“The earliest reference to the resurrection is Saint Paul’s, and he makes no mention of an empty tomb at all. But the fact of the matter is that in a way it hardly mattes how the body of Jesus came to be missing because in the last analysis what convinced the people that he had risen from the dead was not the absence of his corpse but his living presence. And so it has been ever since.” Frederick Buechner, Listening to your Life, p. 102.
“This, then, is the more or less universal witness of the early Christians; that they are who they are, they do what they do, they tell the stories they tell not because of a new religious experience or insight but because of something that happened; something that happened to the crucified Jesus; something that they at once interpreted as meaning that he was after all the Messiah, that God’s new age had after all broken into the present time, and that they were charged with a new commission; something that made them reaffirm the Jewish belief in resurrection, not swap it for a Pagan alternative…” N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking heaven, the resurrection, and the mission of the church, p.57.
How do we embody this resurrection community? We are fearless, bold, humble, and generous. We are alive with hope, not hopelessly dying. I do beleive that nihilism is the last enemy of the gospel. When people lose hope, the will to live follows. Or at least the will to truly live the life that is life; abundant life, eternal life, kingdom of God life. People with little or no hope live exclusively for the now, wallowing in the past--past joys, past regrets, past experiences. Congregations can become nihilistic in their self-perception. There was a golden age. And rather than plan for tomorrow, 'we can't' becomes the paradigm for movement. And we get stuck in a time that has passed. Zion is trying to live like they did 30 years ago. It won't work.
To live in hope is to live free from the sins of the past. It is also to live with a sure vision of the hoped-for future--a reality that is better than now. It is to live now as if that future were already taking hold of us, as if we were already there. To live in hope is to dream with the God who raised His son from the dead. Death does not finish us. Jesus is the end and the beginning. I am alive with hope because something happened that makes no sense but changed the world on a Sunday in first century palestine. May believers come to embody this living hope for a world desperate for a new future, a new story, a better life.
