The Easter stories we have heard so far are stories of joy, stories of discovery, of discovery of something that was thought lost, discovery of something even better than what went before. This week we hear how there is also a dark side to these stories. Or, if not exactly dark, that there are challenges amid the joy and hopefulness.
Last week the disciples were hauled in front of the Sanhedrin and given a severe talking to. But it’s clear the dressing down didn’t amount to much. This week (Acts 13:14, 43-52) we hear for the first time of violence and a clear sense of physical threats against Paul and Barnabas, who are now venturing into a wider world beyond Jerusalem and places where the initial followers of Jesus would have been familiar figures. That violence would rapidly become a feature of the early Christian experience as the new life brought by Jesus came into conflict with the immense power of the Roman state. This conflict was already very clear to John, writing probably about 80 years after Jesus’ resurrection (Revelation 7:9, 14b-17). A great multitude had already “survived the time of great distress”. They had died for their faith but were living with God – the ultimate reflection of what it is to be resurrected.
So the rejection, the violence, the pain and the death came very soon into the Easter experience. But what came with it was the calm certainty reported by John of Patmos:
“The one who sits on the throne will shelter them.
They will not hunger or thirst anymore,
nor will the sun or any heat strike them.
For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne
will shepherd them
and lead them to springs of life-giving water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
John the evangelist puts it in the mouth of Jesus: “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand.” (John 10:27-30) And he goes on to explain once again what is the source of Jesus’s power – he is the power of God, and violence has no effect against that power:
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.
The Father and I are one.”
The resurrected Jesus is the power of God in the world. We share in that life, in that power, and the gates of hell can not prevail against it.