Category Archives: resurrection

Giles Fraser’s Thought for the Day, and the Christian hope of conquering death

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Giles Fraser gave the Thought for the Day on Ash Wednesday. I have had two people ask me what I thought about it! The transcript is here.

What Fraser actually says – so far as it goes – I would actually largely agree with, ie I also don’t “subscribe to Platonic ideas about the immortality of the soul. When you die, you die”, and also, “When theologians… speak of entering eternity they mean something altogether different from this: for eternity is outside of time”. So far so good (nb great weight on ‘Platonic ideas’ about immortality, not immortality per se). Where Fraser goes against orthodoxy, so far as I can tell, is that he stops there. What he has missed out is the rather central teaching about resurrection!! Orthodoxy doesn’t teach a disembodied future, it teaches that there will be a general resurrection, wherein we will each experience in the future what Jesus experienced in the past. If I am right in how I read him, I have to say I have difficulty understanding how he can do what he does. Without some sort of anchoring in this non-symbolic conquering of death I think Christianity loses its point, and becomes just another form of feel-good therapy.

For a good summing up of orthodoxy see Byron’s recent post here and listen to this:

UPDATE: a little more from Giles Fraser here, which would suggest that he does accept the resurrection! Well that’s alright then 🙂

Sacraments and social action

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Doug has an outstanding post here, explaining why belief in bodily resurrection, sacramental worship, and social action are a seamless robe.

“If the tomb is not empty, though, then surely sacraments and social action are alike in vain. Our corporeal existence has no future, and only our souls or spirits matter, while bodily life is to be left behind. Only if the tomb is empty, if Jesus has been bodily raised from the dead, do sacraments make any sense, or caring for the earth have any value.”

Carrying our wounds with us

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A sermon on John 20.19-end

We have this morning the familiar story of doubting Thomas – which is a story that means a great deal to me personally, as I too have moved in my life from doubt to faith, and I am greatly encouraged that it is Thomas who is privileged to give the climactic statement of this gospel ‘my Lord and my God!’ There is a natural sermon there… but I talked about Richard Dawkins last week!

There is something very important about this story which occasionally gets missed. First, and this is very important, it shows that the incarnation was not an illusion, that it wasn’t just Jesus putting on flesh like we might put on a coat – he really was flesh, and he has raised that flesh up – you could say, what this story tells us is that Jesus wasn’t pretending when he suffered

But there is something else here too, even more important, about the nature of resurrection itself – and it says something about what we have to hope for. Jesus is resurrected and I have a question for you, is he happy? [pause]

Of course he is, he has entered into glory. Now what is crucial is that he shows us what the resurrection body is like – full of mystery of course, but still we know some things – we know that he bears the marks of his crucifixion – he is happy, but he is still wounded.

I feel this is worthy of much reflection, and I would like you to take this image with you home today and ponder it – he is happy, but he is still wounded.

A few thoughts about what this story means for us and our Christian hope of resurrection.

First, we carry our wounds with us.
Second, the wounds are no longer painful but they do define us, we are the sort of people that these things have happened to. Our stories, those things which make us who we are – these are honoured by God.
Finally, the wounds are redeemed and healed – but they are not forgotten.

What this means is that what happens in this life is important – God doesn’t wipe the slate completely clean and begin again (the resurrection is not like the flood at the time of Noah); God takes what we have and changes it without destroying it. God takes the broken pieces and makes something new out of them.

This means that what we do today is of eternal significance. What we do in this world matters for ever. How we treat each other, how we treat our world, our environment – these things are invested with profound meaning. This doesn’t mean that things that go wrong cannot be redeemed – it does mean that just as we carry our own wounds with us, so too those with whom we interact will carry their woundings from us with them, and our world will carry its wounds as well.

I was pondering – should God be gracious enough to me to bring me into the kingdom on the last day – I wonder whether I will still be half-deaf, or whether that part of my nature has so profoundly shaped who I am that I couldn’t have full hearing and still be me. Yet I wouldn’t want to mislead you either. In the Kingdom there will be no hearing aids, there will be no spectacles, there will be no crutches or wheelchairs. Yet we will still be the people formed by such things, of that I am sure.

This is one of the deep mysteries revealed in this story of doubting Thomas. For the story is not just about Jesus but also about ourselves, about what we can hope for – that we will still be who we are – that everything that happens to us in this life will matter forever – that when God redeems us, he heals us – he heals, and he heals us; he will, in deed, raise us from the dead. Amen.

