Where's the Body?

 

Today is the Day of Resurrection, the day Jesus Christ was raised from the dead – not resuscitated, resurrected. We celebrate Christ’s defeat of death, sing praises to Him and rejoice in the greatest of victories. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” There is no time in our lives when the Resurrection is more frequently thought of and discussed than at the time of human death. Christ’s victory is our victory. Death does not win.

 

I suggest to you that thinking of the Resurrection only like this is a mistake on our parts. The Resurrection is the defining moment of human history. So also is the Resurrection the defining moment of every day that we live.

 

Jesus rose from the dead, and He rose not as Spirit but as Human. That is the single most significant aspect of the Resurrection for all human beings in each day of history. The Resurrection was not simply a “God” thing; It was a human thing as well. Jesus’ human Body was raised from the dead. That is so obvious. We talk about that fact of faith, especially on Resurrection Sunday, but we do not think about it. Forty days after the Resurrection, Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven, and His Body went with Him. He went to a place that is unknown to us, a place we cannot imagine or envision. He did not rise merely to some esoteric, spiritual state of being and communion, something akin to perpetual prayer. Jesus took His Body with Him when He ascended. His Body is gone – in some measure, in some form – to a physical state, a physical reality of which this world is but a shadow, a hint of this greater thing to come.

 

Our Christian hope is not set on forgiveness alone; that is the fruit of the Cross. Christian hope is set on the reality that as yet remains unknown to us. The future is promised to us. Indeed, it is a promise of such magnitude that we do not even know how to talk about it. Yet, the promise is still true. The Body is gone. What we see is not all there is.

 

The Resurrection is not simply a single event in the life of Jesus Christ. It is a permanent event for all time. The gates of Heaven – the name of this place we cannot conceive – were opened to receive the God-Man, and they remain open to receive every human being born of God. When the Temple curtain was torn in two at Jesus’ death, the great chasm between Heaven and earth was bridged forever. The barrier between God and the world was destroyed. If we have eyes to see, the true reality, the everlasting and infinite reality, imbues the shadows in which we now live with the light and glory of God. That is how we know He is here. That is how we know Heaven is not just there. Hearts opened by faith begin to see. The veil between our dying world and eternity is rent in two, and the Kingdom of God is spilled into our lives, into our generation, and across the earth.

 

Every day we are given a choice. We can live in the Resurrection; we can participate in the reality that will one day end all evil and absorb all that we know into the greater world of which we now only dream. Or we can live in the finite, the temporary and the dying. We have the choice. The days’ events – whether successful or catastrophic – can measure our lives and our living, or the Resurrection can become life to us. The choice lies before us. From where do we draw life? ‘What we will be we do not yet know, but we will be like Him’ Who rose from the dead. Already, the transformation is started in those who believe.

 

What we can see is not all there is. Jesus’ Body went somewhere, and that somewhere is where our Father reigns in glory, Jesus Christ on His right, and the Holy Spirit on His left. For that place, for that life, our hearts must yearn, never satisfied until we see the Holy Trinity face to face. Our greatest successes become occasions for gratitude and rejoicing, but the not the measure of our life, and especially not who we are. Equally, the greatest of sorrows is still temporary, not more than our Father’s capacity to reach and heal. Our life is truly ‘hidden with Christ’ (Col. 3.3) and whatever we accomplish or whatever we endure will give way one day to the greater reality in which we now participate in small degree, if we know to participate at all.

 

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is for every day in history until the end of the age. Until that great and glorious day when He returns and claims the world for which He died to bring into His glory, we have the choice every morning. Do we choose to live in the reality of the Resurrection, or do we choose to live according to all that is fleeting and mortal? The Body is gone, resurrected and ascended with Jesus Christ, and one day, that place, that mystery we call Heaven, will be revealed as everything true, authentic, and beautiful. The shadow that we call home and to which we hold with tenacious grip will give way to what is real. Then we shall know who we truly are.

 

On that day, we will see each other, not as we do now, but as we really are in Christ. We are created for Heaven, not for the death that holds sway. We are creatures of unimaginable beauty and glory, and we will see that when we are there. We do not know who we are. Like Mary who did not recognize Jesus after His Resurrection, neither do we begin to grasp who we shall be, but we will be like Him, not in some spiritual or qualitative sense, but in our bodies. The Resurrection reminds us daily to live here as we one day will live there – in that place where the Son of Mary lives.

 

In Christ –

© 2011 Servants’ Feast Ministry