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A quick thought: If the Resurrection is real, then “Jesus lives” is a political statement.
William Stringfellow once wrote this: “The essential and consistent task of Christians is to expose the transience of death’s power in the world.” Indeed, the power of death is far-reaching in the kingdoms of the world, for it is from death and the fear of death that the State ultimately derives its influence. Governments are founded on violence, which has as its ultimate manifestation death itself. To deny the power of death (as Jesus did!) is to challenge, in effect, the underlying principle of the State. Thus, to say that Jesus lives is to make a statement with drastic real-world political ramifications.
If death is the final expression of violence and destruction, resurrection surely is the final expression of non-violence and transformation. Thus, the basis of Christian ethics (nonviolence/transformation/overcoming-evil-with-good) is contained in the narrative of Jesus himself, rather than in any set of abstract philosophical-ethical propositions.
Related: Creeds and Ethics – Towards a Narrative Christology
This post is part of a series where I’m sharing some of my reflections from my senior project, for which I spent three full days in solitude at Lake Hiwassee, NC. For a fuller explanation, see the introductory post.
On the first full day of my project, I decided to go for a run. After some time, I turned off onto a side road and came to a tiny, old, overgrown cemetery. The cold, grey headstones were often illegible, and some seemed never to have had anything written on them at all. Many were tilted, crumbling, ready to fall. Yet this cemetery was hardly a place of death. Indeed, what astonished me about it immediately was how much life there was. Pine trees were growing. Moss spread throughout. Bees buzzed nearby and ants clambered along.
Lichen grew on the gravestones, eating away at them in the slow progress of time (though all years are but a blink in the eternity those stones represented). Gravestones, to most people, symbolize death – but right there, on those crumbling markers, new life was sprouting.
I’m one of those Christians who believe in a literal resurrection from death. But I also believe in resurrection as a metaphor, as an idea with incredible power. I saw resurrection today; I saw new life coming from death, new hope springing out of what must have been great sadness. I saw graves, and though there were bodies in them, those graves were empty.
Resurrection is all around us.