The Passion (BBC)

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A few thoughts:
– overall very pleased with it, very enjoyable, loved the grittiness and realistic portrayal of the lesser characters, especially Caiaphas and Pilate;
– I thought Joseph Mawle was effective as the lead;
– didn’t like the over-emphasis on the kingdom being within – definitely a secular influence there;
– similarly, was disappointed that there weren’t any healing miracles portrayed;
– I found the treatment of the ‘I am the son of God’ language historically clumsy and implausible; I’m happy for Jesus to have an overwhelming consciousness of God as his father, but this seemed to have been strained through 3rd century theology and didn’t work. That is, I don’t think the claim ‘I am the son of God’ would have been understood in a Trinitarian sense at the time – it would have been understood as meaning ‘I am the true king of Israel/ I am the true high priest’, each of which would have been enough to generate antagonism;
– delighted with the last episode and the presentation of the resurrection, probably the best thing about the whole film and possibly the best presentation of the resurrection I’ve seen. I especially liked the way in which it is portrayed as initially confusing via the use of different actors, and then slowly the disciples ‘get it’ both in terms of recognising who Jesus is and taking forward the implications in their own lives (the washing of the feet).

4.5 out of 5

Dem bones

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This is a train of thought prompted by reading (and commenting on) this post at Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream, the question being what difference would it make to Christian faith if Jesus’ bones were discovered in a tomb somewhere, that is, in what way is the continuity of body between dead-in-the-tomb Jesus and eating-breakfast-with-disciples Jesus essential to Christian faith?

There are two angles I want to mention, but before continuing let me say that I believe the resurrection was a physically perceived event. I was about to put ‘physically manifested’ but that begs questions about scientific objectivity etc, and I don’t really want to play that game. I want to say that the disciples experienced Jesus with them physically, and I’m content to leave open the question of whether that physicality was something that could, in principle, have been validated with scientific instrumentation. Luke’s account: “Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

So: two angles. The first is about the evidence for the empty tomb. Over the last eighteen months or so I’ve been introduced to Margaret Barker’s work, and much Christian language and symbolism is now more meaningful to me. One of them is the empty tomb, in particular, the way in which the two angels at each end of the bed correspond to the cherubim on the mercy seat – in other words, the empty tomb is now the place of atonement (note: not the cross); here is the restoration of the world. I find that a wonderful image.

However, I haven’t reached a settled view on the historical evidence question. Paul doesn’t mention it; on the other hand, if the story was invented out of whole cloth the early community wouldn’t have had the empty tomb discovered by women (their evidence was considered to be less worthy than that from a man). I think it possible that the story was invented; I think it possible that Jesus was buried in an unmarked grave along with the people crucified alongside him; but as time goes on I tend more towards something like the empty tomb.

Really what I want to say on this point is that whatever the view of the story on historico-critical grounds, what matters is the weight put onto the story – which brings me to the second angle – resurrection is not resuscitation. This is something on which Paul is good in 1 Corinthians 15 – the body dies and is raised a different sort of body. Still physical, but different. My worry about the empty tomb is less the historical question than the tendency it provokes to seeing the resurrection as simply a ‘coming back to life’ of Jesus: the body stopped working, and then it started working again. That’s not the resurrection. The resurrection is a much more radical break in continuity than that, it is the first fruits of a new creation.

I think that continuity between the bodies is important (that is why the resurrected body bears the marks of crucifixion – that’s tremendously important) but I don’t believe that continuity has to be expressed through an uninterrupted sequence from dead-body-in-tomb to risen-body-with-disciples. I’m happy for there to be a radical break there – indeed, I believe there was a radical break there.

You could say: the empty tomb as an historical account isn’t weight-bearing for me. Jesus being touched after his death is weight-bearing, and the empty tomb as a theological statement, these are weight-bearing.Which is really why I’m open to the possibility that we might one day discover a tomb with Jesus’ bones in it. That is, I don’t expect it, but should it happen, it wouldn’t make a great deal of difference to my faith and, in particular, it wouldn’t lead me to believe that the resurrection didn’t take place.

UPDATE: in other words, the resurrection is not like this!

Only love can believe

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This is a ‘Blue Peter’ post (“Here’s one we prepared earlier”). I wrote it two years ago.

“Only love can believe”
What does it mean to believe in the resurrection?

