The New Pope on Easter

Most people are getting a little weary of hearing about Pope Francis. (I'm not; I'm getting weary of people complaining about how much they are talking about him.) Whose feet is he washing? What did he say about gay marriage? Is he talking to Kirill? How significant is his provenance? His order? His papal name? Etc. It is easy to forget in all this interpretive tumult that the pope is still the spiritual icon for one seventh of the world's population, one who has a message that is not hidden beneath layers of ambiguous action and mysterious origin. He offers these wonderful thoughts for the Easter Vigil:

Dear brothers and sisters, let us not be closed to the newness that God wants to bring into our lives! Are we often weary, disheartened and sad? Do we feel weighed down by our sins? Do we think that we won’t be able to cope? Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up: there are no situations which God cannot change, there is no sin which he cannot forgive if only we open ourselves to him.

Here is the essence of Easter, distilled and repackaged to meet the world's needs in this moment. The conquest over death is not merely a soteriological mechanism but a testimony to the efficacy of divine action. There is no recession that is more destructive than death, no sorrow which can match its permanence, no wound which can mirror its absoluteness. It is the content of our greatest tragedies and the aim and consequence of our most viscous sins. Yet God took it and transformed it, not into something marginally less terrible but into life itself. It is precisely because of this confidence display of power that we can turn to salvation, that we can expect our own deaths--the individual and the corporate deaths, the physical and the existential deaths--to be transformed ultimately into the eternal life promised for those who love him. In a world acutely aware of its own sufferings and dogged by its own perpetual inability to cure them through its chosen devices, the pope has echoed the psalmist who finds in the fidelity and potency of God the redemptive power of hope: "This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life."

The Wisdom of Rowan Williams

A recent discussion in the comments lead me to an article by Rowan Williams responding to John Shelby Spong. Amidst a wealth of delightful wisdom, Williams offers this compelling thought on the Resurrection:

For the record: I have never quite managed to see how we can make sense of the sacramental life of the Church without a theology of the risen body; and I have never managed to see how to put together such a theology without belief in the empty tomb. If a corpse clearly marked ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ turned up, I should save myself a lot of trouble and become a Quaker.

This struck me specifically, in addition to Williams' good humor, because of the number of times I have heard people, or heard of people, who have declared apparently uncritically, that if they turned up Jesus body today it wouldn't affect their faith at all. Williams is a better man than I. If that body turned up, I would probably fall from faith entirely.

Customized Christianity: The Resurrection vs. Things That Actually Matter

The following is one of a multi-part response to an article by Jim Burklo entitled "How To Live As a Christian Without Having to Believe the Unbelievable." For an introduction to these thoughts, see Burklo's Bible.
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It is important to remember that faith and practice, theology and ethics, compliment one another. It is equally important to realize that not all theology is created equal. There are certain of the "fantastic stories" Burklo alludes to that should not and were probably never intended to be taken literally (if by literally we mean historically, factually, or scientifically). There are certain dogma which arose late in the life of the church which can be accepted or rejected liberally (and frankly, until the Reformation and Trent, the church universal understood this). Unfortunately, Burklo makes no distinction between different types of biblical data, those whose historicity or factuality are essential to the faith and those whose historicity is an unnecessary hindrance.

No one takes the entire Bible literally, not in the sense we've defined the term. Everyone knows that the Psalms are poetic and that parables are moral fictions. From there a tremendous debate arises. Did a winged creature really destroy Sennacherib's army or is "angel" an all-inclusive way of speaking of a providential act or was the supernatural explanation a pre-modern attempt to understand something like a plague? Who knows? And Burklo rightly points out that it doesn't really matter, because the point of that story is not the mechanism by which Israel was delivered by the causal relationship between Hezekiah's faith and Jerusalem's deliverance, a theme which carries over into the New Testament very well. Whether you think the inability of the Assyrians to take Jerusalem was the result of a supernatural slaughter, natural devastation, or simply economic inability to maintain the siege is irrelevant so long as we all affirm the active God who listens and responds to human need.

The problem is not with admitting that certain stories or certain details can be questioned historically without invalidating the faith. There are whole books of the Bible that I would argue need to be read etiologically (e.g. Genesis) or allegorically (e.g. Jonah) and have no basis in historical or scientific fact. Burklo's problem is his inability to distinguish between the seven days of creation and the resurrection of Jesus.

Instead of caring whether the story of Jesus’ resurrection was a fact or a myth, let’s concern ourselves with things that matter.

That's dumbfounding, at least to anyone who has made it far enough out of the Gospels to find 1 Corinthians 15. Burklo apparently has not, suggesting that:

The key to Christianity is the Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew, chapters 5-7.

