Practice Resurrection

By Fred Bahnson

Today Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, finds it empty, runs to tell the other disciples the incredible news. Neither Mary Magdalene, nor the disciples could foresee this glorious event. John’s Gospel tells us that, even after seeing the empty tomb, Simon Peter and the Beloved disciple didn’t quite get it; “for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” (John 20:9) Mary Magdalene even mistook Jesus for the gardener. After seeing their Lord hanging on a cross in weakness, it was almost too incredible to think that he was with them again, that he had in fact been raised from the dead. But it’s true; the dark pall left by Friday’s crucifixion has been cast aside by the dawn’s clear light of the Resurrection.

Reading the Old Testament, we know that Jesus’ resurrection didn’t come out of nowhere; it was the culmination of God’s salvation drama already begun with Israel. We see Jesus’ resurrection anticipated in today’s reading in Isaiah 65, which tells us that God was about to do a new thing. “For I am about to create a new heavens and a new earth.” As Christians, we believe that this new creation has come to us through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. “The former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.” Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we gentiles are included in this new Jerusalem.

The former things that shall not be remembered are the sorrows and agonies that are part of human existence: weeping, premature death, war, homelessness, famine—all of these must give way before God’s New Creation. What’s interesting is that Isaiah gives us a beatific vision of the kingdom of God right here on earth. This is not just a new heaven, this is a new earth. With Jesus’ resurrection, the whole of creation is made new.
Easter has as much to do with earth as it does with heaven, has as much to do with the right now as it does with the past or future.

Thinking of our role in this New Creation, I think of this line by the poet Wendell Berry:
Practice resurrection.

What did Berry mean by those words? He spells resurrection with a little “r”. He’s not saying we should try and repeat Jesus’ resurrection. That was a one time event. I think he’s implying that if we believe in Jesus’ resurrection, that we should be putting that belief into practice. That belief needs to be visible in our daily lives.
Practice resurrection.

What does it mean to practice resurrection? It means to live so that the world can look and see that we are a redeemed people, that we are already partaking in God’s New Creation. Another name for this New Creation is the kingdom of God.

Unfortunately, we are all heirs to centuries of wrong-headed thinking about the kingdom of God. The church has been tempted to think of this kingdom as something merely inward, in the heart, or something that begins in the distant future. This mistake has led Christians to think that, because the Kingdom is in their hearts, that they can meet the world on its own terms. We act one way in our private lives, and act entirely differently in our public lives.

Paul tells us in First Corinthians that “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” But I wonder if the reverse isn’t true as well. That is, if for the next life only we have hoped, that for heaven only we have hoped, that we are of all people most to be pitied. Yes, we do hope in our own bodily resurrection when Christ returns, we do hope for eternal life with God, but what we miss if our hope is aimed only forwards is that the Resurrection anchors us fully to this life, right now.

Whenever we gather as a church, whenever we do the things Jesus taught us to do, whenever we pray “thy kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven, we aren’t just saying we hope someday it’ll happen. We’re actually asking that God’s kingdom come right here on earth, as it is in heaven. We’re affirming that Christ’s resurrection is at work among us, right now, this moment.
Practice resurrection.

As members in Jesus’ new society, the church, we should expect to see signs of God’s newness in our midst. We do things differently than the world does. When we wash each others’ feet, we are already participating in God’ new creation. When we serve each other, when we forgive one another, we are already participating in the kingdom of God. When we serve food to the hungry as we do at the soup kitchen, when we suffer with the oppressed as Peter is doing right now in Baghdad, we are proclaiming with our bodies that Christ’s resurrection is real; When we take communion, we are proclaiming Christ’s death until he comes; When we welcome strangers into our community, even into our own homes, we are proclaiming that the resurrection has broken down social barriers; when we worship the Triune God instead of worshipping the flag or the good life spewing from Wall Street, we are practicing resurrection; When we love even our enemies, which is the one point in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus calls us to resemble God, we are practicing resurrection.

Notice that, to practice resurrection means that the lines between spiritual and physical are suddenly blurred, that what we do in worship and what we do in “the real world” is finally not distinguishable. To practice resurrection is, in fact, to erase the lines between spiritual and physical, so that worship blends seemlessly into hospitality, into reconciliation, into enemy love, into serving one another.

To practice resurrection doesn’t mean that all the former things have disappeared. Not yet. Though Jesus has triumphed over the grave, there is still an overlap of eons. The “former things” still persist alongside the “new”. We live in the between times, the already/not yet. Jesus Christ has already overcome sin and death and enmity between people, but sin is still present. Christ has not yet returned to bring us into eternal peace with God.

Sin and destruction are still rampant in the world. Wars and famine persist; we will still hurt each other; we’re still prone to self-deception, to greed, and pride;

But our hope is this: that ever since the first Easter, the New Creation, seen most fully in Jesus’ resurrection, is the witness that those “former things” have been judged and rejected by God. In Isaiah we hear the Lord say “Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.” Before the words could form on our lips, God has already answered. That answer is the life, death, and resurrection of Immanuel, God with us. This is our hope and our joy.

So let us boldly proclaim to the world this answer already given. May the very shape of our common life together as the body of Christ be that proclamation. As St. Francis says, let us proclaim it everyday, and when necessary, use words. The world aches for a peace it cannot name. But we are the ones who can name it. It’s the peace given in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. May our lives mirror that peace. May it be said of us, “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.” May we practice resurrection.

Amen.