Observation: At least two decades before the first Gospel account was written down, Paul writes to the Corinthians about a great mystery, which strikes at the heart of Easter. Not only was Jesus raised from the dead, but we will be, too. Our bodies will not be perishable, or subject to the decay and illness that we know from our current life, but they will be bodies in some meaningful sense of the word, and ultimately we will live here, not on some other spiritual plane.
Application: I once asked a class full of confirmation students to draw what they believe they will look like after their death. The answers were as varied as the number of students, from crime-fighting ninja ghost, to motionless corpse, to the more "conventional" angel with a harp on a cloud. These were mostly lifelong Christians, who sang hymns of praise every Easter, who shouted "Christ is Risen Indeed!" on an annual basis.
It's not just young people. It's Christians of all ages. Our views of what happens to us after we die are widely varied, and even our internalized view of what "the Bible says" is kind of all over the place. Where it all comes from is a much longer story. There's some Greek philosophy in there, some inter-religious dialogue, some ancient Christian disagreements, a good helping of pop culture...it's quite a stew. But the consensus view seems to gather around leaving our mortal bodies behind, and having our consciousness or our "soul" ascend to some other far-away heavenly dimension, to be reunited with loved ones and with Jesus forever.
My Easter challenge to you, dear reader is this: let's pretend you've never heard of any of that. It's hard, I know, but pretend you're a blank slate. Now, read the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 15. You may find that what "the Bible says", at least here, is a little different from what we think it says.
To borrow a phrase from Ronald Reagan (this is not a political endorsement), the problem is not that we don't know anything about the resurrection. It's just that we know so much that isn't so. The trouble with the witness of death and resurrection in the New Testament is not so much that it isn't coherent. The trouble is the coherent picture it paints is a pretty wild story. And it ends right back here, on planet earth, which for many of us is a bit of a scandal.
At its heart, the resurrection is a mystery. Even Paul says so. We do know that in a very radical way, we'll be changed. And that the change that happened to Jesus 2,000 years ago is relevant to that change. Paul holds very tightly to the idea that some day, what happened to him will happen to us--all of us, at the same time. Christians differ on what will be our state of consciousness, or existence, in the mean time. But the resurrection wasn't a one-off freak accident of God's grace. It is the blueprint: the mold for our ultimate destiny.
Prayer: Jesus, your resurrection is a mystery. Help me be humble in approaching it, and remind me that what it really is, and how we will experience it first hand, is known only to you. Give me enough trust to proclaim it, to embrace it, and to leave the details to your Holy Spirit. In your name I pray. Amen.
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