Curiously, Burklo doesn't seem to realize that the Sermon on the Mount is offered only in Matthew, while all four Gospels have an account of the resurrection. In fact, it is the resurrection that is the defining event of the Gospels. And why not, since according to Paul, it is the Gospel (unlike Burklo who asserts, without explanation or justification, that the Gospel is "the good news that Love is all that matters"). "If Christ has not been raised," and Paul specifies a bodily resurrection, "then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain."

Paul isn't exaggerating. The resurrection is the central event is Christian thought. It is the purpose of the Incarnation, it is the victory of good over evil, it is the means by which humanity is redeemed, it is the core of the message Christians proclaim to the nations, and it is the future hope for all the redeemed in Christ. There is a reason the creeds include an affirmation of the resurrection of the dead. It is core to everything we do. It defines our anthropology which, in turn, defines how we treat not only ourselves but others. It shapes a theologically valid relationship with the material world. It is our promise of participation in the eternality of God and the sustaining hope of millions who suffer. Without the resurrection, Christ's and ours, there is no Christian faith.

It is interesting from a historical standpoint, that all manner of beliefs seeped into the mainstream of Christian thought at one time or another. The belief that the Son was a creature and that the Spirit was a creature. The belief that Jesus was a human-deity hybrid. The belief that, after a period of pedagogical suffering, even the devil would be saved. Curiously, however, the mainstream of Christianity never entertained a belief that the resurrection did not literally happen. Certain gnostic sects certainly, as part of a broader complicated cosmology in which the Christ was never really here to begin with and therefore never really died and never needed to be really raised. For Christianity, this has been a modern pretension.

I can swallow a lot of skepticism. They could discover today that the whole Old Testament was written by a council of rabbis in the 200 BC, and I would trudge merrily on. You could tell me you don't believe Jesus walked on water or changed water to win or even drew water from a well if you're so inclined, and I can still extend you a sincere, if shaky, hand of fellowship. But a graduate student at a seminary in the Midwest once told a friend of mine, "If they found the bones of Jesus today, it wouldn't affect my faith at all." I'm not there. I'm with Paul; if Christ has not been raised, my faith has been in vain. Burklo needs to understand that. To suggest that the historicity or factuality (or however you want to phrase it) of the resurrection is a matter of no consequence is to misunderstand everything: the structure of ancient narrative, the historical witness of the church, the soteriological and eschatological promises of Christianity, in short, the faith in its entirety.

The church can and should scrub away the accretions of overactive imaginations and the layers of obscurants created by ancient idiom and metaphor. The church also can and must distinguish between those things which can be scrutinized safely and those which, if undone, will mean the end of the faith as we know it. Some of those essentials, particularly the resurrection, may unfortunately fall into Burklo's unbelievable category. This, of course, cuts to the heart of Burklo's problem. A faith which can only believe that which it already considers believable is no faith at all, and a God who can only do that which His creations can reproduce in a laboratory is no God at all.

John of Damascus for Easter

Come, and let us drink of that New River,
Not from barren Rock divinely poured,
But the Fount of Life that is for ever
From the Sepulchre of CHRIST the LORD.

All the world hath bright illumination,—
Heav’n and Earth and things beneath the earth:
’Tis the Festival of all Creation:
CHRIST hath ris’n, Who gave Creation birth:

Yesterday with Thee in burial lying,
Now today with Thee aris’n I rise;
Yesterday the partner of Thy dying,
With Thyself upraise me to the skies.

Easter

Christ is risen!

Easter is always a bittersweet time for me. Just as, paradoxically, the beginning of Lent is always a happy occurrence so with Easter there is a tinge of sorrow. It marks the end of the great fast and my favorite time of year, liturgically. The various Christian bodies will go off to observe their separate traditions (or ignore tradition altogether) and the spiritual unanimity of the paschal season will be lost. This is particularly true now because it will be several years yet before the Eastern and Western Easter calendars align again like they have for the past two years.

The real bitterness, though, is in reflection on my own spiritual state at the end of the fast. Easter and its magnificence throws into sharp relief all my own short comings of the past six weeks. Every time I may have broken fast or neglected the spirit of the fast or even every time I didn’t anoint my head with oil. Recently, I had focused so much of my concern on persevering until the end, that I overlooked the startling craftiness of the devil. The real trial of fasting is not that we might grow weary of it but that we shouldn’t. In our weariness, we meet God. He has a heart for the broken, the weak, and the longing. The real snare that our enemy sets for us is arrogance, the confidence that we can persevere. We become so comfortable in our deprivation that we forget that our success depends on God or else we allow our resolve to slip into the background and begin to fill the void we have created by fasting with a substitute both for the object or behavior we are abstaining from and for the God who ought to be our satisfaction in its stead.

