Bridging the Distance: Resurrection as Faith-Event (An Easter Sermon)


The 19th century German idealist philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel once famously wrote, "In Swabia people say of something that took place long ago that it is so long since it happened that it can hardly be true any more. So Christ died for our sins so long ago that it can hardly be true any more" (Hegel's Jena Diary). What Hegel so poignantly illustrates with this bit of local Swabian wisdom is the problem of distance -- that is, of understanding how the "there and then" is still relevant in the "here and now."  
 
Yet, with respect to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, today's Christians face not only a problem of distance -- that is, how the resurrection of Jesus, which was supposed to have happened two thousand years ago, impacts their lives today -- they also face the challenge of those who would question whether it happened at all. 
 
Christians even differ among themselves on this question. For many believers (indeed, most Christians down through the ages), believing in the resurrection of Jesus means insisting on the physical resuscitation of a corpse. Others are content to remain ambivalent on the particulars of "what actually happened," and prefer instead to focus on the metaphorical significance of Jesus' resurrection. My hunch is that most Christians today fall somewhere between these two poles. Yet this is nothing new. Christians have struggled with what resurrection means ever since rumors of an empty grave began to circulate in first century Judea.    
 
The New Testament is not impervious to such questions. In fact, one might even suggest that it evokes them. The Gospel of Mark, the earliest of our four gospels, written probably 40 years after Jesus died, ends simply and elegantly with the mystery of an empty tomb. That's it. (The post-resurrection appearance in Mark was added much later.) The other gospels offer more details, including appearances by Jesus. However, they often conflict with each other, making harmonization notoriously difficult. The reason for these differences is simply that the gospels were not written with modern historical concerns for accuracy and precision in view, nor should they be read today as history books. Rather they are faith narratives. They contain stories that various communities of believers told and retold, interpreted and re-interpreted, decades before anyone ever thought to write them down. In short, the gospels presuppose faith, rather than the converse. 

The earliest witness to Jesus' resurrection is actually the Apostle Paul, writing within two decades of the crucifixion. As a Pharisee, Paul believed in the resurrection of the dead. He believed in resurrection as an article of faith, even before he came to believe that Jesus had been resurrected. Yet, intriguingly, his description of the resurrection does not appear to require a suspension of belief in the natural order of things, even by 21st century standards. In his typical rhetorical style, Paul writes, 
 
But someone will ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?' Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body (1 Corinthians 15:35-38).
 
According to Paul, questions surrounding the nature of resurrection, like, say, "the kind of body" one receives, are fruitless and vain. Paul goes on to explain that "heavenly bodies" and "earthly bodies" are different; God creates both and provides each with its own unique glory. The resuscitation of corpses is simply not part of Paul's understanding of resurrection, perhaps not even for his understanding of the resurrection of Jesus, although this latter point is impossible to say without knowing whether or not Paul relied on some oral tradition or Ur-Gospel that described it in this manner. Still one can only imagine what Paul might have said to those who insisted that it should.
 
But there's one particular point about Paul's faith in the resurrection of Jesus that a lot of well-meaning Christians seem to miss. His faith in the resurrection was not in virtue of its status as a verifiable historical event (Swabian wisdom notwithstanding). Rather Paul's faith in the resurrection of Jesus was grounded in his own experience of the resurrected Jesus, who appeared to all of the apostles, but lastly to Paul "as to someone untimely born" (1 Corinthians 15:8).
 
The lesson to be learned here is that, despite differences among Christians in how they might understand Jesus' resurrection as "historical event" -- whether that means resuscitation, metaphor, or something in between -- there remains enough common ground to recognize Resurrection as the Church's pre-eminent, recurring, and ongoing "faith event." This recognition, I believe, is critical in enabling Christians to bridge the distance between the "there and then" and the "here and now."
 
For example, last week we suggested that Jesus' triumphal entry revealed the sharp contrast between two kingdoms on offer: the one that Jesus embodied -- one of peace, of justice, of radical inclusion -- and the worldly kind that conquers by force and maintains rule by threat of death. From the standpoint of crucifixion, the kingdoms of this world would seem to have conquered. Yet, from the standpoint of resurrection, God's kingdom reigns victorious in its defeat of sin and death. 
 
So while we may still be left with many mysteries surrounding the "what" of resurrection, we are left with no doubt that the earliest Christians, and generations of Christians after them, believed that Jesus was the first fruits of it; that his earthly life and witness bore witness to God's kingdom; that the Cross exposed the sham of the kingdoms of this world; and that the Resurrection constituted God's full vindication of his Messiah and of his kingdom program.
 
This calls for faith on our part, not the passive faith of mere affirmation in terms of past events, but rather an ongoing faith on the part of those who actively seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness: a faith that pursues peace and restorative justice; a faith that accepts the disenfranchised; and a faith that embraces the dispossessed in the love of God. This is the kind of faith in which the resurrection of Jesus constitutes no less than God's eternal "yes" to the world's temporal "no," not only at the Cross of Calvary, but also on every cross borne by a disciple of Jesus in obedience to his call. 
Amen.

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