The Third Day: Living the Resurrection

By Tom Berlin and Mark A. Miller

On the third day, he rose again.

In The Third Day: Living the Resurrection, Tom Berlin uses his gifts of storytelling and understanding the Scriptures to connect the reader to the experiences of several individuals around Jesus in his final days, focusing on new life and redemption rather than loss.

Join Peter, Mary Magdalene, and Thomas as they feel the despair of losing Jesus and the surprise and joy that awaits them in the resurrection. This study traces events around these characters, along with Paul and the disciples at Emmaus, and how the resurrection transforms their lives.

The book can be read alone or used for a six-week group study and church-wide Lenten program. Components include a comprehensive Leader Guide and video teaching sessions featuring Tom (with closed captioning).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781791024154

Tom Berlin

Tom Berlin serves as a Bishop in the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church. Prior to being elected Bishop, he served as lead pastor of Floris United Methodist Church in suburban Washington, D.C. Tom is a graduate of Virginia Tech and Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He is the author of numerous books, including Reckless Love, Courage, Restored, Defying Gravity, The Generous Church, and the coauthor (with Lovett Weems) of Bearing Fruit, Overflow, and High Yield.

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INTRODUCTION

This is a book about how the resurrection of Jesus Christ profoundly changed the lives of those who followed him and how it can transform ours as well. The first disciples were blown off course when Jesus was crucified. Some thought their journey had ended. Others went back to their old lives, no longer able to navigate in the places Jesus had taken them. The experience of the Resurrection is what put them back on course. It reoriented their lives and enabled them to go places and do things they never imagined.

The Resurrection is not a strategy or a product. It is not sold by self-help gurus telling us, Get some resurrection and you, too, can find a new life! Instead, we need the Resurrection to be a reference point in our lives rather than one Sunday on our calendars. It is both an experience of the power of God and a truth about Jesus that offers us confidence. Because Jesus was resurrected on the third day, we know that God offers new beginnings, no matter what the facts of our present reality seem to tell us.

Everyone needs the power of the Resurrection. It does not matter how smart you are, you will still encounter problems that defy solutions and lead to dead ends. It does not matter how much positivity your personality possesses, there will be times when you will feel despair. You may have the ability to read people and know whom to trust, but someone will let you down so badly that you may give up on them. Likewise, you may disappoint yourself and others so deeply that you will feel beyond redemption or disappointed with God to the point that faith seems impossible to hold.

Jesus’ first followers had these experiences, and so do we. This is why the resurrection of Christ and the new life he demonstrated each time he appeared to them transformed their lives. The Resurrection offered Jesus’ disciples hope, new life, and the assurance that God is present not only in our brightest moments but also our darkest, including the consideration of our own mortality. The Resurrection dispels fear. It resolves anxiety. In the darkness that shrouds death, the light of the Resurrection shines.

For all these reasons, we need to think and talk more about what happened on the third day, the day of resurrection, and how that impacts all the days that follow. Having spent time considering Jesus’ resurrection appearances to his disciples and the way it impacted both their lives and the message that they shared with others, I now think it odd how much Christians talk about the crucifixion and death of Jesus compared to how little we talk about the resurrection of Christ. It is even apparent in our jewelry: always a cross, never an empty tomb. While some believe an empty cross is a symbol of the Resurrection, its shape speaks more to death than new life.

Theologians, biblical scholars, pastors, and evangelists often speak of the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion with such interest and devotion that the Resurrection appears to be an afterthought by comparison. The forty-day season of Lent, observed in many church traditions, is typically focused on the difficulty and sacrifice involved in following Jesus. It can be a dark time. Crosses are draped in black. There is lots of music in minor keys and weighty tempos.

While Martin Luther may have said that every Sunday is a little Easter, the season of Lent rarely speaks of the triumph of Christ over sin and death. For six weeks, services typically focus on sin and forgiveness, the cost of discipleship, and the sacrifice of Jesus for our salvation. Churches culminate this season with Holy Week services that offer ample time to consider the triumphal entry of Palm Sunday, the meaning of the Last Supper, and Jesus’ arrest, trial, and crucifixion. We see dramatic reenactments of these events. Cantatas and other musical programs remind us of the events of the last days and hours of Jesus’ life. The Seven Last Words of Christ are read and preached.

All of this is done for the best of purposes. Jesus’ suffering and death are the means through which Christ secured the hope of salvation for all people. Understanding the many dimensions of the rejection, suffering, and death of Jesus during Holy Week enables us to consider our need for God’s love and forgiveness in new ways.

Jesus’ suffering and death are the means through which Christ secured the hope of salvation for all people.

The crescendo of this season is to be the joyful celebration of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. In many churches we limit this celebration to a sixty-minute service before quickly moving on to other matters. In so doing, we lose the deeper lesson. The pivotal event of the Christian story is the Resurrection. When Jesus overcame death, it fully transformed the lives of the first disciples. It is the wellspring of good news that can change our lives as well. With the Resurrection, all the other events of Jesus’ life gain meaning. Without the Resurrection, we have nothing. A cross without an empty tomb on the third day is just bad news.