And yet wonderfully, mystically, beautifully therein lies the indomitable joy of Easter. It came anyway. It didn’t matter that I failed on so many levels. It didn’t matter that beneath all the apparent unity in our Christian observance there lingered seeds of discord. It didn’t matter that some didn’t fast and never fast. None of it mattered. None of our sins were ever enough to keep Christ in the grave. Before time and outside of time he knew just how pathetic I would be, but he still created me, still came for me, still died for me, and still rose then and today as a conqueror over the darkness that I am inadequate to overcome.

The veil has been torn, the stone has been rolled away, death has been swallowed up in victory, and Jesus Christ--praise to his name--is risen.

And the church said: amen.

Feast of the Annunciation

Scripture:


Luke 1:46-55

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever

Psalm 119:81-83

My soul faints with longing for your salvation,
but I have put my hope in your word.
My eyes fail, looking for your promise;
I say, “When will you comfort me?”
Though I am like a wineskin in the smoke,
I do not forget your decrees.

History:

C. H. Spurgeon, “The Believer Not an Orphan”

In the absence of our Lord Jesus Christ, the disciples were like children deprived of their parents. During the three years in which He had been with them, He had solved all their difficulties, borne all their burdens, and supplied all their needs. Whenever a case was too hard or too heavy for them, they took it to Him. When their enemies well nigh overcame them, Jesus came to the rescue, and turned the tide of battle. They were all happy and safe enough whilst the Master was with them; He walked in their midst like a father amid a large family of children, making all the household glad. But now He was about to be taken from them by an ignominious death, and they might well feel that they would be like little children deprived of their natural and beloved protector. Our Saviour knew the fear that was in their hearts, and before they could express it, He removed it by saying, “You shall not be left alone in this wild and desert world; though I be absent in the flesh, yet I will be present with you in a more efficacious manner; I will come to you spiritually, and you shall derive from My spiritual presence even more good than you could have had from My bodily presence, had I still continued in your midst.”

Reflection:

The Lord is faithful, which is a comforting thought as the fast wears on and we begin to languish in the desert. The Feast of the Annunication (which, in truth is more of a lightened fast in practice than an actual feast) is rather beautifully and meaningfully situated so near to Easter. While the date of Easter always dances around, the Annunciation is always commemorated precisely nine months before the Nativity. As we approach the climax of Christ’s earthly ministry, his passion and resurrection, and recall his promises to come again and to complete his work on earth, we are reminded that two thousand years ago, in a manger, in a stable, in the little town of Bethlehem God proved that He knows how to keep a promise.

He told the Israelites that He would send someone into the world to overcome sickness and poverty and suffering and, ultimately, death. This is the content of the Magnificat; Mary magnifies God for having fulfilled in the child of her womb all the promises of the prophets. And He was, in fact, faithful, far beyond what could have been imagined. He came himself and, rather than setting up a temporal kingdom of the earthly sort, he inaugurated a spiritual, eternal kingdom in which he invited all men to participate. This is the final promise which finds the first seeds of its completion in the annunciation to Mary.

So we recall two things today. The first is that we are not abandoned in this wilderness to live in a constant state of deprivation and self-denial. Easter is coming and, with it, the glorious culmination of our shared journey with Christ. We will walk with him to the cross, and while he finds only violence there, we will find peace. The trial of Lent, however, is only a microcosm for our greater struggle. We await an even greater day when the truths which are typified in Christ’s resurrection become actualized in our own salvation. The Annunciation reminds us that we serve a faithful God, a God who exceeded the wildest possible hopes and expectations of His people when He sent his only Son in the flesh to conquer death. He will not abandon us in our greater turmoil, in this life which is still very much in the clutches of sin and death. Thanks be to God.

Prayer:

Father in heaven! You speak to man in many ways; You to whom alone belongs wisdom and understanding yet desires Yourself to be understood by man. Even when You are silent, still You speak to him, for You are the one who says nothing, yet speaks in order to examine the disciple; the one who says nothing, yet speaks in order to try the beloved one; the one who says nothing, yet speaks so that the hour of understanding may be more profound. Is it not thus, Father in heaven!

Oh, in the time of silence when man remains alone, abandoned when he does not hear Your voice, it seems to him doubtless that the separation must last forever. Oh, in the time of silence when a man consumes himself in the desert in which he does not hear Your voice, it seems to him doubtless that it is completely extinguished. Father in heaven!

