-----------------------------------------------------
When I was a little girl, watching The Sound of Music on TV was one of my absolute favorite things to do. For one thing, the television was a pretty hot commodity in our house. Between my mother's love for soap operas, my older brother's obsession with The A-Team, and my father's evening news habit, I rarely chose a show for myself. Not only that, but I was a mouthy little thing and was grounded from watching TV on a nearly weekly basis. Whenever BA Baracka pitied the fool, I was pretty sure he was talking about me.
Luckily, like many families in the 80's, mine made a big deal out of Sunday Night Movies like Superman, The Ten Commandments, The Wizard of Oz, and that delightful film where Maria and the children sang a lot. It was my favorite, and we always watched it, no matter what else was on: my yearly dose of vindication, heavy on the lederhosen. When Maria walked down the aisle to a horn volley and the voices of the nuns, I got whisked off to bed to dream of Rolf dancing me around in the gazebo.
Until, that is, the time we watched it at my grandparent's house and neither of my parents had the guts to turn it off after the wedding scene. I was disoriented and amazed to find that there was a whole half hour of threats and terror following the happily ever after. Worst of all, Rolf turned into a Nazi asshole and nearly got the Von Trapps annihilated.
Turns out there was more to the story.
This was NOT supposed to happen!
I can't help but recall that feeling of disbelief as I wrestle with my feelings surrounding the resurrection. Way back in March I posted about wanting to examine the unexamined parts of my faith, and I find it telling that I didn't even mention it in the litany of questions I raised. Perhaps it's because other issues were foremost in my mind, but as I try to come to terms with the theology and implications of Jesus' bodily resurrection and glorious ascension I'm pretty sure it's because I've been shutting the whole thing down too early. Yes, like everyone else every Easter I've sung "He is Risen," but I've been living in that commercial break after the crucifixion.
Look: there is no denying the power in his shocking, humbling death on the cross. From the incarnation to his atoning sacrifice, I've pledged my allegiance to the life that Jesus lived and the lessons that Jesus taught. I mark service in his footsteps to be my own way forward, however God would have that look. But it has been very hard for me to come to terms with the fact that his body stopped working and then started working again, even with God involved. Jesus was human, but human bodies don't do that. Jesus was also Divine, but then again it's not exactly easy to wrap one's mind around that duality, either. And then there's the fact that Jesus was raised because, ultimately, that's what's in store for us, too.
Q. Why not just see resurrection as a metaphor? Why can't it just be symbolic of the continuing influence of Christ on the life of the disciples and the early church?
A. Because that feels half-assed to me. There is plenty the Bible says nothing about, but the New Testament is pretty much stuffed with references to the resurrection. I admit that I myself have been historically half-assed in my thinking about it, but now I'm in full moon.
On a related track, among the things I have come to accept is a belief that heaven is not some weird shadow-land in an invisible supernatural dimension, but that it will eventually be here on earth. N.T. Wright calls it "the life after life after death," which is both fun to type and say out loud. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth," right? This planet is a vital part of creation that we should love and cherish as much as the people on it, because it's going to play a major role in how God "makes all things new."
Q."Makes all things new?" Ummm...
A. Right. Well, that's where resurrection comes in. Once again conveniently borrowing from N.T. Wright: "In the Bible we are told that you die, and enter an intermediate state." This is "conscious," but "compared to being bodily alive, it will be like being asleep." And, he concludes, this will be followed by the resurrection into new bodies.
Perhaps even more difficult to accept than the fact that Jesus rose from the dead is the notion that it will happen to me. Jesus was Jesus; I'm just a person-- one of approximately 6,973,738,433 people and hella statistically insignificant. This is when I'm thankful for Paul, who was that squatty little guy who did much to spread the mission of Christianity in the first century and whose writings, in the form of letters, make up much of the New Testament.
Paul takes a lot of time to discuss exactly what that resurrection means. I must admit that I take some small comfort in this-- if the doctrine were easy and obvious, why write so much about it? (Of course, the flip side is the question of how I could have left unexamined the central tenant of the creeds, liturgy, entire church calendar, and God's most important promise to humanity, but sometimes, these things aren't immediately obvious. Soylent Green is people, and all that.)
At any rate, Paul wrote, "Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ--whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died." (1 Cor. 15:12-20)
Q. This just makes it even harder for me to accept that there's anything inherently truthful about Christianity.
A. I hear you, but let me go out on a limb here and say that, central tenet though it may be, it's pretty spiritually challenging. It's my time to wrestle with it, but if it's your time to wrestle with whether there's even a God or not, please don't put the cart before the horse. Like I said in this post , start small. For me, that meant extracting the person of Jesus and his life and words and example out of everything else-- doctrine, church, all of it-- and falling in love there. Then I took that love with me to church, and sat there for a while, and then I took that love and dared to open the Bible, and sat there for a (long, shaky) while, and then I took the questions as they arose and asked them, one at a time.
I'm grateful to be a part of a church community where there are many opportunities for me to ask the questions I need to ask. Christianity is not some dusty, static set of beliefs for me, but a process: one where I work to serve others in the name of Christ as I simultaneously discover more and more about who he is. The more I discover who he is, the more I discover who I am, and how I fit into this complicated, messy, heart-breakingly beautiful creation.
As I stumble and trip up and fail at doing that, and get up and try again, I ultimately have to concede that it's not all frolicking and singing in the Austrian countryside. The world is a place full of hurt and pain and Nazis and honeymoons cut short, but it's equally as full or more of a grace meant to heal those wounds. More than anything, I want to be a vector of that grace.
I don't have a clear or complete picture of what that will look like, but as I try to puzzle it out I feel like I'm finally beginning to take complete ownership of the creeds I've been reciting my entire life. I'm a little ashamed it's taken me so long to try and understand why, but then, I'm excited, too.
As it turns out, there's a whole lot more to the story.
No comments:
Post a Comment