Real and Earthy Resurrection

Resurrection is as earthy, local and intimate as our sweat and blood, our dreams and nightmares, our drives and passions. It is as real as whatever or whoever drives and drains us, draws and drags us. Resurrection, in fact, is the deepest meaning of everything that brings a smile to our face, a tear to our eyes, a vitality to our bodies, a softness to our voices and a tenderness to our touch. Resurrection is as real as that.

Last Sunday, after the Easter gospel, I waited on the lectern and looked at the people. At such timeless moments I can sometimes feel the relentless rhythms of their hearts, the murmur of harmony, or the turbulence of conflict. This awareness fills me with wonder. These are the times that I see with a painful clarity the utter fallacy of the dualism that underpins so much of our teaching, preaching and evangelising. There are no longer two realities, the mystery of Easter convinces us – one merely human, the other holy; one the church, the other the world; one human, the other divine. In the baby body of the Incarnation, in the destroyed body of the Crucifixion, in the shining human body of the Resurrection – that is the same body in which all dualism, all separateness, all division, has been transcended. To be truly human, it is now established, is to be divine. To be, is to be blessed. To live is to be holy. Everything is Grace.

To believe this is to be transformed into another way of perceiving our identity and our humanity. To believe this is to be subjected to a paradigm shift where we are present to ourselves and to others in an irrevocably transformed way. A veil parts. The stone is moved.

The focus changes. In the light of this disclosure moment, I found it so moving to believe that the lifeless and vibrant, the full and empty, the struggling and hoping people before me last Sunday, were, without doubt, the very heart of the church, the blessed sacrament of the divine presence of the living Christ of the resurrection. God comes to us disguised as our lives. Nothing is just ordinary anymore. Every bush is a burning bush. This incredible revelation is, in fact, the very mystery we celebrate at Eucharist.

At the end of Lent we read, ‘See, I am doing a new thing. I am sending a fresh stream through the desert.’ The Resurrection promises that the dry places will always burst into vibrant life, that the stone will be always rolled away, that nothing good stays dead for long.

Every dream can be stirred into life, every fire rekindled . . . Small wonder that the Celts of old saw the sun dancing over the mountains on Easter morning.

The sun should dance for us, too. Everything is now new and fresh. Our lives are transformed. We have just come through the amazing ceremonies of Holy Week. At the Vigil there is a deliberate assault on the senses, those senses that we call the thresholds of the soul. It is all intensely physical, emotional and spiritual. Every liturgical stop is pulled out to ensure that we do not forget the glimpse we have been given of the meaning of the mystery. Easter then, like Christmas, like Baptism, like Eucharist, the celebration of the body in its wholeness set free – that human, sacred body of ours which is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and which will live, in its entirety, with the still-shining wounded body of Jesus in heaven forever.

Imagine this life-giving whisper coming from the tomb of our stalled heart: ‘I am the Spirit of the Risen Christ. If you dare to believe it, I can set free the dance in your body, the dream in your heart. You can overcome fear – with me: you can forgive every hurt – with me: you can make your life a journey of wonder – with me. With your bodies you can worship each other – with me. Every hope you carry inside you can come true – because with me you can do all things. You can mend a broken world because now, everything is possible. Heaven and earth lies open before you today for the taking. But there is one condition to this glorious transformation – of you, of humanity and all of creation – you must dare to believe it.’

(Already Within pp 47,48,49)