Most Sundays in worship, our congregation repeats the Apostles' Creed, in which we say that we believe in, among other things, "the resurrection of the body." Like a lot of things that get repeated routinely in worship, I don't know that people often give much thought to what they say. I feel pretty safe that they don't with this line considering how little most folks connect resurrection with "the body."For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, Christian belief in resurrection has become wedded to Greek philosophical notions of the immortality of the soul. For a lot of Christians, resurrection is simply another way of saying that our soul persists after death, with the added benefit that it is with God in some way.
It is interesting to contrast this with how Paul thinks about resurrection. For him, and indeed for the Bible, resurrection is connected to bodily existence. Jesus' bodily resurrection at Easter is a precursor of what is to come. When Jesus returns, death will be totally defeated and the dead will be raised. In our reading today, Paul speaks of death as an enemy, the last enemy to be defeated when Jesus returns. Paul does not view death as a natural passage from this life to the next. Rather he sees death as an enemy of life itself. But Jesus' resurrection means the power of death is not absolute. This enemy could not hold Jesus. And so we trust that it will not be able to hold us.
Richard Hays, in his commentary on First Corinthians (in the Interpretation series p.279), tells of a young woman whose 18 year old sister had been killed in an auto accident. Friends and family kept telling her that she should should be glad that her sister was in heaven. Surely her sister, who had been an unhappy child, was much happier now. This young woman was infuriated by pious talk that seemed to deny the tragedy of her sister's death. But she also felt guilty that, as a Christian, she ought to believe the pious things she was being told. This young woman found Paul's words to be incredibly liberating. They allowed her to mourn the tragic death of her sister, while giving her a strong hope that she would yet embrace her sister again some day.
What do you understand resurrection to mean, and how did you come to have this understanding?
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Someone in my Sunday School class mentioned that it's somehow easier to believe in a bodily resurrection than to imagine it. I thought that was an interesting comment...
ReplyDeleteI struggle with this, too, but I go to Paul when I'm feeling doubtful:
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain...
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.
1 Cor. 15:12-13,16
I'm so glad you shined a light on the questionable and variant meanings people ascribe to creeds, and by extension, to all the difficult philosophical questions in scripture, and in life. The remarks on appropriate talk with those bereaved was also very good to hear repeated.
ReplyDeleteRobert Browning said: “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?” Yes, we see through a glass, sometimes darkly, sometimes not at all.
The Quakers, many of them, prohibited the use of creeds in their practice, but given the human weakness for superstition and fear of death, the Quaker stand is a serious handicap to successful evangelism.
In an advance promotion for a radio reading of a Christmas story, the voices of professional actors are heard to recite the opening lines of children’s' stories; "Once upon a time...", "A long, long time ago...", Long before the earth was made...", etc. The last speaker in the promo, with perfect Jewish accent implores: "What am I? A watch! It's a story." I think of this as we struggle to fathom the deep meanings, ones beyond capture in writing or speech.
Perhaps Jim Wallis' cautionary counsel in ascribing political meaning applies in other ways: "Don't go Left, or Right; go deeper." There is always "deeper".
I also find comfort in the aphorism attributed to Coptic writers: "The truth that can be told is not the eternal truth." But I have made peace with spoken creeds, and the blunt instrument of language in conversing with fellow believers, and fellow doubters. As Lewis and Clark proved as they surveyed lines west across North America, even primitive tools can be used with precision, when used with care and with skill.