How's Your Resurrection?

As I sit in my sturdy apartment building, listening to sirens blasting all around, the TV is one big screen of weather that robs us of watching anything but the threat and traffic of tornados, warning us to hide in the bathroom or get away from windows, as we hope to ride out the storm. Meanwhile in California there have been uncontrollable fires eating up people’s homes, burning all their possessions into obscurity, making them homeless and helpless regardless of their station in life.

So I began to think about resurrection. It might be my time or your time and what in the world do we think about the possibility of resurrection? Do I have hope? Do you have hope? Is it a gift like something your loved ones give you at Christmas? Or is it a spiritual trip where the body is either dissolved or locked into a tomb, but the spirit is active, alive and soaring to the heavens? Does it have a beginning and an end? What is resurrection? Will we all resurrect? Or is there a judge who will pass or fail us like school teachers?

Even Job who did no wrong, who followed God’s command, in fact who was chosen by God to suffer and to still love God as he lost everything, his family, his fortune. But Job trusted that God was no tyrant who demanded abject submission of the innocent. Job knew well that the wicked don’t always suffer, they prosper. Is that justice? It is a way saints could be identified? Yet Heaven, the afterlife, the resurrection is begotten for all of mankind. In fact, as Deepak Chopra pointed out, every spiritual tradition has this idea of death and resurrection. It is not unique to Christianity.

So what is our Resurrection? Is it something glorious with angels and golden thrones and the best gospel music one could hear? Or is it a creepy crawly thing where we pass through hell and see the torturing of maybe people we knew back then, and who missed the boat. I don’t believe anyone, even the most egregious and horrific of persons, is lost forever. Maybe here on earth, they are paying the price, and maybe they commit suicide, so they don’t have to deal with their sins, but somewhere, somehow, we all resurrect. God has promised that we will all get a chance - and why? Because each one of us no matter who we are, what we do, how we survive, - every one of us is HIS child - be it Moslem, Buddhist, communist, criminal, scammer, homeless bum, Hindu, atheist, abuser - all of us came from God and will return to Him, one way or the other. Maybe resurrection is a cleansing of sins, where one learns how to love, to forgive, to apologize, to be humble and to smile in a peace that passes all understanding.

Obviously, Resurrection in the days Jesus’s tread on this earth, was a topic of conversation, even more of religious belief and argument.  Everyone seemed to be curious, or frightened, or suspicious and anxious. It was obvious from the start; the powerful Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection. They were apparently very conservative aristocrats, members of a sect of Jews whose main task was to protect the Temple of Jerusalem. They were interested in material things, political things, that might help them achieve their goals. The Sadducees believed in the death penalty, the Mosaic principle of an eye for an eye - and with their wealthy, haughty bearings, they were willing to compromise with Roman rulers who hated the common people. All decisions and opinions, then, had to base on the written Law of the Torah, those five books of the Bible, as the only source of revelation. In other words the Oral Law meant next to nothing.

On the other hand, the Pharisees were the spiritual fathers of modern Jerusalem, the authority of piety and learning, the high priests from aristocratic families, conservative, static, Hellenistic with good relations with the Roman rulers of Palestine. They claimed their rights due to birth and revered the Torah but also claimed the oral tradition that was part of Mosaic Law even when everything fell apart when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

Pharisees were more generous. They felt men must use reason in their interpreting the Torah and applying it to daily life and problems. They interpreted the law according to its spirit.  They weren’t afraid to improve and make acceptable the spiritual, so the Torah was adapted to the times and needs and thus is still primary in Judaism. They were not a political party but a society of scholars and priests.  In the New Testament they seem to be spokesmen for the majority of the population. God, they pronounced, could and should be worshipped even away from the temple and outside of Jerusalem. Everywhere.  This included NOT bloody sacrifices - the Temple priest practices - but in prayer and in the study of God’s law. And so the synagogue was an institution of religious worship, outside and separate from the Temple.

So the Sadducees confront Jesus with a complicated tradition that came out of Moses- about a woman marrying brother after brother, up to seven brothers, poor woman, and produced the dilemma that each brother died childless - which may have been the female’s inability to conceive. Jesus immediately made things clear - what happens on this earth, and all that they might suffer or do, has a different spirit in the time of resurrection. There will be no more earth problems, so to speak, but one will enter the heavenly kingdom of God and there they become angels and children of God, no matter what mistakes they might have made on earth or in the universe because they could not die anymore. Once one is resurrected, he or she is with The Only Father God, the God not of the dead, but of the living. For to him, Jesus says, all are alive.

Job declares resurrection: He awaits that honor as we all do. “For I know that my Redeemer lives, he said, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth and after my skin has been destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side and my eyes shall behold and not another.” 

So what is resurrection: Primarily it is the rising of Christ after his crucifixion, death and burial. Then the continuous rising of the dead-on Judgment Day, a rising above mortality through the understanding of spiritual life as demonstrated by Jesus Christ.

Another concept is that it is the time that will be when all people return to life at the end of the world. Since resurrected bodies will be incorruptible, they are not carbon-based and hence not identical to organisms, or human biological bodies. They have no death or limit.

Jesus said resurrection, the risen life, will be totally new and beautiful since no one will die again and so there would be no need for procreation, nor need for marriage.  He says that resurrection life is not this life all over again. But a new existence in which we participate in God’s eternity.  The good news is that our life, after we invite Jesus “resurrecting presence into it” is not this life all over again either. It is a new existence in which we participate in God’s eternity.

I think it is glorious because we all will be together again with not only those we have loved the most, but with the people who have been in and out of our lives transformed into goodness and love. We will wander among the saints and be friends with those we have considered our enemy or opposition. There will be no more monsters, no suffering, hatred, false claims and lies, no more doubt nor hatred nor confusion - we will know what we need to know and not have to research it. Most glorious will be that we will know our God, The Everlasting God, and be able to say face to face, at last, Thank you Jesus, for everything.

Leo Tolstoy wrote:

"Human beings are like rivers; the water is one and the same in all of them, but every river is narrow in some places, flows swifter in others, here it is broad, there still, or clear or cold or muddy or warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man." 

and he added:

"There are many faiths, but the spirit is one - in me and in you - and in him. So that if everyone believes himself, all will be united, everyone will be himself and all will be as one." 



 ~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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