I find it amusing, this great befuddlement that befalls some intelligent Christians when it comes to the definition of resurrection.
On Holy Saturday the New York Times published an interview with the president of Union Theological Seminary in which she mentioned Christian “obsession” with the physicality of our Lord’s resurrection.
Count me among the obsessed.
There are so many witnesses in the New Testament but John’s witness that Jesus Christ ate with his disciples and his words to Thomas that “a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you *see* I *have*” takes the guesswork out of it.
This is someone who remains flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone *beyond* death, the grave, and hell.
Yes, the body of Jesus Christ walks through walls and vanishes and—well before the resurrection—walks on water. There is great mystery here, no doubt, but we are talking about *embodied* mystery.
One doesn’t have to be a skeptic or a confused cleric, this is not about a class of over thinkers...no, misunderstanding of the resurrection is ubiquitous among a wide variety of believing American Christians, who have a tendency to make a ghost of Jesus, who tend to think of Jesus as once again bodiless in eternity, a state many American Christians consider superior to embodiment.
Americans, in general, have a fundamental philosophical misapprehension of human nature that assumes we are mere ghosts in machines, spirits in a material prison.
Whereas Christian anthropology trusts—and insists—that our created earthiness is essential to our humanity, now and for eternity; that one does not have resurrection without a body, even if that body has a transfigured physics.
As Cyril reminds us, echoing Paul, if Jesus does not rise again in a body of flesh—not only for a moment but forever—then death is not defeated, neither is the sin that bound in the grave and in hell everyone who shares human nature.
The first Christians are clear about this: the one human nature we all share has been rescued from death by the death and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This is not a small matter where different opinions and perspectives are allowed. You can struggle with its enormity and not comprehend it (who does), and doubting is part of being human—the “ants in the pants” of faith, as Buechner reminds us—and talking about and debating the mystery of it all is part of having faith in community with other persons, but that resurrection involves cells and skin and eyes and tongues and hearts and lungs (“he breathed in them”) and empty tombs because transfigured material bodies have somehow escaped them is a settled matter for Christians.
Yes, it’s spiritual and mysterious and beyond science and nature, and, yes, the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is an apt metaphor now for existence and nature and our personal struggles—now death is the not the end of anything or anyone, resurrection is!—but resurrection as a word has that power because death is defeated when this one human is raised bodily and brings us all with him.
He was first dead once for everyone to be forgiven, reconciled. as in 2 Cor 5:16-20 tells us we are reconciled so be reconciled back to God in the done work of Son for us.
Turn from unbelief to belief of this done work for new life to be installed in us from Father.
yet unless one is willing to be dead, one does not see new life ahead in them installed on first day in belief from Father
As said in Eph. 1:13 sealed by Father in risen Son on the first day of belief, he is risen for new life to be given after first his one time death took away all sin.
John 19:30 Leaving, left only one choice to believe or not believe, each person consciously aware of the choice each one makes.
Then one begins new in being taught new as in Eph 1:6,7
Seeing we all are accepted, forgiven and sealed on the day anyone believes and sticks with it, not religiously necessarily, just in belief even through adversities will see as Job saw in the book of Job, who would not deny God. Even deeper with the Son, Jesus as the way the truth and new life who went willingly to death once for us all to get new life in his risen life by continued belief
no matter what!
Thank you for your article above, enlightening to me at least
Posted by: Howard Schultz | April 29, 2019 at 09:09 AM