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Mark A. Lewis,
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MLewis@secaucus.org
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Feb 01
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Resurrection:
More than Life after Death
Reflections on the
lessons for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
11 February 2001
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Jeremiah 17:5-10 / Psalm 1
1 Corinthians
15:12-20 / Luke 6:17-26
Easter is still quite a way off. But every Sunday of the year is a "little Easter". And every Sunday is about resurrection. About new life. About life winning out over death every time. So it's perfectly appropriate that one of the readings for today -- the reading from Paul's letter to the church at Corinth -- focuses specifically on the resurrection. It reminds us that we are called to live as a resurrected people throughout the year, and throughout our days here on earth however long or short they may be.
But what does that mean? To live as a "resurrected people"? The phrase shows up in theology and scripture all over the place. Paul seems to think it has to do with seeing the resurrection as a key to understanding who Jesus is and who we are ourselves. He wrote to the Corinthians "if Christ had not been raised then our proclamation has been in vain, and your faith has been in vain".
The context here is a controversy that was causing tension in the church at Corinth. Paul's agenda with the Corinthians was to defend what he called "the resurrection of the body" against the common ancient Greek view that only the soul is important. The Greek philosophers saw the body as an impediment to true spiritual or intellectual freedom. To their way of thinking, the spirit was a pure and noble thing (the only real part of a human being) trapped in an oafish and crude body that was nothing but a source of trouble. They consequently found it difficult to see why any reverence for the body, or any emphasis placed on physical things would be in any way desirable.
So Paul goes to great lengths to remind the early Christian community that the resurrection is not simply about the "inner" state of one's soul after death. Somehow -- and that "somehow" is key -- whatever resurrection is, it does have flesh and bones and substance.
In the first lesson, Jeremiah describes trust in "mere mortals" versus trust in God as a clear dichotomy. But that isn't always so clear cut. And, since Paul was a very sophisticated writer and thinker, perhaps his talk about the body and the resurrection isn't as simple as some people try to make it seem.
Have you ever experienced trust in God through trusting another human being, or even of some human organization and its workings? I have.
And just what kind of resurrection have you or any human being ever seen for yourself except the kind that includes bodies and real, everyday lives? I have to think that no human being ever, anywhere, has ever experienced trust or resurrection except through the physical things in the real world. Anything those experiences may point to in the beyond, in the sweet-by-and-by, as an old hymn says, is purely extrapolation. Maybe good extrapolation, but extrapolation, nevertheless.
I, for one, have noticed resurrection when -- after some bad patch or another -- I finally begin to see life differently. It's happened to me a number of times and it's high time for it to happen to me again. We all know what it's like to feel as good as dead, and then finally and gradually to start feeling happier again, to stop crawling back under the covers and start seeking our better selves again.
Rebirth often comes as a returning concern for community interests and the well being of future generations -- so that those things overshadow self-interest or self-pity as well they should. And you know that resurrection has happened again when you or someone you know starts to recognize again -- in a bigger and better way this time -- the face of God in the faces around us. When just a while ago God didn't seem to be there.
We have a misunderstanding of the resurrection today, just as much as the Corinthians did. Ours isn't formed by the ancient Greek worldview. Our misunderstanding is thoroughly modern and scientific. We don't believe that the resurrection of the body is not desirable. Rather we think it's not possible.
When something dies -- we think -- it's supposed to stay dead. From this "scientific" perspective, the resurrection, if it is believed at all, is considered more of a symbol or a metaphor than something that refers directly to reality. Thus the resurrection, like the rainbow after a storm or the butterfly emerging from a cocoon, comes to mean something like maintaining hope in a bad situation or trusting that tomorrow will be a brighter day.
But the Bible says -- from cover to cover, over and over again -- that the resurrection is not simply a symbol of something else but a reality in itself. The resurrection does not mean anything. Rather it is something. It' s God showing up in real life and making something real happen to us.
Paul described how he experienced a foretaste of God's resurrection in his own life: "For I am the least of all the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am." (What a teacher of mine called the "Popeye passage".) In other words, Saul has become a new person, a new creation; he even gets a new name out of the deal -- Paul. He's got a new life. And it's not because of something Paul did or thought. God did it. And it's not something that will start when Paul dies. It started already.
The resurrection is about God creating new people. This is why it can never be only about life after death. God has already begun this new creation in the midst of the old. The focus of the Easter texts in the gospels is never on Jesus getting up and walking around again after the crucifixion. The real theme there is how the people of God get up and get going again.
Admit it. No one "knows" what happens after people die. But the real message here is that if you assume (even just for the sake of argument) that behind what feels like death there is a whole new kind of life coming at you; and if you accept Jesus' idea that a sure thing that's on its way can be banked on or borrowed against right now -- then you see how the concept of resurrection has real effects in real life. Makes life better for us now and -- who knows -- maybe even better still on down the line.
The new creation of God's people is of course not flawless. More often than not most of us live as members of the old creation, as if the resurrection of Christ makes no difference. And because of this the church is called constantly to practice repentance and confession.
But this does not deny that the church is the body of Christ -- not because of any particular merit on our part but because it pleases God to demonstrate goodness and love in a visible and concrete way. The body is totally important -- as far as any real person can ever conceive -- because whatever eternal ramifications the resurrection may have after death the certain payoff -- the place for us to concentrate on for now -- is here in the real world.
New life comes every time we're born again, every time we learn again that nothing in life is more important than to go where our heart leads us, trusting that the universe will always reward right action with abundance. New life -- coming into the world in little fits and snatches -- finally adds up. And the more people let resurrection take them where God calls them, the more the world is transformed. Belief that new life comes on the heels of old life -- every time -- lets people live like there is no death. And when people do that, Paul insists, what we do is not in vain.
-- Mark Lewis
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
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