Reflections on Resurrection Faith

Originally published as “On Death and Resurrection” on March 27, 2005

Joyful Easter Season. Fifty thousand years of accumulated experience by the 70 – 100 billion Humans who have lived on this planet have led us to a certain knowledge of at least one thing:

The dead don’t return.

Oh, sure. Almost every culture that ever existed and almost every person who has ever lived believed in some form of life after death. This belief continues today. But while the dead may live on somewhere else, the dead stay dead. They may appear as spirits or ghosts, but they never return.

Accepted practices for disposing the corpse exist in every culture. In some cultures even the  almost  dead were buried to protect their transitioning spirits from the snares of demons. Imagine fearing the transition from this world to the next so much that you would bury alive those near to death. It was an act of love.

The journey from life to death, from here to there is universally understood to be irreversible. Once the living pass over, they are gone forever. The dead do not return. The whole world in every time and place have known the reality and permanence of the final transition.

This universal knowledge binds all mankind together at a primal level. This is what we know. It is our common lot.

The story of Jesus is rooted in an event that defies that which we – the entirety of the human race – have come to know with certainty.

I love the understated conclusion of Mark’s version of the life of Jesus. After the crucifixion, some women go to tend to Jesus’ corpse. But something unexpected happens. The stone has been rolled away and they experience a theophany. They are told that Jesus isn’t there. He is risen. And here’s the conclusion that I love:

“Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

That’s how Mark’s version ends.
So subtle. So terrifying.
So open to questions.
What if what we have come to know with certainty is certain no more?
Run, friends. Tremble.
Things are not as they seem.

Others posts in the Reflections on Easter series…
What Happened to the Other Guy?
The Walking Dead
The Voyage Home

Series Blurb…
I write a lot about the future. As we approach Easter 2015, I wanted to write about the past, specifically the resurrection of Jesus and a few other directly related topics. As always these reflections may be slanted towards the future. After all, that’s where the resurrected Christ comes from.

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Originally published as “On Death and Resurrection” on March 27, 2005