Faint Hope?

I went to church this morning and found myself wondering whether I believed what I was singing and saying. What does Easter really mean to me, and does it matter?

As I have got older so I have thought rather less about life after death and more about getting as long a life before death as I can.

It’s not that bodily resurrection doesn’t have some appeal – after all, who wants to be non-existant, or even non-corporeal, once they have enjoyed everything that’s good about being sentient? But I can’t help thinking, if we are all going to be raised from the dead, why die at all? “Take this cup from my lips,” indeed! What’s the redemptive value of suffering and dying? Or is it just part of being human?

Well, yes, of course it is! Pain is an unavoidable part of a self-conscious life, and death is what comes at the end of it. You don’t live for ever and there really isn’t any discernible purpose to most of the pain in the world. If Jesus lived, then he died. And stayed dead, biologically, at least. Incarnation is an all-or-nothing thing, even for the Son of God.

Resurrection must, therefore, mean something quite different from resuscitation. And, I believe, it does.

The earliest account of the appearance of the risen Christ in the New Testament, found in Paul’s letters, does not talk about an empty tomb and abandoned shroud, but rather speaks of the blazing light of recognition and the sudden revelation of a truth that was always there but, once seen, changes everything. I think that living in the light of the Resurrection, means living a life here and now that is tied in with an eternally present but as yet not fully apparent ‘kingdom of God’, and which will, in its renewed nature, survive death and extend beyond the inevitable grave. Abundant life – that’s the Christian hope for me. Significantly, this is a life that does not depend on the physical presence of the body, and even survives it.

I often wondered what the gospel writers were trying to tell us when they described how people, even his disciples, didn’t immediately recognize Jesus after the Resurrection. I can see that the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus can lead to an assurance of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, as they recognized the Christ only as he broke bread with them. I can see, too, how Mary could not recognize Jesus until he had called her by name, for isn’t that expressing a fundamental gospel truth? But the point to me is that it wasn’t the body of Jesus that was recognized. It was what he said and did.

What attracts me to The Salvation Army is, perhaps more than anything else, the sense that this is a church that ‘gets it’. It understands that deeds and words are the mark of the Resurrection, not absence of a body and sundry numinous appearances. Even though most Salvationists would not believe as I do, I still feel comfortable among them as their acts speak louder than the doctrines they espouse.

So what of bodily resurrection? Shall we meet again beyond time, in a new earth and under a new heaven? Shall we be part of the new order, when Jesus comes again to reign in glory? I honestly haven’t a clue, and, frankly, I don’t think the writers of our holy books did, either. Except that they expressed in the most vibrant terms of their age that the future was one where good prevailed and that it would take a complete renewal of all nature to bring this about. And yet, they said, we could begin living in this type of world right now.

My ‘salvation’ requires me to have faith in this type of future, and the underlying goodness that will bring it about, not belief in the mechanics of redemption, just as eternal life calls for me to participate in the community of the faithful that reaches back to the beginning of the age and forward to a future that will find its fulfillment long after I am dead and gone. I dearly want to be part of that new order, and the essential message of Easter, for me at least, is that I can, right now and in person, be part of it, for it has already begun.