April 8 2007
Background Scripture: Revelation 1:9-20; John 20:1-18; 30-31
Devotional Reading: Romans 14:7-12

When I was a seminary student in the mid-1950s, most funeral sermons I heard spoke of life after death as “immortality.”
Today, to be theologically correct, we are told we should think only in terms of “resurrection.”

Immortality, it is said, is a Greek concept which holds that we do not die, but are only freed of the physical body.

Resurrection, a Hebraic idea, means we totally die and are raised from death by the power and grace of God.

So, there are great debates over immortality versus resurrection, and physical resurrection versus spiritual resurrection and, from the Gospel of John, “eternal life” – a quality of life that, in Christ, we can experience both before and after death.

The resurrected appearances of Jesus in the four Gospels and Paul’s experience on the Damascus road display a considerable diversity of understanding in how the resurrected Christ was experienced.

Anything as vital and lofty as the experience of the risen Christ should not be forced into an experiential straightjacket.
It does not bother me that Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-17) and disciples on the Emmaus road (Luke 24:13-32) did not initially recognize him, nor that in Lk. 24 they are invited to handle his physical body though in Jn. 20:17 Jesus told Mary, “Do not hold me …” Describing our experience of the risen Lord is not like filing an accident report.

Resurrection photos
Someone once suggested this would be more believable if someone could have taken photos of these experiences. But is that our only measure of reality?

Can you photograph the faith that took Jesus to the cross?
Do we all pray to God in the same measurable manner, and is it possible to record the voice of God which speaks deep within us?
In 1956 Life magazine carried an editorial: “The Resurrection cannot be tamed or tethered by any utilitarian test. It is a vast watershed in history, or it is nothing. It cannot be tested for truth; it is the test of lesser truths. No light can be thrown on it; its own light blinds the investigator … But once accepted as fact, it tells more about the universe, about history, and about man’s state and fate than all the mountains of other facts in human accumulation.”

God has given us the spectacular gift of a life beyond death, but many would rather argue about it than use it as He intended.

The Resurrection is not intended for dispute, but for living.
“For the first Christians,” wrote Archibald Hunter, “the paramount miracle was Christ as a present power, not Christ as an admired person in history. I wonder whether we Christians of the 20th century make it basic today.”

That’s what the Gospel of John is trying to tell us about the resurrected Christ: A power for living, not a concept for dispute.

A word of power
Forty-seven years ago on a stormy, cold night in Nuremburg, Germany, I awoke to see a shadowy figure standing at the foot of my bed.

I could not see his face, but I clearly heard him say, “Fear not, for I am with you,” and the bed began to shake violently.

“Aha,” you say, “you were dreaming.”
True, I cannot prove Christ was not a figment of a dream – but in my heart of hearts, I knew he had spoken to me a word of power by which to live my life.

The power of the resurrected Christ comes to us in many different ways so that we too may be witnesses of the Resurrection. And the purpose is not to make us more theologically “correct,” but to give us power to live the lives for which we were created.

Mary Magdalene did not recognize the resurrected Lord at first, but when he said, “Mary,” the stone was rolled away in her mind and she knew it was him. In one way or another, he calls each of us by name so we may have that life in his name.