Dr. Witherington has posted on his blog the second installment of his series titled, The Gospel of Jesus.

CHAPTER TWO: A DEEP CONVERSATION AND A DISTURBING DREAM

Miryam had sensed at once something was amiss when Jesus barely touched his supper. He was far too preoccupied and was not his normal jovial, joyful self. He seemed distant, reserved tonight as he said the Kaddesh prayer before he broke the bread as the head of the family. Could it have been the news about John that caused this change? She must ask him later. The evening had passed quietly, and Jesus had helped with putting the youngest two girls to bed, singing psalms with them until they fell asleep.

Afterwards, Miryam approached Jesus, holding a small lit hand lamp, and said “let us go out into the courtyard, so I can listen to what is on your heart.” Jesus sighed a sigh of relief. His mother had always been able to sense his moods, and he realized that this night, rather than in the morning the opportunity had arisen to have their talk. Walking away from the house the two sat down on the other side of the olive press.

Check it out.

The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. 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. So it is written: “The first Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 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.

—1 Corinthians 15:41-50 (TNIV)

If you are like me, as I grew up in one of the mainline Christian denominations (and here I am not concerned about which one because they all tended to behave the same), I encountered a lot of muddled thinking about the Resurrection, in part because it became fashionable at that time to reject the plain meaning of passages like this one and assign to it a “deeper meaning” (whatever that means). This resulted in me thinking that “life after death” meant me going to heaven and living for eternity with God in a disembodied state, a prospect that I confess didn’t always sound all that appealing. Ugly as my body might be, I have grown attached to it and didn’t look forward to not having one.

But here we have some of the NT’s clearest teaching on the bodily resurrection. When Paul talks about a spiritual body, he is not talking about some kind of disembodied state. No, he is talking about a transformed body, patterned after our Lord’s resurrection body, a body that will be indestructible and impervious to disease, decay, and deformity. He is talking about life after life after death, the time after Christ returns and those who died in him are raised with him.

Whatever our resurrection (spiritual) bodies look like, they will be bodies of some kind, equipped to live in God’s New Creation, in his new heavens and new earth. This is a vision I can eagerly embrace. We have transformation of our old mortal, corruptible bodies but we also have continuity in our new spiritual (resurrection) bodies. Did you catch that in Paul’s writing today? That is why Paul tells us flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (the New Creation). Our bodies are corruptible and mortal. They will die and cannot live for eternity the way our new resurrection bodies will.

Paul is not saying that God hates our mortal bodies. After all, God created us (and our bodies). Why would God hate what he created? Rather, Paul is painting a glorious picture of the time when Christ returns to consummate his saving work and God reveals his New Creation in which there will never be any kind of brokenness or hurt or sorrow. What a wondrous promise this is! No wonder the early Christians lived such joyous lives! Do you?

In the meantime, however, as we await Christ’s return and the redemption of our bodies, Christian teaching on the Resurrection must lead us to value God’s creation here and now because we know God plans to redeem his good but fallen creation, just like he plans to redeem his good but fallen creatures. We have Christ’s blood shed for us and his mighty Resurrection as proof of this. Consequently, we need to get to work to help God in his redemptive work. We need to strive for justice and peace and sound ecological practices. We must be good stewards of God’s creation and use his resources wisely and reasonably. We must take care of and honor our own bodies. The promise of bodily resurrection does not give us warrant to abandon God’s created world. Rather we must put on Christ so as to allow God to use us to help him redeem his creation until he comes again to finish his mighty work once and for all.

This is a compelling vision of God’s great love for us and his mighty acts through Jesus. Once we get our minds wrapped around the Christian teaching of the bodily resurrection, we surely will find power and  hope with which to live.

Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

How great was your  love for us, O great Father, for you did not spare your own Son but gave him up to save us sinners! Jesus-God who alone was free among the dead (free to lay down his life and free to take it up again) became for us both victor and victim. He freed us from slavery and made us  your children. We might have despaired of ourselves if he had not come to dwell among us.

—Augustine, Confessions, 10.43.69

O God, who for our redemption gave your only begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by, his glorious resurrection has delivered us from the power of the enemy, grant us to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him, in the joy of his resurrection, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

—Gregory the Great

An angel descended and rolled back the stone. He did not roll back the stone to provide a way of escape for the Lord but to show the world that the Lord had already risen. He rolled back the stone to help his fellow servants believe, not to help the Lord rise from the dead. He rolled back the stone for the sake of faith, because it had been rolled Over the tomb for the sake of unbelief. He rolled back the stone so that he who took death captive might hold the title of Life. Pray, brothers, that the angel would descend now and roll away all the hardness of our hearts and open up our closed senses and declare to our minds that Christ has risen, for just as the heart in which Christ lives and reigns is heaven, so also the heart in which Christ remains dead and buried in a grave. Christ the man suffered, died and was buried; as God, he lives, reigns, is and will be forever.

—Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 75.4

He humbled himself, according to the Scriptures, taking on himself the form of a slave. He became like us that we might become like him  The work of the Spirit seeks to transform us by grace into a perfect copy of his humbling.

—Cyril of Alexandria, Festal Letter 10.4

For since eating is proper to them that live this present life, of necessity the Lord by means of eating and drinking proved the resurrection of the flesh to those who did not acknowledge it to be real.

—Theodoret of Cyr, Dialogue 2