It is only a moment of silence in an intimacy of conversation. Bless then this silence as Your word to man; grant that he never forgets that You speak also when You are silent; give him this consolation if he waits on You, that You are silent through love and that You speak through love, so that in Your silence as in Your word You are still the same Father and that it is still the same paternal love that You guide by Your voice and You do instruct by Your silence.
--Soren Kierkegaard

The Scars in Heaven

It has only recently occurred to me just how strange and fantastic it was that Jesus retained the scars of his crucifixion even after his resurrection. Certainly my view of the resurrection body is significantly tainted by the writings of theologians throughout history as much or more than by Scripture itself, but even in Scripture it is obvious that the resurrected Jesus is something different than the pre-resurrection Jesus. Mary Magdalene cannot recognize him (John 20:11-18), the men going to Emmaus cannot recognize him (Luke 24:13-34), he passes through locked doors (John 20:19), and mysteriously disappears from sight (Luke 24:31). All this is consistent with what Paul says about our own resurrection bodies in 1 Corinthians 15:

The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body...The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.

I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

Historically, there developed a more precise view of the resurrection body as 'supracorporeal.' Consider Nicholas Cabasilas regarding Jesus: "He discards the other features that belong to the body and possesses a spiritual body without weight or dimensions or any other physical conditions." Gregory of Sinai has a similar picture of the resurrection body of Christians: "The body in its incorruptible state will be earthly, but it will be without humours or material density, indescribably transmuted from an unspiritual body into a spiritual body, so that it will be in its godlike refinement both earthly and heavenly." While I certainly ascribe, at least loosely, to those historical conceptions of the resurrected body as somehow supracorporeal, it is hardly debatable that that Jesus, at his resurrection, possessed a refined and somehow different body than he had prior to his crucifixion.

And yet he preserves his scars. I had never thought about it before, and--without a little prompting from Cabasilas--I might never have thought it significant even if it had occurred to me. After all, it may merely be an indication that our resurrected bodies bear resemblance to our earthly bodies, even in their imperfections. They may serve a totally utilitarian function, since it is by seeing the scars--and in the case of Thomas, feeling the scars--that the disciples come to believe. There are certainly a variety of possible explanations, but Cabasilas takes it to mean much more than accident or utility. I am swayed by his interpretation. Referring to the scars, he writes:

He saw fit to cherish them because of His affection for man, because by means of them He found him who was lost, and by being wounded He laid hold on him whom He loved. How else would it have been fitting for an immortal body to retain traces of wounds which art and nature have sometimes eliminated even in mortal and corruptible bodies?...So He determined to preserve in His body the signs of His death and always to have with Him the marks of the wounds which were once inflicted on Him when He was crucified. Thus it might be evident in the distant future that he had been crucified and pierced in His side for the sake of His servants, and together with His ineffable splendour He might regard these too as an ornament for a King.

Cabasilas, in making his first point, eliminates any perception of accident or chance or pragmatism from the presence of the scars. That the scars have endured is a willful act of love on the part of Jesus. They are a testimonial not only for all time but for that eternity which is beyond time: Jesus loved us enough to die for us. They are a freely embraced article of his royal garb which rightly testifies that we have a king who is worthy of our love and honor and praise but who nevertheless deigned to love us first (Rom 5:8).

Yet Cabasilas continues, adding to his argument that the scars are an eternal testimony of Jesus' love that they are also an ongoing act of love toward humanity. That he should continue to wear them in spite of his exalted place is a perpetual reliving of his loving act toward humanity.

As it appears, He had the desire to suffer pain for us many times over. Yet that was not possible, seeing that His [resurrected] body had once for all escaped from corruption, and that He spared the men who would have inflicted wounds on Him...What could be equal to that affection? What has a man ever loved so greatly? What mother ever loved so tenderly, what father so loved his children? Who has ever been seized by such a mania of love for anything beautiful whatever, so that because of it he not only willingly allows himself to be wounded by the object of his love without serving from his affection towards the ungrateful one, but even prizes the very wounds above everything? He greatly honours us, yet it belongs to the greatest honour that He is not ashamed even of the infirmities of our nature, but is seated on His royal throne with the scars which he has acquired from human weakness.

These concluding remarks add a fantastic Christological aspect to the continuance of the scars into the resurrected body. They are an eternal reminder that Jesus has not only dignified humanity by stooping to unite with it but that he has carried that humanity with its infirmities into the heavenly realms. It is a physical witness to the principle that God became man in order that men might become God. All that we are was assumed by Christ, and all that we are has been redeemed by him, exalted to the heavenly realms.

In view of all this, I think to an extent I agree with Cabasilas when he declares that "this is the most astounding thing of all: not only did He endure the most terrible pains and die from His wounds, but also, after He came to life and raised up His body from corruption, He still...bears the scars upon His body and with them appears to the eyes of the angels. He regards them as an ornament and rejoice to show how He suffered terrible things."