Preaching about a man who died and then began showing up again, evidently no longer dead, with a new evolution of the human body, and claiming this resurrection as validation of his claims to be king of his nation, saviour of humanity, and founder of a new world order where humans live empowered by a supernatural spirit to live an entirely different style of life which occasionally ignores the realities of physics or biology or politics…. I feel it should carry a whole different level of energy, challenge, hope, discomfort and urgency than it normally does.
And yet if I was preaching, I have no idea what that would look like.
Maybe I need to explore the reality (or unreality) of this story in my own existence first.
4 replies on “Preaching about the undead”
If I may speak on this subject, as a non-Christian: I think Biblical literalism misses the point of the bible. I think seeing Jesus of Nazareth as an unattainably superior being misses the point of his teachings. I do like to believe that there has been a human being very much like him. And I think that the supernatural accomplishments attributed to him are to be regarded as metaphors that try to appropriately represent the greatness of his deeds and his unyielding kindness in circumstances that quite often were brutal, savage and hopeless. What I draw from this story is that all human beings have the capacity to be every bit as decent, loving, compassionate, forgiving and inspiring – despite all adversity. To me the resurrection of Jesus is not the Biblical story. To me, it is a perpetual accomplishment, that occurs every time somebody strives to draw from that capacity. It is that very capacity, that I would call The Divine. It is in all of us and that’s how I like to interpret the statement that God created us in his image ;)
Hi Juraj,
I appreciate your boldness, as a confessed non-Christian, for addressing this question. I am a Christian and so approach the question somewhat differently, as would be expected. For me, the critical question which must be addressed here concerns whether or not the so-called resurrection actually happened as an event in space and time. If the resurrection actually happened, as I believe it did, then it has all kinds of implications. One of these implications concerns the particularity of Jesus Christ. Why this man? What does it say about him that distinguishes him from all other people, ancient and modern? This would challenge your universalising of the Jesus story.
We cannot, of course, prove the resurrection. But my understanding of the history suggests that the evidence points in this direction, and quite strongly so. The history, and especially the emergence of the primitive church as a resurrection movement, does not make sense without the reality of the resurrection. Anyway, thanks for your comment, and I hope you keep thinking about these things, and reading the gospels.
Grace and peace to you,
Michael.
It is however an uncanny coincidence that I would stumble over your post at this particular time :D
[…] where you think a corpse coming back to life and walking out of a tomb isn’t ridiculous…” At some points of my life I’ve been convinced it’s true, and some points not, and well, eh 🤷‍♂️ That’s not […]