Seeing the Resurrection

Jesus has been raised Paul says, and he's not the only one saying this.  Jesus appeared to many.  Jesus was seen.  In fact, Paul quotes what looks like an early creed that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again.  How do we know this is true?  People saw it and they passed on what they had seen.

Paul gets really exercised about resurrection because the Corinthians were saying the spirit was more important than the body, and that once you died, the body rots.  He doesn't give much of an argument to convince them otherwise, but the crux of his point is that the gospel promise is that death is not the last word, that the body matters, even in the next life, that this life has a much bigger horizon that we commonly think.  

There is a More.  There is a More that doesn't diminish with sickness or injustice or death.  The ultimate word is not a No, but a Yes that stands beyond the grave, beyond disease and evil, beyond all things imaginable.  And that Yes has been seen.

How do we know?  We know because people long ago saw something More in Jesus of Nazareth.  They witnessed his life over death and became witnesses of it.  Generation after generation they received this message and handed it on, like a runner's baton - year after year until the baton came to you, to me, to this parish.  And our choice is whether or not we pass it on.

Why would we pass it on?  Why should we trust this tradition?  In truth, Beloved, there is no reason to pass it on - unless we too have encountered, experienced, seen the Lord.  In the Temple or in a boat, it only makes sense to follow Jesus if we sense there is something More.  Otherwise, we're just fools.

And that's the rub.  There's no guarantee that we're not all fools.  There's just an invitation - to trust.  To have faith.  To see.  I don't mean give up our questions or our objections, even about the resurrection.  I mean trust that what Isaiah, Peter, and Paul saw is somehow related to what we have seen, what we will see, what we want to see.  We just ask for eyes to see, and ears to hear.  So that our mouths can speak, and pass it along.