Why Christ's Physical Resurrection Matters

The Apostle Paul said: "16 if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied." (1 Cor. 15) While many modern so-called churches have forgotten this timeless truth, it still speaks today.

I offer this poem by John Updike as an Easter meditation.

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier - mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

— From Telephone Poles and Other Poems by John Updike
© 1961 by John Updike

John Updike's take is that if all there is is all we can control, we are dead to truth and beauty, and most to be pitied. This Easter, my prayer for you is a deep encounter with the truth of the Risen Christ - a true human (like you and me) and also true God. As his body has been raised into glorified perfection, so shall ours be. And as his body is one, may he also make his church - his body on earth - to be one. Amen.

Richard John Neuhaus, 1936-2009

Today, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things, has gone to his reward. He now lives in that perfect unity of the saints for which he struggled his whole life (leaving the Lutheran church and continuing his ministry in communion with the Bishop of Rome). I pray that he died in that full assurance of salvation that is his birthright (restored to the church by the efforts of Dr. Luther himself).

Ora pro eo.

Saints of God, come to his aid!
Come to meet him, angels of the Lord!

[Response] Receive his soul and present him to God the Most High.

May Christ, who called you, take you to himself;
may angels lead you to Abraham's side.

[Response] Receive his soul and present him/her to God the Most High.

Give him eternal rest, O Lord,
and may your light shine on him for ever.

[Response] Receive his soul and present him to God the Most High.

Let us Pray.

All-powerful and merciful God,
we commend to you, Richard, your servant.
In your mercy and love,
blot out all the sins he has committed through human weakness.
In this world he has died: let him live with you for ever.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

AMEN.

V/. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.
R/. And let perpetual light shine upon him.

V/. May he rest in peace.

R/. Amen.

V/. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

R/. Amen.

Maundy Thursday is now Mandatory

Today, most of the Latin-derived churches are celebrating Maundy Thursday. The name comes from the Latin word mandatum, which means "command." It refers to the Last Supper, when Jesus said:

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13)

This isn't a command to "like" one another but to LOVE. He didn't say "tell people that all belief systems are equally salvific as a means of showing how friendly you are" (love means telling them that apart from Christ, they're bound for Hell). It's not a command to seek institutional unity at the expense of truth. It's a command to love as Jesus describes Christian love.

Attention, Church (especially those who have existed as either an implicit or explicit established institution):

Jesus gave us the marching orders, and we need to be on about it.

In other words, sh*t or get off the pot (else you may end up like this poor woman). The legacy churches desperately need to be dethroned. And for you pastors out there: quit letting your lay leaders get away with just sitting around doing nothing. You're only making their inactivity more acceptable. And you are depriving yourself of great joy.

Same thing for you lay leaders: if your pastor isn't feeding you a steady diet of the God's Word, then don't enable them. Demand they hie to the study and come out when they've heard from God. Demand that they lead by example. Don't let a numpty waste your time with fables.

Catch that Calvinism

I just got an Easter card from a friend. It's lovely and well rendered, graphically. Take a look at it here. Do that before you read the rest of the post.





Now....can anybody guess why I find this card disheartening? Two thumbs up to the first contestant that gets it right!

Unmistakable Truths

Hmmm... dig up the corpse of Jesus and you get to claim that your faith is not beholden to fact because you can make it a metaphor or just dump the whole "realism" project. (Not to mention that everyone else who disagrees with your interpretation does so from intellectual dishonesty or, worse, moral bankruptcy.)

Dig up something an anthropologist claims is a human ancestor and you demand that everyone's faith claims have to change in accordance with that "fact."

Anyone else smell inconsistency? (Hint: it smells kind of lemony.)

Evolution and relativism = "unmistakable truth" over which only the mentally deficient can disagree.

orthodox Christianity = misogynistic powerplay for privileging a narrow "western" view.

A most fascinating hermeneutic....

Resurrection Fun

Okay - it's Lent. That means that we're preparing ourselves for one thing: EASTER!!!

I understand that our repentance (which should be continual, but is especially intentional in this season) is often accompanied by a somber turn of character. However, in the interests of keeping Lent a truly proleptic time of anticipation (kinda like Advent), I encourage everyone to repent of their unbelief in the true, bodily resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Sure, there are people who don't believe it and say as much (some of whom who should really know better). But there are plenty of folks that would confess belief in Jesus' triumph over death, yet the accompanying joy of that fact never reaches their hearts (much less their daily living). Folks, there is only one response to Jesus Christ having been raised for our justification (Rom. 4:25) - a more profound ALLELUIA!!

As James Dennison reminds us:

Eschatological death is past for us—Jesus paid it all.

Eschatological judgment is past for us—Jesus endured it all.

Eschatological wrath is past for us—Jesus bore it all.

Eschatological righteousness is present for us—Jesus has it all.

Eschatological forgiveness is present for us—Jesus gives it all.

Eschatological life is present for us—Jesus lives it all.

Even now to those who are in Christ Jesus—no condemnation!

Even now to those who are in Christ Jesus—no more wrath!

Even now to those who are in Christ Jesus—no more death!

Even now to those who are in Christ Jesus—you are justified!

Even now to those who are in Christ Jesus—you are forgiven!

Even now to those who are in Christ Jesus—you have been raised from the dead!

In that spirit, I encourage you all to take this whimsical test by Gary Habermas.