Spiritual Hiccups - Invaded by Heaven

If you go to a Christian funeral, there is a very good chance you will hear the following verse from John's gospel. "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die."  A few years ago, these verses were a part of the New Testament passage used for one of our denomination's "ordination exams." These are taken by those seeking to be ordained as pastors, mostly seminary students.  I served as one those grading the exams, and a question in the exam on the John passage asked whether or not this passage was actually appropriate for funerals. 

In the exams that I graded, most all the test takers struggled with this question, and I heard a similar report from other exam graders.  In nearly all cases, the problem arose from understanding resurrection and eternal life to mean nothing more than going to heaven when you die.  But biblically speaking, resurrection has nothing to do with souls winging their way to heaven.  Resurrection was something that was supposed to happen "on the last day," as Martha says quite clearly in today's gospel.  And so when Jesus says, "I AM the resurrection and the life," (The peculiar Greek grammar of Jesus' "I AM" is supposed to remind us of God's personal name.) he seems to be saying that the promise and hope and power of that last day has come into the present.  Those who are "in Christ" can began to experience a new quality of life, a new life born of the Spirit, here and now.

One of the exciting things going on in Christian faith right now is a recovery of a gospel of the Kingdom, of God's coming reign, a gospel that had been supplanted by what Brian McLaren has called a "gospel of evacuation."  This gospel says that if you have faith in Jesus, you will get evacuated from this earth (which is apparently beyond hope), and relocated to the paradise of heaven.  But of course Jesus never says any such thing.  He says the God's reign has "drawn near."  And the Apostle Paul speaks of creation itself longing and groaning in labor pains for the new thing that is coming. 

It seems rather odd to me that so many Christians, who know very well the creation story where on the sixth day God looks out and judges the whole shebang "very good," somehow conclude that this same creation has gotten so badly off track that it is beyond God's power to rescue and restore.

"I AM the resurrection and the life."  God's power to restore, redeem, and make new has burst into the present.  Heaven is not some distant evacuation zone for those who qualify.  Rather heaven has invaded creation, intent on conquering it through love.

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