And Most of Us Just Thought We Died and Went to Heaven
The Resurrection of the Dead in Michelangelo's Last Judgement
For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day…Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
- John 6:40, 54
One of the driving questions of Christianity in last 2000 years has been “Where will you go when you die?” (I might of made up the “last 2000 years” part, so if you feel particularly perturbed by that, you can substitute any number that is at lest over 200). In fact, forget Christianity, it has been the driving question of the West for centuries. Thanks to our Judeo-Christian roots almost everybody thinks of their future life in the terms of “going” and “dying.”
This of course would be okay (in fact excellent for evangelism since even the non-Christian were already spouting out your own lingo, hopes and questions) if this was the language the bible used to speak about the afterlife. The problem is, other than the fact that the Bible doesn’t use the word ‘afterlife,’ is that the Bible does not really speak of ‘going’ either. While we all talk about “going to heaven,” “going to hell,” the “sweet chariot coming for to carry us home,” and being a “pilgrim in the earth” (a word that has picked up a little too much baggage ever since the Mayflower but nonetheless vouches for the fact that Catholics were not the only ones to wear funny hats) the bible is more ready to speak of “waiting” “coming” and the really kicker; “resurrection.”
In a manner which is about as foreign to us as ancient Greek or Hebrew (though I will praise Richard Liantonio for trying to make ancient Greek all a little less foreign to us all), the Bible presents the future hope not that someday you will die and your ‘immortal soul’ will be whisked to that “Spirit in the Sky” but that instead when you body hits the grave it won’t stay there but on a glorious future and eschatological day (actually ancient Greek, from eskhatos ‘last,’ referring to the study of the last things. I could write a whole post on how that word can be used) a trumpet will sound and all those whose hope was in YHWH, maker of heaven and earth, will arise from the dead to new glorified bodies that do not know death, darkness, sin, or decay.
Now, you might say, everyone believes that, it’s in the creeds, (First Council of Constantinople 381 AD “we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”) my response to that would be “you know the creeds?” (Extra points if you come from a non-liturgical Protestant or Charismatic background). So yes, it turns out that the resurrection is in the creeds, but most do not think of it as their primary hope. The Resurrection of the Dead is sort of like the lollipop the waiter brings you after the meal, its an add-on to the real reason you came, and since no one can look cool sporting a dum-dum sticking out of their mouth, it tends the evoke the response of “now what do I want this for?”
The resurrected body sort of becomes that moth eaten suit of your grandpa’s that you have to lug around everywhere because your mother won’t let you throw it away, even though no one really wants and is darn ugly to boot (a corduroy suite, seriously?). When all we have been told about life after death is some cloud covered place of gold, whiteness and light screaming of a bad gospel music video from the eighties it might come to quite a shock that this is not really the way in which the “place Christians go when they die” looks like (mostly because that is not really something the bible talks about that much). Whatever the intermediate state (that time between when you buy the farm and that Resurrection Day) looks like, the bible seems to make it rather clear (based on its relative silence on the intermediate state) that it is not the Christian hope.
Course, the problem about actually saying this is rather obvious, the Christian hope then, unfortunately is, well, not the Christian hope. And as it turns out, when people spend their whole lives hoping for something they seem to respond a little strongly when you tell them the thing they are hoping for is, well, not what the Bible tells them they should be hoping for. So more than telling people just that their hope is wrong, let us introduces, as Hebrews says, not just a different hope, but a “better hope” (pretty sure I am taking this phrase out of context, check out Hebrews 7:19 to prove me wrong).
And that is the thing; the Resurrection is a better hope. The reason, because it addresses one of the fundamental problems concerning the Christian hope: that, well, it was dubious whether or not it really should be called hope. Lets just admit it, we saw the pictures, heard the stories; the white flowing robes, the clouds, the harps, all that gold, and while the choir got up to sing another song about our heavenly abode we smiled, sang along, and pushed to the back of our minds that voice screaming “I never want to go there.”
The reason I long for the resurrection is because it is not some ethereal pie in the sky neverland where I am suppose to be happy and yet have no basis for why other than the fact that Jesus is there. And while being in a 4×4 cell in complete darkness with Jesus would be better than all the beautiful glorious wonders of the world without Jesus, that doesn’t keep me from wanting to avoid incarceration as much a possible. I long for resurrection because as much as I sometimes am frustrated with my body (I am sort of sick as I write this) I still love the physical world, I love texture and feeling and rough sawn wood and nature glens and rivers and sun and stars and somehow being with Jesus without those things wouldn’t really be like being with Jesus, mostly because it wouldn’t be like being.
We need to forget the old hope our hymns, gospel songs, and old-time preachers were trying to sell us and embrace an older, better hope that the bible talks about. We sang “Give me that Old-Time Religion” but the religion that was “good for the prophet Daniel” was the resurrection from the dead. Death is not just a transition to a better world; it is an unnatural terrorists which violently rips the fabric of reality. Going to haven does not make death better, because death is not something that can just be merely redefined. The Lord came not just to save souls, but to save people; body, soul, and spirit. He did not come to redefine death but instead to destroy it. The resurrection of the dead is, at the end of the day (and the beginning of a new day) the destruction of this last enemy which is death. The Hope of Humanity is not going away to escape a world of death, it is New Creation, Resurrection, invading the present age and destroying that last enemy named Death.
