It is almost Ascension Day 2020, but I am still thinking about the resurrection, trying to get my head around what I really, truly believe.

Do I believe in the resurrection of the body?  No.  Not really.  I don’t think so.  I say I believe in it every time I say the Nicene Creed, but I really don’t.

Do I believe in the resurrection at all?   Yes, I think I do.  I am currently reading a book called The Presence of Absence, by Doris Grumbach.  In it, she says that, for her, the culminating event of Jesus’ life was/is the crucifixion.  I find that interesting.  Why would the most important event in the life of Jesus be a painful, torturous death administered by an oppressive, occupying regime on behalf of a terrified established religion?

The great, central message of Christianity surely is not suffering and death, but life everlasting.  If the message had been suffering and violent death, this newborn religious movement would not have grown and survived.  The message is a gospel – a good news.  Violent death is not good news, even if you twist it around and explain it weirdly, as theologians certainly have.

The message of Christianity is that love never dies; the life that was incarnate in Jesus could not and cannot die; death has no more dominion over us.  That is good news!

And surely Peter and John and Andrew and Mary did not really believe that everyone would be bodily raised from the dead as the story seems to say that Jesus was.  How could they believe that?  The first martyr of Christianity, Stephen, did not rise bodily from the dead.  None of the apostles showed up in the body after being executed.

Anyway, as we know, it would be a disaster if every saint who ever died actually came back to live a physical human life on the earth.  We are already overpopulated.  Imagine if a bunch of Christians just refused to actually die!

So what really happened?  Something did, and it was something big, something so amazingly transforming that it attracted hundreds, thousands, millions of followers.

What if John’s story about Mary Magdalene in the garden almost tells us the true story?  She goes to the tomb and finds that the Jesus who changed her life, who was the love of her life, is not there – only the linen grave cloths are there – the outer covering of his body.  The body is empty.  The tomb is empty.  The intense spirit of love that was Jesus of Nazareth is not there.  She had hoped to go and find him sitting there alive – or emerging from the tomb as Lazarus had done.  She had hoped to be the first to embrace the living Jesus, but there is nothing there but an empty body.

The angel asks, “Why are you seeking the living among the dead?”  Good question.  If you want to see and feel and be with the spirit of the living God, you will not find that spirit animating a dead body.

Mary begins to weep uncontrollably.  The love of her life is dead; not alive as he promised.  She has been left alone.  She bumps into the gardener who says, “Woman, why are you crying?”  She barely looks at him as she chokes out her answer.  Then the same man says her name, “Mary,” and she looks at him.  She looks into his eyes, and really sees him.  He is not just a gardener; he cares about her; he has compassion; he wants to help.  And then she gets it.  She makes the connection.  She has an epiphany.  Jesus is alive in the gardener.  Jesus is alive in her, in Peter, in John, in every one of them.  Jesus is alive and God is alive.

I think it is significant that Mary does not drag Jesus back to the upper room with her.  Why would he not go with her?  What kind of friend would take the trouble to come back from the dead, reveal himself, and then just bugger off?  Mary goes back to the disciples alone, and she is not upset that she is alone.  She doesn’t complain that Jesus didn’t want her to touch him.  She doesn’t whine that he didn’t want to come and see them.  Why?  Because the message is not that Jesus is walking around in a garden somewhere after death.  The message is that Jesus is alive everywhere.

This is not some zombie apocalypse; this is something eternal and unchanging.  It is the understanding that the dwelling-place of the spirit of the divine is not outside us but inside us and inside every individual.  Jesus is there.

What about the locked room?  What about the road to Emmaus?  What about the fish picnic on the beach?

The story of the road to Emmaus is similar to the story of Mary’s epiphany.  The disciples do not recognize their companion as Jesus until he breaks the bread when they sit down together after their long, dusty journey.  The familiar action, one of the last acts of Jesus that they witnessed, jolts them.  They suddenly see Jesus in the stranger.  They see that the stranger is Jesus.

The story of the picnic on the beach is the same.  The disciples are too far away from shore to really see the man who calls out to them.  It is only when they come in and sit with him, sharing a simple meal in the open air, as they did with Jesus many times, that they recognize him.  Jesus is there, sharing with them, chatting with them, smiling at them.  Jesus is alive as they sit on the beach with the man.

The appearance of Jesus in the locked room is different.  But perhaps this is the most important epiphany.  All the disciples are together and suddenly Jesus is also there with them.  They can feel him and see him and hear his words.  He is alive with them.  Thomas, who was not there, says he will have to actually put his hands in the wounds in order to believe, and the story is so beautiful that Jesus allows him to do that.  But another way of reading this story is that Thomas is still dwelling on the crucifixion.  He cannot see or feel the resurrection within himself.  He needs proof.  I want to make the movie in which the disciples stand in a circle around him and say, “Jesus is here.  Jesus is alive here and now.  Touch my hand.  That is the hand of Jesus.  Touch my brow.  That is the brow of Jesus.  Touch my heart.  That is the wounded heart of Jesus.  We are Jesus and you are Jesus.  Jesus is alive.  Believe.  You have seen Jesus in the flesh.  Blessed are all those who will never have experienced Jesus in the flesh and yet still believe.”

I think this idea that God is within transformed those frightened men and women.  I think they were inspired – literally – to see the spirit of God in their own hearts and minds, as they had seen the spirit of God incarnate in the living Jesus of Nazareth.

And then, they must have realized what Jesus meant when he promised them that they would be able to do whatever they asked in his name.  Peter and John are approached by the crippled man at the Beautiful Gate.  They have never tried to access the power of God before, but they decide to take that leap in faith and try.  They lay their hands on the man, and he is healed.  That must have been an amazing moment.  That must have been a transforming moment.  They were fishermen.  Practical people, who in one moment of madness, left their nets to follow an itinerant rabbi.  Now they had the power of Jesus inside them, accessible, and they could heal the sick.  That would change your life!

So, this moment in the history of Christianity should really be called Epiphany.  This is the moment of the greatest epiphany of all – not the recognition of God inside a tiny baby, but the recognition of God in every one.