to celebrate there. I’m not exactly answering your question yet, because I want to really dwell on this for a second, that it could be that somebody, if they were completely outside of the christian faith, wouldn’t know how important the resurrection is, by the way, that we practice our faith in terms of what we focus on. We do focus on Jesus’sacrifice for us, his love for us, and none of these things are wrong. 

11:29
Emily Wilson
Right? 

11:30
Rich Rudowske
And yeah, all the wisdom of scripture and God’s counsel, God’s full counsel through the word of God. But how can you focus on the resurrection and just dwell there for a little bit? The church calendar, which the lutheran church follows, does allow for six weeks after lent to balance out that six weeks of Easter. And even so, yeah, I haven’t been in too many congregations where we’re shouting, Christ has risen. He has risen indeed. As loudly on the fourth Sunday after Easter. 

11:59
Emily Wilson
The pastor always has to remind, as. 

12:02
Rich Rudowske
We are on that day. So Easter Sunday is. It’s just the thing that changes everything. 

12:07
Emily Wilson
So I’m thinking about all of the hype, if you will, around Christmas. There’s just so much of people having this focus of Christ coming into the world to save us from our sins, and there’s just so much joy at Christmas, and it feels like with all that lead up, and I know a lot of it is cultural, right. But there seems to be just Easter feels cut short, right. Not necessarily within the church, but maybe within the cultural mindset. Why do you think that is? Of the readiness that we have to just adopt this Christmas sort of mentality and then Easter, it’s like, yeah, we’ve already heard it. 

13:00
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. Oh, man, there’s so many directions to go on that. I mean, you don’t have to go back more than about 150 or 200 years ago, and you find that Christmas is not nearly as emphasized in culture, especially in the United States or western culture, and how it grew influence and so forth. As you said, it’s a lot to do with culture, it’s a lot to do with the time of year. It happens, and we’re ready for something merry and bright at that point. 

13:31
Rich Rudowske
I think the exclusive claims that Easter also makes upon us makes it less likely that culture wants to celebrate it as much, because everybody can get behind Jesus, meek and mild and the great teacher coming into the world and showing us how to do good things and to be generous at this time of year and all the stuff that comes with Christmas. But Easter, with making the claim that Jesus suffered and died in a very real place and under certain circumstances for this reason, and then rose again, gives the implication that this means something for you, and culture is not really ready to receive that. 

14:14
Rich Rudowske
Also, I think in the western context, it happens in the spring, and in very practically speaking, I mean, you get past Easter, then you got Mother’s Day, and you got confirmation in the church, and you got graduation, and you got. 

14:26
Emily Wilson
Summertime build up, that there’s that tendency of when you see a crucifix. I know for a lot of people that is that constant reminder of Christ’s sacrifice. Growing up, the church that I went to, it was an empty cross because were remembering the resurrection. But I remember, too, we had a pastor come through, and I was actually kind of surprised. He said, the glory is in the cross. And our pastor would always emphasize it was actually in the empty tomb. The glory wasn’t stopping at the cross because that wasn’t where the victory was. The victory was after the sacrifice, the rising from the dead, conquering over sin and death and breaking that curse. So, yeah. Do you feel like that sort of dynamic within the church? 

15:33
Emily Wilson
Does that lend itself to maybe poor theology or conflict within us as we’re trying to serve and be Christ followers? 

15:47
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, I think a couple of things. I mean, I think that what you’ve described is a holistic approach, that Jesus suffering and death means nothing if he doesn’t rise from the dead. And yet if he rises from the dead without the suffering, death, it also means nothing. And there’s something really powerful that God decided to do by. He didn’t just die and then say, yes, that was it, and rise him right there like he had to be dead in the ground three days. If you pull the incarnational stuff from Christmas forward to Good Friday and Easter, here is the second person of the Trinity incarnate as a human being, fully God, but fully man. And that man is dead for several days, right? That is the depth of everything breaking and then it being made right with the resurrection. 

16:39
Rich Rudowske
On the other hand, I think it’s so hard to understand birth is something that most of us are familiar with at various degrees and levels. We understand it, resurrection, we just don’t marriage. We don’t expect it. People have appeared to be dead or been dead and come back alive again since Jesus as well. Nobody ever expects that’s what’s going to happen. Right? C. S. Lewis, in one of his books, I think it is mere Christianity, talks about how basically now I’m just talking about Christ followers, because I don’t expect culture that’s not christian to really lean into resurrection. The spiritual things are discerned by the spirit, and the spirit is given by God. But for those of us who are Christian still, as C. S. Lewis says, we’re just satisfied far too easily, like Christmas is. You know, it’s wonderful. 

17:27
Rich Rudowske
We can wrap our minds around it, but this thing here is huge and it just changes everything. 

