Are you watching closely?
One of my favorite movies is a film called The Prestige. It’s a fairly dark film, but it has some of the best storytelling I’ve ever seen. This is how the movie begins:
Every magic trick consists of three parts.
The first part is called the pledge. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird, or a man. He shows you this object, perhaps he asks you to inspect it, to see that it is indeed [ordinary]. But of course, it probably isn’t.
The second act is called the turn. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary …But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough.
You have to bring it back.
That’s why every magic trick has a third act. The hardest part. The part we call the prestige.
It all started ordinary enough: a guy and a girl are pledged to be married; a baby is born to them in an obscure town. But if we look closely and inspect this life for ourselves, we quickly discover this is no ordinary child. His origins are not ordinary, and so his destiny cannot be, either. Something extraordinary is going to happen here. We sense it with every page we read; we feel the extraordinary surging through his words, his miracles, his life, his love.
And then, the turn—that terrible moment at the cross when the unjust, unthinkable, and unexpected happens: this extraordinary life is brutally cut short. He allows himself to be snuffed out, to disappear into the grave under the weight of our sin.
Jesus’ miraculous resurrection is God’s prestigious third act—when he brings His Son, and all of us, back again from the grave. It’s the greatest comeback ever seen in human history, when the unstoppable forces of death, and sin and separation were brought to a halt—and then began working backwards! Magnificent! Marvelous! This is the part where everyone in the crowd rises to its feet and bursts into thunderous applause!
Well, almost everyone.
“Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee , to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” vs. 16-17
Most responded in worship. As they should. But even some in the front row held back, unsure how to respond in the presence of a risen Savior. Doubts still hindered them. On Monday, we’ll meet the most famous of the doubters and hear his story… and watch how Jesus meets him where he is. Keep on reading… there are so many exciting events yet to come!
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