This is the day when we Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Trying to understand this is a bit like trying to understand four-dimensional mathematics. While it is certainly possible to talk about such a creature, even write the equations out, it is actually impossible to create a physical representation of such equations. The so-called four-dimensional cube - the teseract - exists only as a theoretical construct for the very practical reason that there is no fourth physical dimension for the next set of angles to project 90 degress out from. Does a teseract exist? The equations certainly say so.
The analogy, like all such, is imperfect. The risen Christ is a reality for us; but, like the teseract, of what that reality consists is something we cannot grasp. Part of the problem in dealing with the question of the resurrection of Jesus is the simple fact that this is not something for which we have any categories for understanding. This is not a resuscitation, a "coming back to life" in the way medical science does for us. It isn't anything anyone has experienced, before or since. That it is, we declare without fear. What it is, well, how do you talk about something for which there not ony is no precedent, but no understanding?
Jesus tried with the Sadducees, who tried to trip up Jesus with questions about the law and its applicability after the resurrection. Paul tried in his letter to the Corinthians when he wrote about "spiritual bodies", although one gets the sense from reading the passage in the fifteenth chapter that Paul is straining to make sense without conceding the completely "new" involved. When presenting various bits of resurrection accounts, there are hints of this wholly new reality in the confession that various people who knew Jesus did not recognize him. How could they? They were confronted not with the Jesus with whom they were familiar, but Jesus raised from the dead. Not "brought back to life" like Lazarus, say, or the boy raised by Elijah in the Old Testament, or the girl raised by Jesus. This is something wholly new, wholly different - a taste of what is to come.
We stand in the light of this new day, this day when we remember that everything has, indeed, changed, and rather than sit around and try to figure out "the physics of resurrection", say, or "the biology of the New Creation" - we need to declare the reality of the resurrection for us. We need to live as if this new reality were completely around us - and have eyes to see where it peeks at us through the shadows.
We need to have the faith that stands in the graveyard and does a little dance. The grave upon which we dance is our own. Not just the little plot of land in which our dead bodies will be placed (or, in my case, where a little marker will be placed because my ashes will be scattered somewhere); but this whole world whose first unspoken assumption is that this little plot of land is the final answer. We see it in our politics. We see it in our culture. We see it in our medical science where death, not dehumanization through the imposition of technology, is "the enemy". We see it in our art. We try to shield our children from the reality of death, claiming "they won't understand", when I have come to remember and see in my childrens' eyes and words that there isn't much to understand, and they get it just fine. Just as I did.
How hard is it to understand? It is part of our set of reality, after all.
Resurrection, though . . . Just dance, man. Find the beat and go.
