The conventional wisdom says that I, and many of us here, are nearer to our deaths than we are to our births. And says much of the conventional wisdom, that is a cause for anxiety, even fear because it is the end of our lives, the end of our relationships, the end of everything that we have known and loved.
And we are surrounded by what has been called the culture of death – casual killings, violent war, abortions unlimited and the growing desire to enable euthanasia – assisted suicide.
But Easter day, the day of resurrection, says something quite different. It says that I and many of us here, are nearer to life than we are to our birth. That’s a life that in three ways is to be in deep continuity with our present lives.
The resurrection life is one in which body and spirit continue to be a unified whole. Those old ideas that the body is unimportant and can be left behind, whilst our disembodied spirit continues, is debunked by the risen life of Jesus. Read the resurrection stories and some kind of physicality is quite clear – he walked, he talked, he ate, he drank, he had scars. But of course that’s not the whole story because clearly it was not the same physicality as he had and we have. How that works, we don’t know, but it is the case that Jesus continues to appear to people, not as spirit, but as a person.
And the continuity means that we shall recognise and be recognised not only by Jesus, but by those whom we have known and loved. Mary, as we have just heard, recognised Jesus, not immediately, but at the sound of his voice; Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus, recognised Jesus, not immediately, but at his familiar way of saying grace before a meal – Jesus, different but still known and loved as the Jesus of Nazareth, of Capernaum and of Jerusalem
And there’s another continuity – that of the created world. Heaven is not as we just sang: ‘now above the sky he’s king’, nor is he somewhere in the clouds. It is in the Kingdom of God where he is and where we shall be – that renewed heaven and renewed earth where all that has gone wrong with this heaven and this earth will be wiped away. We get foretastes of that Kingdom in this life in the moments of truth, love, beauty, joy and compassion that we already experience. But in the fullness of the kingdom, death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.
To hold to this version and vision of life, death and life is countercultural, surprising, even shocking for some. But it is the one that we have been given as a gift, the gift of Jesus, his life, his death and above all today, his resurrection. It’s the gift that we accept as something to celebrate, not only today, but every day, to rejoice in it and above all to share it with those who live as if death is the end.
Brislington Community News 