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1 Peter 1.3)

The resurrection is both the origin and the definition of Christianity – Christianity could not have come into being without the resurrection, nor can it be sustained except by a belief in the resurrection – “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15.14). Yet there is still room to ask, what does it mean?

It should first be pointed out that there is no clear harmony between the different accounts given in the New Testament. The appearance to Paul on the road to Damascus, for example, is rather different to the experience of Thomas. So there is room within Christianity for differing understandings of what the resurrection was.

Many people see reason to doubt the resurrection, citing various scientific, critical or exegetical grounds for doubt. Perhaps the story was made up by the early church. Perhaps the apostles had psychological disturbances which they interpreted as ‘appearances’. Perhaps it was a group pscyhosis, brought on by a combination of grief and guilt. And so on and so forth.

To my mind, these issues, although of some intrinsic interest, are beside the point. To explain why, let us engage in a little ‘mind-experiment’. Imagine that somehow, we were able to send a team of scientists back to AD33, to the time of the crucifixion. These scientists can take whatever instruments and techniques they want, and they are to assess the ‘evidence’.

Firstly, they examine the body of Jesus after the crucifixion. They confirm that Jesus is dead – the heart has stopped beating, the brain has stopped functioning, the body has begun to decay.

Let us next assume that, on the third day, they see something like what is described in John’s gospel, specifically the experience of Thomas. Like Thomas, they examine Jesus’ wounds; they positively identify that this person is Jesus; that he is alive.

The scientists then return to our own age, and proclaim – in the manner that scientists are somewhat prone to – ‘Science has displaced religion! We can prove that Jesus rose from the dead!!’

To my mind, this is to miss the point. For Christian belief in the resurrection is not belief in a matter of fact, no matter how wonderful that fact might be. Christianity sees the resurrection as a miracle – as THE miracle – and, as Wittgenstein put it, “The truth is that the scientific way of looking at a fact is not the way to look at it as a miracle”.

There are many reasons for this difference in approach between science and Christianity, which I shall not enter into here. For what I would like to do is give an indication of what Christian belief in the resurrection is actually about. At its core, at its most simple, it is a claim about Jesus, that Jesus was justified by God and raised in glory – and that glory is something which the Christian participates in, by grace. In other words, belief in the resurrection is a belief that Jesus was the Messiah – and vice versa. Consider the sequence of events. Jesus proclaims the gospel, a new law of love and forgiveness, of including the outcast and healing the sick. He comes into conflict with the political and religious authorities, and is crucified. Now this demonstrates that Jesus has been rejected by God –

‘And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God; you shall not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance.’ (Deuteronomy 21.22-23)

The disciples are shattered, downcast, scattered and leaderless – and these people then establish a church which ‘conquers’ the known world. Clearly something happened, which transformed those downcast disciples into apostles and missionaries, filled with enthusiasm for proclaiming the gospel.

Whatever that something was, it justified Jesus. Instead of Jesus being condemned by God, he was instead held up by God in special honour – he was vindicated against his accusers. The world says this; the world makes this judgement about Jesus – yet God says this, and makes this judgement about Jesus.

We thus have a difference, right at the beginning of Christianity, between the judgement of the world and the judgement of God, and therefore the origin for all contrast between Law and Grace. For Grace is the principle of the resurrection – to stand condemned, and yet to be free from punishment. It is to be forgiven, to be included, to be accepted.

It should be clear, then, that this justification of Jesus cannot be divorced from who Jesus was in his life, and how he lived. For Jesus taught the path of forgiveness, of healing the sick and binding up their wounds. This was rejected by the religious authorities – and yet it was vindicated by God. So clearly God is like Jesus, and Jesus is like God. And the resurrection reveals Jesus in glory, a divine glory – a glory that we are called to share in.

We share in it through living that same life of grace that Jesus lived, ie by following the path of healing compassion, of including the outcast, of forgiving the sinner. That path was broken open by Jesus (the ‘pioneer and perfecter of our faith’), in his life, death and resurrection.

In other words, belief in the resurrection is really a commitment to living the Christian life – that which was opened up and vindicated by the resurrection of Jesus, whatever that event could be described as in scientific terms.

Once more, Wittgenstein demonstrates his sure understanding of Christian identity:

‘Only love can believe the resurrection. Or: it is love that believes in the resurrection. We might say: Redeeming love believes even in the resurrection; holds fast even to the resurrection. What combats doubt is, as it were, redemption.’ (Wittgenstein, 1937)