I shared this in church today…
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To answer the question, I wanted to start out by talking about the human body…
There would be no story of the Resurrection – no story of Jesus transcending suffering and death – without the story of the human body.
The human body – the baseline of all human experience – is closely associated with hardship, limitation, and disenheritance.
It is the human body which anchors us to this imperfect world fraught with violence, colonial attitudes, and indifference towards the other.
For those suffering at the hand of the misguided – the body is a profound liability, an inescapable ground.
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But there is another important plotline in the story of the human body.
The product of millions of years of evolution, the human body is a remarkably complex and potent technology.
Our bodies have the capacity to consciously design themselves and their environment.
I think all of us can marvel at our body’s ability to learn, grow, adapt, and create.
As a personal trainer, I have watched up close as my clients work to turn themselves into healthier, more sustainable individuals.
I have watched their bodies get stronger, more efficient, more useful and alive.
So while our bodies do anchor us to this imperfect world, they are very much equipped with all the tools required to change it…
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This is narrative backdrop against which the Resurrection introduces a new possibility for humanity.
In the book of John, Jesus foreshadows the Resurrection by telling the crowd: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
In this statement, Jesus collapses the sacred and symbolic connotations of a holy site – a temple – onto his physical being.
He turns his body into a signifier for Divine Reality.
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Earlier in the book of John there is a beautiful passage about the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among humanity.
In some sense the Resurrection reverses this Word-to-Flesh metaphor that describes Jesus.
Instead of divine Word becoming flesh, the Resurrection is an expression of flesh becoming divine word.
In the story of the Resurrection, Jesus embodies both a top-down and bottom-up dimension to creation.
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I believe the Resurrection is an example of what theologian Paul Tillich calls the New Being. Tillich says:
Later in the same essay, Tillich goes on to say:
I believe the Resurrection points to this New paradoxical reality which Tillich speaks of.
And I believe it is the New Being which could shift humanity towards this New Reality.
It is through the Resurrection that New Being writes a new script for humanity, a new plot line in the ancient story of human body.
New Being renders the divine and the human as two aspects of the same paradox – two sides of the same mobius strip.
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One of my favorite thinkers, Joseph Campbell once said “I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”
This has always resonated with me and I think it resonates with the Resurrection.
In my mind, what we understand as the meaning of life will always be based in the world of thought and epistemology, but the experience of being alive is based in the world of the body, the most integral and universal of human artifacts.
I don’t believe Jesus came to teach us the meaning of life, I believe he came to show us how to be more alive: how to hack finite existence and orient our existence towards transcendence.
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So, summing up, this is what the resurrection means to me…
It’s an example of how our limited being can take on the structures of Ultimate Being, how flesh can become Word.
It’s an open call to humanity – not to think our way into the meaning of life – but to participate in the experience of being more alive.
It’s an open challenge to inch our way around the paradoxical mobius strip of existence, always open to redesign as we cl
ose in on the experience of being ultimately alive.
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Most importantly, I believe the Resurrection means moving Christianity beyond Christianity and into the mystery and wonder of the New Reality…the New Heaven, the New Earth, and the New Jerusalem.
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I recommend Kevin Kelley’s Technium post ‘Upcreation’ as related reading.
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I love it when I pop in to visit and find an unexpected guest. The Resurrection? Next to pretty much any other topic? Gutsy. Who says science and religion can’t coexist together on the same blog? It would be interesting for you to expand on how having the experience of being alive relates to the newness of Heaven, Earth, and Jerusalem. Does it change their reality or how we percieve them? And how is it that Christianity in particular promotes that experience? Also, you talk about the body versus the mind but amazingly make no mention of the soul. It would be nice to see where you locate it in relation to the other two.
Maybe they asked those questions in church…
Nasreen
Bro, I’ve known for a long time that you’re brilliant, but I didn’t expect that. I dig it. I agree we’ve got to think about paradox if we’re to begin to grasp such mysteries. Really like the concept of the body as a vessel that both docks us and lets us explore new worlds. By the way, I’m an English major, but I might hire you if I ever write a book.