This year for Easter season the sermons have the theme of new creation, which I emphasized on Easter Sunday. This may be a new thing for you and you may be wondering, “What on earth does he mean by this?” Or, “Why is he even making that connection?”
Well I’m glad you asked, hypothetical reader! This connection between the bodily resurrection of Jesus and the Judeo-Christian affirmation of creation is actually a bit of a passion of mine, and it tends to come out on Easter. I fear that in North American Christianity we too often slip unknowingly into a pseudo-Gnosticism. Please stay with me hypothetical reader, as I realize I may have drifted from muddled to cloudy, but this point is important. Gnosticism is an old false view of things that tends to see only the “spiritual” as good, while the physical is bad or evil (or disposable). It also tends to emphasize some secret or hidden knowledge as that which saves us – and gets us into the good “spiritual” realm. When we believe that the end result of the resurrection of Jesus is that we get to go off to heaven, we are engaging in what amounts to as Gnosticism. I am trying my best to make heresy punishable by stoning here at our church, but we have police officers in our congregation who are *really* sticklers about American law, so if this is your current view, consider yourself lucky.
Anyway, as I said in the Easter message, the belief that your spirit lives on elsewhere after you die is not called resurrection. That is called being dead. And it is a belief that has been held by many people in many cultures. Resurrection means a new, physical body. As an aside, keep this sort of thing in mind at funerals. While I understand the sentiment that the body is just the “shell” or that they “aren’t really here,” we Christians, of all people, must understand the true tragedy of the loss of death if we are to proclaim the hope we have in Christ with any sort of credibility. Death is a tragedy precisely because something and someone was lost. Their body absolutely was a part of them, and while we do believe there is some other essential part of them, their soul, that is still alive elsewhere, they are yet incomplete until the final day when Christ raises the dead. Heaven is not the end destination. The final resurrection of the dead is. Unfortunately, I realize that this maybe a new thing for many people, but please understand it is an old Orthodox teaching. We believe in, “…Jesus Christ… who on the third day arose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” (The Apostles Creed)
This is why I emphasized 1 Corinthians 15:20-22 on Easter Sunday. Hear the power of these verses, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” If Christ is the first fruits of this new thing, then we must pay close attention to what exactly happened in the resurrection. This is why the physical and bodily resurrection of Jesus has been such an important theological issue, especially in debates through the rise of 19th century Protestant Liberalism (which is different than American political liberalism). The Gospels go to great pains (as does Paul) to show the resurrection as physical and bodily and this makes sense as the Jews believed in a bodily resurrection at the end of time. Why did the Jews believe this? It is because their faith was grounded in the first five books of the Old Testament – including the creation narrative that states that God’s creation was very good. When we make the resurrection something that is not bodily and when we make a “spiritual” heaven the end goal – then we deny the goodness of creation and fall into the old error of Gnosticism.
One of the things I love to say about the Resurrection, especially on Easter, I actually got after reading a book called, “The Doors of the Sea,” by David Bentley Hart. For the parent who lost a child, the resurrection of Jesus does not mean that someday they will receive an explanation as to why their child had to die. Instead, the resurrection means they will get their child back. You see, that is actually good news. That is radical good news. The implications are glorious. What if God can undo and restore all the damage that evil and death have done? Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and the destruction his body suffered was made impotent. God undid it. That is hope. And it is a hope that I refuse to trade in for a sensible Gnosticism that promises an escape but no recovery.