Practicing Resurrection B
Last week I sent off final proofs on some devotions for Upper Room’s Disciplines 2015. My chosen theme for the week following Easter next year is practicing resurrection. I won’t be sharing what I wrote for Upper Room here at my blog. (You’ll have to order a copy when it is ready.)
What I do want to share here in the coming weeks of Eastertide (50 days between Easter and Pentecost) is why I think churches and people wrestling with faith need new understandings about resurrection. Believing it literally is incompatible with our scientific view of the world. Spiritualizing it leaves the idea hollow and useless. Yet we are surrounded by things dying and dead, desperate for new life and renewed spirit. The big idea is that practicing resurrection is the most compelling way to move inside this central concept of Christian theology and faith. I’ve got some things to learn, and I’m going at the theme in lots of ways: music, stories, photos, poetry, reviews, and of course the challenge of six-word stories.
Your thoughts and questions, ideas and struggles are welcome as we explore together!
May I suggest N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church? I am reading this for Eastertide and am being quite challenged by it. I am not so ingrained (enamored?) with Enlightenment rationalism, that I find a literal resurrection (for both Jesus and humanity) incompatible with (my) scientific understanding.* So, maybe that’s why I find Wright’s argument for Jesus’ bodily resurrection compelling.
*Fantasy literature is my absolute favorite genre of fiction, so maybe that says enough about me to show why a bodily resurrection is not offensive to me.