into an ambiguous country

 April 3, 2019

I continue to work and write within the Christian Tradition, but a revised one. Everyone has a Story they live by. Mine is the Christian Story. It gives me an ethical orientation, a psychological framework, a metaphysical fantasy, and a theological narrative.

 

I don’t believe in the Incarnation in a literal sense, only in a metaphorical sense. The resurrection takes me into an ambiguous country. The community around Jesus continued after his death. Something happened. The texts report that he literally came back to life in a transformed mode of being. He literally walked through walls, yet sat down and ate fish with them. Then, disappeared in thin air. I have no rational or logical problem accepting those reports as true. It could be that God transformed the man Jesus into a new mode of being, which previewed our future destiny.

 

The problem for me comes when I look around me and see no literal evidence that such an event happened in human history. There is a gap between then and now that I can’t quite cross in my mind. The resurrection seems like something written about a long time ago that has no corresponding reality in my actual day to day life.

 

Something happened to carry that community forward after Jesus’ death. I don’t know what it was. I have trouble believing they invented it all. Perhaps they are writing about a New Beginning in parabolic form—the resurrection appearances and the empty tomb. Perhaps it was some kind of inspiration from Jesus’ life and death that kept them going. Maybe it was for them a conviction that the life he lived and the truth he taught were “eternal,” – undying. Some kind of courage grasped hold of them from that point on.

 

The people that first Christian community preached to were also grasped by something. Did they receive their reports of resurrection literally? Or did they understand the resurrection-talk in a poetic way?

 

All I know for sure is that a New Community was born at that time. It was a New phenomenon in human history—a fellowship of people open to every race, both/all genders, all social classes, and every failed human being. That was new. And it has continued for 2000 years. Something made that happen. They called it the “resurrection.”

 

The force of the “resurrection” thrust that little community throughout the known world. The believers were willing to die for its message—and its sense of hope for everlasting life. They didn’t give their lives for “extinction” or “annihilation.” They offered themselves up for an eternal future with Christ. So, the “resurrection” that they proclaimed and believed in must have had something to do with an ongoing and transformed life. Would a “metaphor” give birth to that kind of hope and courage?

 

So, I continue to identify myself with the historic community of faith in Christ. It was given me an understanding of my humanity, a sense of meaning, a sense of hope, an ethical guide, a call to work for peace and justice, and advocate for the powerless.

 

I’m holding the “resurrection” phenomena lightly—open to various understandings of what it was and is. Whatever it was, it had a force and a power to build community and encourage risky faithfulness to the God of Israel, redefined by Jesus. Love and Resurrection have something in common. Could “resurrection” be another way of bearing witness to the powerful ongoingness of Love?