Easter Mood

      Easter is a wonderful time of the year with crowded churches, well larger crowds than usual, pretty hats (comparable only to Kate & William's wedding:), dressings, great music, I mean Bing singing "Easter Bonnet" and messages on the resurrection of Christ. The only trouble is that it is a bit confusing (dyed Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies?). What are we celebrating? Some old anniversary of Christ's removal form the grave? Or that we too are going to be resurrected "oh beautiful someday"? The truth is that Jesus' conversation with Martha is probably the one we should be thinking about on this glorious Sunday (John 11:20-27). When it comes to speaking about the resurrection, like Martha and most of us, the translators have had a hard time nailing down what Jesus was saying. Most of us tend to put the resurrection off in the future, like Martha or in the past like the women of Hebrews 11 who received back their dead. But isn't resurrection life available now? May be we should look closer at the language that talks about the Resurrection.
      The koine Greek, the language of the New Testament, has several different moods, like you and I :-).  The indicative mood is the resounding favorite and dominates the verbal landscape of the NT. But there are others such as the infinitive mood,  the imperative mood and the one I want to talk about, the subjunctive mood.
     The subjunctive mood has two aspects to it. It is used when the author wants to talk about the realm of possibility and when the time is undetermined. It can be used in conditional sentences, for instance; a writer may say, "If you go to the store, get me some milk." We see that there is a possibility that this person may or may not go to the store. At least one person is hoping they will go as they are running out of milk, "got milk"? This possibility is shown in the way the verb tense is made. Not to get too technical, but the Greek verbs have different suffixes and prefixes that can show; the person(s), active or passive voice, mood, and time.

      Usually a verb will express the time of its action which is called "tense" in the past, present, or future tenses. This occurs in the indicative mood. The past indicative mood is often denoted by the "aorist" tense of the verb which is usually a definite past action. However in the subjunctive mood time is not the important thing.  In the subjunctive mood the aorist is undefined time.  That means the aorist subjunctive may take place in the past, present or future,  it really is determined by context. A great example is in Mark 12:25. In Mark's narrative Jesus is being questioned by the unbelieving Sadducees about the resurrection. Jesus' replies to their trickery by saying, "For when they rise form the dead, they neither marry or are given in marriage..."(NASB). The KJV has "For when they shall rise from the dead...." Why did the KJV pick the future tense? Because the aorist subjunctive can be past, present or future depending on the perception of the translator. 
      The subjunctive mood is hard to translate. The word anastosin (Mark 12:25) is in the "aorist subjunctive" mood which leaves it open for translation. Translators who get the subjunctive mood still have trouble nailing it down. Another scripture about the resurrection that is a good example is found in Romans 6:4. "Therefore we have been buried with Him by baptism into death, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life" (NASB).
       In Romans 6:4  we can see this confusion in different translations. The NIV says, "we too may live a new life." The KJV translates it, " we should also walk....", and the NASB writes, we too might walk in ...."  These are attempts to define the undefined.  The question is "When is this resurrection available for us to walk in newness of life with God?" To answer this question and try to translate these texts it may do well for us to see how Christ felt about it. Let us return again to Martha.
      Martha had basically the same problem we have. You remember the story. Jesus came to raise Lazarus from the grave (John 11). Martha rebukes him for being late. Not offended, Christ responds to Martha with a question. "Do you believe in the resurrection?"  "Of course", She responds, "the resurrection will come in the future, at the last trumpet." But Martha's problem is now. Lazarus is dead now!  And I guess that is all our problems. The great "already, but not yet" theological dilemma. We, like Martha, know there will be a resurrection. Jesus knows we know that. He also knows that He IS the resurrection. Not past, not future, but present. He responds to Martha in the great YHWHian response to Moses, ego eimi, "I am the resurrection!" The proof that we don't know this reveals it self in our translations. The aorist subjunctive, in these scriptures,  should be translated in the present with its possibilities in tack. 

Road to Emmaus

       Remember Mark 12:25?  If we apply what Jesus was trying to tell Martha, we should translate that aorist subjunctive as the present tense, may rise and the Romans 6:4 passage as we may walk in newness of  (resurrection) life.  Christianity is for the present. It is not an Easter remembrance of bonnets, lace and a chance to wear white, but a present realization that the resurrection is for the living. It brings reality to baptism and it is the newness of life that we are to walk in daily. Religion's proponents will put it off till the end thereby not bowing to the responsibility of walking in the Good News today. The subjunctive allows or permits this interpretation. Ultimately, the undefined aorist subjunctive leaves it up to us to define it as something in the past, like a good Easter parade, or in the future like some joyful funeral eulogy, or should we man up and say truthfully "Lord I believe, help my unbelief" and walk in Christ's resurrection today?
        
For a great Easter Morning Sermon listen to The First Fruits Resurrection, by Gary Hargrave.