The Dead Will Be Raised
Photo by Pisit Heng from Unsplash
Two Saturdays ago I attended a funeral. My older son’s best friend, Jimmy, lost his mother. She went to bed and never woke up. Her name was Betsy, and she was a faithful Christian, wife, mother, and teacher.
I first met Betsy when my son Luke was in third grade. Luke was beginning to struggle in school. Every day he would come home and say he hated school. I won’t go into all the problems, but my wife, Harriet, and I were becoming quite concerned. As an assistant professor in a freestanding seminary I wasn’t exactly raking in the dough. Private school seemed out of the question. Full-time homeschooling would have been a stretch as well. My younger son, who has Down syndrome, requires a great deal of extra attention, and he wasn’t in school yet. After some prayerful searching, my wife and I found a school called Dominion Academy of Dayton. It offered a classical Christian curriculum, and we could afford it if we were careful. We went for a visit, and that is where Luke met Jimmy. They ran off together while Harriet and I spoke with some of the teachers, one of whom was Betsy. She taught elementary school, and she would soon become one of Luke’s teachers, one of several over the years who would slowly, patiently, day after day, work to form their students intellectually and spiritually.
Saints: Remembered and Raised
At her funeral, I thought about how many students Betsy had shaped over the years. Many were there in attendance to pay their respects, express their gratitude, and honor her life. I began to reflect on the people who had sown into my life as well--my parents, my grandmother, nursery school workers, Sunday school teachers, scoutmasters, pastors, and others. Across the world and across time there are faithful servants who spend their years in service to Christ, raising up the next generations, teaching the faith of the church, teaching young believers to pray, reading aloud the stories of Scripture, and correcting the wayward. These women and men are rightly called saints. Their labors will not often be recorded in the annals of church history, but there is no church history without them. Most will not be remembered like the towering figures of centuries past--say, Augustine of Hippo or Julian of Norwich--but God remembers them, and God will raise them up on the last day.
God remembers them, and God will raise them up. Back in grad school I read a piece by Charles Hartshorne in which he cast Christian eschatology as eternal preservation in the divine memory. We “live” forever because God always remembers us. I suppose this is right as far as it goes. It just doesn’t go far enough. God does remember us. Since God’s love is eternal, how could it be otherwise? But the expression of that love is not limited to the divine memory. It is, rather, a participation in the divine life. 2 Peter 1:4 teaches us that we become “participants of the divine nature,” and the divine nature is eternal. When we participate in the life of God, we transcend the finite limitations of the present age. We partake of life eternal. We are, quite literally, saved from sin and death.
Paul writes in Romans 8:9-11,
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
We have to understand that, for Paul, “flesh” and “spirit” are ways of talking about the unredeemed self and the redeemed self. Apart from the cross of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, sin has free reign, and the consequence of sin is death. But life in the Spirit is different. In fact, because of the work of the Spirit, “Christ is in you.” Jesus Christ, who is perfect righteousness, is alive in us. And thus we have life. Death now has no power.
As Charles Wesley put it, “Made like him, like him we rise.” Christ truly died, and he truly rose. The tomb was empty. His resurrection body was not entirely the same as his mortal body. He told Mary not to hold him (John 20:17). He could pass through locked doors, and yet he still bore the marks of the crucifixion (John 20:19-20, 27). He would share table with others, blessing and breaking the bread (Luke 24:30), and at one point he even made breakfast (John 21:9-12). In his resurrected form, he could be hard to recognize (Luke 24:16; John 20:14), but he was nevertheless the same Jesus (Luke 24:31; John 21:16). Because we have been made like Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we will rise like Christ. Our bodies will not be the same, but they will be bodies nonetheless (1 Cor 15:35-58). “We will not all die, but we will all be changed” (1 Cor 15:51). Christ’s resurrection anticipates our own resurrection. He is the first fruits of those who have died (1 Cor 15:20). Our new life in the present sets the stage for eternal life in the age to come.
If There Is No Resurrection
Years ago I sat in on a class at a church for people new to the United Methodist tradition. One of the participants asked if Methodists believe in eternal life. The ordained elder leading the course replied simply, “Well, I don’t.”
I’ve thought about that incident often over the years. There are so many problems with this minister’s response to the question about eternal life it would take a series of articles to unpack them all. What comes to mind at the present, though, is its cruelty. This minister did not mean to be cruel, but he was. To take away the hope of eternal life--within the very context in which people rightly go to find it--is cruel. Consider the person who asked the question. Perhaps she had just lost a parent. Perhaps someone she loved had just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. The empty promises of consumerism and image-maintenance that occupy our days in Western culture will offer her nothing. Finally she realizes this. She decides to come to church on Sunday, perhaps even out of a sense of desperation. She enters a class taught by an ordained representative of the church, surely a man of experience and learning.
“Do Methodists believe in eternal life?”
“Well, I don’t.”
What is this response, if not cruel? True, I have imagined the scenario leading up to this question, but I would be willing to bet that some variant of it has played out more times and in more churches than we care to admit. As I said, I’m sure this minister did not mean to be cruel. He was, in fact, a caring and kind person. But he had imbibed a theological vision, common within mainline Protestantism, that rejected this most central promise of our faith: eternal life.
If there is no resurrection, says Paul, then we most of all are to be pitied (1 Cor 15:19). Indeed, without the hope of the resurrection we are a pitiable, deceived, and doomed lot. These short lives we live are simply futile exercises in mitigating the pain that unavoidably attends our existence. If Christ is not raised, if we are not raised, then our future is not one of eternal life, but eternal death. As Flannery O’Connor once wrote, if the resurrection is just a symbol, then to hell with it.
The Strength of Our Faith
As Jimmy spoke at his mother’s funeral, his voice broke once or twice. It is so very hard to say goodbye to those we love. But I sat in admiration of the strength of this young man, a twenty-year-old sophomore in college. He spoke with the confidence of one who knows the living God, the God who promises us eternal life. I was so proud of him. He spoke out of a faith that had been tended by the care of Christian parents, the weekly rhythms of faithful church attendance, the formation of Christian education, the support of Christian friends. After the funeral, he and my son embraced for a long time and shed tears together. I felt tears well up in my own eyes, but these were tears of gratitude for the friendship of two brothers in Christ showing love for one another in the midst of life’s suffering. It is common today to hear stories of the church’s failures, but sometimes the body of Christ gets it right.
Last year I turned fifty years old. I have fewer days ahead than I do behind. When the Lord calls me home, I want my children to know--not just to hope, but to know--that death is not the end. We will be together again. The resurrection of the dead is not just a symbol, nor is it the wishful fantasy of those who are too weak to face the fact of death’s finality. It is the victory that Christ won for us by conquering sin and death. It is the unavoidable consequence of our participation in the divine life. It is nothing less than the sure promise of the living God whose love for us is eternal.
David F. Watson is Lead Editor of Firebrand. He serves as Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.