17:32
Emily Wilson
Yeah. So as I was preparing the questions for this interview, just thinking about our culture having this just strong desire for hope and for purpose, there’s just such a struggle for it. It really dominates conversations of people looking around and trying to fill spaces. But there’s also, like, it’s just this dichotomy of, like, they’re looking for purpose and hope, but they also are so committed to this unbelief of Christ’s death and resurrection. So what are they missing out on as they’re stuck in this dichotomy? 

18:15
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. In the way culture developed. The thing that slowly happened is the removal of God from the picture. And when you remove God from the picture, you remove the intrinsic value that all human beings have and their purpose. That’s all found in God. If I had to make the answer short, I mean, that’s what we’re missing is ultimately, what’s the purpose behind everything? Christian culture assumes that God is at the center of everything, and his deep love shown for us, and the hope by the very visible and tangible event of the resurrection is the thing he gives us to show, because this happened, you know, that there is nothing that stands between you and me and my love for you, and that gives you purpose and hope. 

19:00
Rich Rudowske
And I think that in a society like ours that is comparatively affluent to the rest of the world, and we’ve been blessed by great technological development and so forth, the mortality of life and just the hardness and rigor of life in terms of a struggle with life and death is much more distant from us. And so even more so than with life comes the blessing of, I want to do something with this life, and I want to find purpose with it. But if you don’t start at the very foundational level with the reason that I have a life that would have any purpose at all is because the creator who made me for a reason and redeemed me so that I don’t have to spend my life, like so many people in the world, wondering, am I right? 

19:44
Rich Rudowske
With whatever is controlling everything out there? And can I understand how life works or anything like that? Those questions don’t go away. But the deep hope and trust that comes from knowing, like, I’m going through something really hard right now. If you just read through the psalms, for example, over and over again, why are you distant? Why do you hide yourself from me? How long, o Lord? And yet I will trust in you. I know that you’re going to hear me. I know you’ll act in your time. I don’t agree with how you’re doing now, but I know you’re going to. That’s what you’re missing out on. So the desire to say, well, I have to really understand how a resurrection is possible has sort of elevated human reason above revelation from God and made that superior. 

20:29
Rich Rudowske
And again, that’s just a flip flop of what things are. And you’ll hear people talk about facts versus faith, but for most of the world’s history, belief in something that you can’t see and feel and experience was considered a more significant and more meaningful belief because anybody can look and observe things and believe. That’s true. Right. But what about committing to something outside of all that? So it’s just interesting how culture and science and scientific advancements and all those things have sort of flipped some of those ideas on their heads and in so doing, maybe dethroned. 

21:06
Emily Wilson
Right. So the centrality of scripture, just thinking about it from the perspective of people who have God’s word, who are committed to reading it and digesting and really letting it shape their lives, is the cultural shift for am I going to live in purpose and hope versus people who are putting something other than God’s word at the center, whether it’s themselves or a relationship or other things that they’re seeking power in, whether it’s their career or just another deity, that is going to shift them away from that mean language communities around the world, bringing it into their own language. What shifts? Like, what is it that you experienced personally as you worked with the Shikalahari translation team, working alongside them, especially with the resurrection account in Luke, is what you worked with. 

22:09
Rich Rudowske
Yep. Yeah. Luke is the only Shikalahari book published right now, so that’s the one I can definitely talk about, although the rest is coming soon. Right. And the joy of the resurrection can be theirs even more. So, before the Shikalahari Luke came out, the Luke they would have used is in this Satsuana Bible. And if I’m looking at that, even the heading says sukha yaha jesu, which means, well, it’s supposed to mean the resurrection of Jesus, and that is what it means. But the word sulka is to stand up. So verse six, hayo fao tuhili, that’s Jesus isn’t here, and he is risen, is what we would say in Luke 24, verse six. And he has risen is a good translation there, too. It’s just that this is the same. 

22:54
Rich Rudowske
When I see and greet somebody in Setswana after I’ve said the equivalent of hello, the next thing I ask them is, how did you get up today? And it’s that same exact word and the same in Shakalahari as we worked through what you would say, it’s still verse six says, ha hoho, which means he’s not here. Na zuha, he’s risen. And same thing. If in Shakalahari, I’m greeting somebody, then I ask them how they. The next thing I ask them the equivalent of how you doing? Is, how’d you get up? Which is wazuka. And I’m not saying that people reading that think, oh, we’re just talking that Jesus was asleep and he woke up. That’s not the case, because the Bible doesn’t ever function in a vacuum. 

23:37
Rich Rudowske
There is teaching here, and of course, the chapter before he was clearly dead and he was buried and three days went by. But it does go to show the deficit of human language to try to explain what happened. 

