Happy Easter!! You might be wondering why I'm wishing you a Happy Easter, now that we are four days out from Easter Sunday. Well, that is because Easter is not a day, but a season! If you remember, the season of Lent, a time of preparation and reflection, lasted for forty days (not counting Sundays); well, it doesn't make sense for Lent to be longer than Easter, given that our God is a God who brings bounty, peace and life! So Easter needs to be longer--50 days, to be exact. We will be celebrating Easter this year from March 27 until May 15, which is Pentecost Sunday.
And of course, during the Easter season we are celebratory and engage in studying resurrection. What does it mean, after all, that Jesus rose from the dead? Obviously that means he was walking around again, interacting with his disciples, even after he had been long killed; but what is resurrection really? What does it look like?
In English we will often use several words almost interchangeably to describe a state of life after death. The first is describing someone as "coming back to life". This is probably best used to describe Lazarus, Jesus' friend, whom he raised from the dead after falling ill. Lazarus was dead, and Jesus brought him back to life (John 11:44); but this wasn't exactly a resurrection. One really important distinction about resurrection is that when we are resurrected, we will no longer experience death in any way. Lazarus cannot properly be described as "resurrected" because he died again. Similarly, when doctors bring patients back to life after a few minutes of no heartbeat, they are not "resurrecting" their patients; they are bringing them back to life. They remain mortal, and in no better shape than they were before their brush with death. In resurrection, we become immortal and eternally God's own.
Another term used mistakenly is "reincarnated". This is a term used with prevalence in the Hindu religion to describe a spirit who, after death, possesses a new body based on the karma, or good/bad works, that the spirit acquired in the previous life. This term "reincarnated" does not at all describe what we mean by resurrection; when Jesus was resurrected, he did not come back in an entirely different form, but rather he reappeared in a way that was recognizable to others. Mary Magdalene, for example, recognized Jesus pretty quickly once she saw him (John 20:11-18), which would have been impossible if Jesus had undergone some sort of radical change, like turning into an animal. Furthermore, Jesus' body continued to bear scars from his crucifixion which helped the disciple Thomas to identify him later (John 20:24-28).
Resurrection is unique. In fact, it's only ever happened once before in history, with Jesus Christ--the rest of us are waiting for his return for our turn! So everything we know about resurrection is based on the testimony from those who saw it with their own eyes and had it recorded for us to read. And based on that Scripture, we know that resurrection leads to eternal life (immortality); a resurrected person is somehow recognizable to others; and thirdly, there is a profound change in the individual who undergoes resurrection, but this change does not render us unrecognizable. In the gospels we read that Jesus' body did not respond normally to the laws of physics, as he is apparently able to enter into locked rooms without trouble (John 20:19, maybe again in Luke 24:36-37). The disciples understandably think Jesus is a ghost of sorts, given that they had personally witnessed and confirmed his death, but it is likely that, due to their surprise in both of the above stories, Jesus is not making noise in the same way when moving around either. Whatever the case may be, there is little room for doubt that something new is generated when the body is resurrected, and the body receives new qualities that are currently unbeknownst to us.
In brief: resurrection is God's work to take something which is old and lifeless and makes it into something new and eternal. Resurrected people bear the old image of God originally bestowed but then also are given new properties such as immortality. In effect, the resurrected body is by far superior to the old, and all of the wounds from the previous life are healed in full.
This of course has a lot of implications for us, not only in the next life, but in this one. You see, it is quite obvious through Scripture that God's intention is to heal, restore and flourish humanity, not only for the future in heaven, but right now for us on earth. We don't preach a Gospel of Jesus' healing that only comes in the future; we understand God's commandments to lead us as his disciples to start now in reaching out to a hurting world and bring them into God's fold. As Christians we affirm the resurrection of the body (the whole body, including the mind, the spirit, etc.) as a true, historical event which has occurred and will occur again; but we also affirm God's work towards resurrection each day in our current lives, and through us to those all around us. Resurrection, then, is not purely a theological concept limited to the raising of Jesus Christ, but is a word that appropriately defines all of God's works in our fallen world, that defines God's will towards creation, and describes God's heart and viewpoint when he looks upon us and takes delight.
Happy Easter to you all.
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