Imagine if the last line of the Apostles’ Creed stated that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. The period at the end of that sentence would signal the finality of death. Instead, the text reads that Jesus, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day he rose from the dead. The semicolon changes everything. It tells us that Jesus’ death is not an abrupt and wretched ending, but rather, the splendid light of a new beginning.

When we take time to consider the Resurrection appearances, we find the source of the power that enabled the disciples to move from following Jesus and acting on his directions to disturb the peace throughout the Empire (Acts 17:6). The good news about these disciples is that like us, they were imperfect. They needed forgiveness. They were sometimes fearful. They experienced setbacks and failure. Some had difficult pasts. Few could imagine their future without Jesus. Jesus’ death on the cross was devastating to them. The Resurrection not only restored their hope in what God was doing in the world, it validated everything Jesus had done and taught.

Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene. She was a woman Jesus had healed and who had been able to reclaim her life. Our first chapter speaks to the hope that Mary regained when she realized that Jesus was alive, and his power could not be broken. If you have ever lost hope, you will be encouraged by her experience.

Jesus appeared to his disciples for a period of forty days between the Resurrection and his ascension into heaven. In chapter 2, we will consider the experience of Simon Peter. He was the disciple who first called Jesus the Son of God. Later, Peter denied knowing Jesus three times. When Jesus appeared to him on a beach by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus didn’t come to reinforce his guilt. Jesus came to restore Peter and send him on a grand mission. Peter helps us understand that new life in Christ can restore us and give us a purpose as well.

In chapter 3, we will meet Thomas, the disciple whose crisis of faith following the Crucifixion made him doubt the word of his closest friends when they told him that Jesus was alive. God knows we will have moments and seasons when our faith is also in crisis. We sometime drift away from God. Watching Jesus’ patient care for Thomas tells us much about the way the risen Lord seeks us.

A pair of disciples on the road to the village of Emmaus is the focus of chapter 4. They were going there after the first news of Jesus’ resurrection. They heard the accounts of Jesus’ presence but seemed to have lost their sense that God was still working in the world. Jesus came to them as well, offering them Communion in which they experienced the real presence of Christ.

Chapter 5 moves to the Book of Acts and the experience of Saul of Tarsus. Saul was not a follower of Jesus. He was a Pharisee who opposed and persecuted Jesus’ disciples. His encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus changed his life and his name. Paul became the key interpreter of the Resurrection to the early church. In chapter 5, we will consider Paul’s life and letters along with key insights that have transformed countless lives in the years since.

Chapter 6 provides a summary of the purpose of the Resurrection and how it fulfilled Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God. This chapter examines the predictions that Jesus made about his death and resurrection. As we consider Jesus’ observations about the miracle of the third day, we discover the power that makes the kingdom of God possible on earth as it is in heaven.

The people who first followed Jesus, the ones who experienced the power of his teaching and miracles, the ones who spent time with him as he walked from one village to another, knew that the Resurrection was the seminal event not just of his life and their lives, but of world history.

The author of the Gospel of John wrote, The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (1:14 NIV).

You have known a lot of people and have seen many at their best moments when they cared for loved ones, landed a big contract, won a race, learned a new skill, or recovered from a failure. Perhaps you encouraged them by pointing out how impressed you were by what they did. You may have bragged on them to mutual friends or family members. But have you ever been tempted, even once, to say about such a person, We have seen his glory?

Me neither.

The third day is the day of the Resurrection, the beginning of all of our stories and the day when hope broke through so many forms of darkness that attempt to cloak our lives.

The author of the Gospel of John is not being hyperbolic. The author is describing the Resurrection, writing the opening paragraphs of this account of Jesus’ life; but the author already knows what is going to happen at the end of story. The end of Jesus’ life is not the day of Crucifixion. It is not the moment his body was laid in the tomb on the first day. It is not the second day, which included the stillness of the sabbath as his followers grieved his death. The end of the story is the third day. The third day is the day of the Resurrection, the beginning of all of our stories and the day when hope broke through so many forms of darkness that attempt to cloak our lives. When we consider the difference the Resurrection made to those who first experienced the risen Christ, our lives will experience the joy of new life as well.

CHAPTER 1

Mary Magdalene

At St. Mary’s Church in Newport, Rhode Island, a woman was discovered hidden in the sanctuary when the church’s organ was removed to be refurbished. It was actually a sculpture of a woman’s head. Half of each side of her face peered out of the end of an arch. They had been covered up for a very long time, said Rev. Kris von Maluski, the parish priest at St. Mary’s, Rhode Island’s oldest Roman Catholic parish.

There were different theories about the identity of this woman. One suggested St. Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians. But the choir loft and organ were not originally on that end of the sanctuary, and it seemed odd that the musicians would allow their patron saint to be hidden by an organ. Another assumed the sculpture to be Mary, the mother of Jesus. Few believed a Roman Catholic Church would allow Mary to be hidden, or let an architect divide her face with an arch.

Father von Maluski believes she is Mary Magdalene. He observes that the other arches are adorned by twelve male figures, representing the twelve male apostles identified in the New Testament. If Father Von Maluski is correct, the architect of the church made a statement that a later renovation of the church covered up: Mary Magdalene is also an apostle. She is the first follower of Jesus who saw the resurrected Jesus. She is the first to share the message of hope found in the good news