23:48
Emily Wilson
Right, right. 

23:49
Rich Rudowske
That we have this word resurrection in English. And I’d say that’s probably formed by our long exposure to christian culture and that there was some idea of people coming back from the dead in the older languages of scripture as well. But that doesn’t exist in other places, and it’s hard to describe. And so, again, I would never say, well, people don’t adequately understand the resurrection because of the words, but at the same time, none of us really adequately understand the resurrection because it’s so outside the scope of what we’re used to. When I stood at the side of the casket of my mother at her funeral, I did not expect that when I was standing there, she was just going to wake up. And we don’t expect that. Death looks and is terrible, and it looks terrible. 

24:38
Rich Rudowske
What the resurrection does is say, this is not how it will end. And this is the ultimate image of the effects of humans rebellion. Human beings rebellion in the world. But there’s something greater than this. But we still don’t expect it to happen right now. 

24:57
Emily Wilson
Right. 

24:58
Rich Rudowske
We know that resurrection for us is something that we are waiting for. And so where am I going with this? It’s hard to put language around that. It’s really hard to put language around that. And I think that then speaks to the task of the preacher and the christian community to say, let’s rally around this concept and let’s really keep it central and in focus as we go about our lives as christian people and as a christian community, that the hope and the joy and the love that we have for each other aren’t just commands that sort of come in isolation or nice things that we should do. But they all find their completeness or their root in the resurrection. Without the resurrection, as Paul says in the letters to the corinthians, it’s all meaningless. 

25:41
Emily Wilson
So do you feel like, as people are reading the resurrection accounts in their own language, and then further on in acts and in the epistles, as they’re pointing to the recollection of the resurrection and what the implications are, do you feel that there are more questions or less questions as people are reading it and engaging in with it in their own language? 

26:07
Rich Rudowske
I think that the thing I’ve noticed is that people just really feel like this message has found a home in my heart and in my culture, because if we would talk about something like this happening, this is how we would talk about it. This is the language and the words that we would have. And as you go through the scripture narrative, they see the narrative continue to unfold, and the apostles start to understand the implications of all this and the weight they put on it. It just continues to unfold that way for them, too, in the same way that we may struggle with, what does this really mean and what are the implications, really, for us? We see that the original apostles who had walked with the Lord himself, also had to struggle through and learn what it meant. 

26:54
Emily Wilson
No, that’s really true. I think about when I engage with scripture, and in some ways it answers a lot of my questions. But then at the same time, when you think about a really engaging sermon or a really engaging reflection on church history, how much more so with God’s word that we start to have more and more questions. Like, our questions have questions, and it is just, I feel like the Holy Spirit prompting us forward in more relationships with one another, to, .1 another to scripture, but also to further and deepen our relationship with him. 

27:37
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. When I get the privilege of preaching on resurrection. Certainly the texts from the gospels that actually report the resurrection are wonderful, and you see the wonder and everything. But I also like digging into some of those early texts in acts where John and Peter, they’re just on fire. They’re just on fire because it’s like, yeah, we saw this. We are witnesses of this, and we can’t stop talking about it. Or revelation chapter one, where Jesus is seen again, and he’s just so different than Jesus in its time of ministry. Here it says, well, there’s this crazy description of him. And then he says in revelation 117, fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one. I died. And behold, I am alive forevermore. He’s the first person that can say that. 

28:25
Rich Rudowske
And yet, someday we will all be able to say that, except for those of us who remain when Jesus returns, if we haven’t died yet. But every one of us will be able to say, I died, but I’m alive forevermore. 

28:36
Emily Wilson
So thank you guys for joining us on this very special time of unpacking the resurrection. And we hope that you have a blessed, just Easter weekend. But Easter season, you are Easter people, and God is leading you forth in hope and joy as we look forward to the hope of life with him. 

28:59
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And if we can be the first to sort of sneak in, Christ is risen. 

29:03
Emily Wilson
He has risen indeed. 

29:04
Rich Rudowske
Hallelujah. Because even if it’s Good Friday and you’re listening, there’s no day since that first Easter Sunday that those words aren’t true. And they’re true for you. 

29:12
Emily Wilson
Amen. 

29:13
Rich Rudowske
Thank you for listening to the essentially translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible translators. Look for past episodes@lbt.org slash podcast or on your favorite podcast platform. Follow Lutheran Bible translators social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Or go to lbt.org to find out how you can get involved in the Bible translation movement and put God’s word in their hands. The essentially translatable podcast was produced and edited by Andrew Olson. Our executive producer is Emily Wilson. Podcast artwork was created by Caleb Rotewald and Sarah Lyons. Music written and performed by Rob White. I’m Rich Rudowski. So long. For now.