Imagine living in Old Testament times. Imagine your mortal vulnerability to the mosquito, the amoeba, the lion, childbirth, appendicitis, leprosy, etc. For the ancient, death stalked everyone and made far fewer allowances for wealth, geography, race, age or gender than it does now. Imagine facing the death of a child, mother, father, spouse or friend while living in the Old Testament times. What comfort would you have? What scriptures would you lean on?
The Pentateuch? Sorry, you’re on your own. The patriarchs spoke of being "gathered to their fathers," but that could easily have referred to joining them in the grave. Similarily, in the Historical Books, David expects to join his dead son, but what type of life does he expect?
The first clear vision of a New Testament conception of the resurrection comes from a homeless guy scraping his boils with a discarded piece of pottery and contemplating the death of his children and the abandonment of his wife:
"I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God." – Job 19:25,26
But how was this read by early Jews? The poetic rantings of a man half-mad with grief? Why don’t we hear more of this kind of talk in the Old Testament?
Then, Jesus busts on the scene. He raises a widow’s son, Jairus’ daughter and even Lazarus after three days in the tomb. But a Jew could easily have pointed backward to Elijah and said, “He's just another prophet with special powers. How pitiful that all this guy is doing is giving people who are all going to die a few extra years. Isn’t this guy just postponing the inevitable?"
But with Lazarus, Jesus offered the resurrection to everyone—not just those who were fortunate enough to die while he was walking the earth, those whose friends were persistent enough to drag him to their graves. It seems that people in Jesus’ time were just as clueless about the hereafter as people nowadays are—they had superstitions about ghosts (see their surprise at Jesus walking on the water and Peter’s return from prison, etc.)
“I am the resurrection and the life," he said. "He that believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”
They must have known he wasn't talking about what happened to Lazarus. Jesus likely attended many funerals in the course of his ministry--without raising any of them from the dead.
So, the best way that Jesus could debunk their misunderstandings was to show them:
Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, calls Jesus the “firstfruits” of the resurrection—the model upon which our own resurrection is based.
"But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming, then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death." - 1 Corinthians 15:20-26
Jesus possesses a body more real than ours, more fit for eternal realities—able to enjoy the stuff of earth (e.g. eating fish) yet not limited by its substance (e.g. walking through walls.) Our current bodies could not begin to handle the rarified air of heaven on earth. I would imagine we'd be like the weird oil fish of Lake Baykal in Siberia. Accustomed to the crushing depths of the mile-deep lake, when they are caught, exposed to air and placed in a boat, they melt into a pile of oil and bones.
Perhaps it was only when they saw the resurrected Jesus that the full meaning of the echoes of Old Testament promises made sense. He wasn’t just talking about raising people from the dead so that they could die again, or even freeing their spirits to roam the earth, haunting their enemies. He was talking about reconstituting their physical atoms, molecules, fibers and bones into a new reality--the stuff of heaven.
How does this effect our lives today?
In the early church, the resurrection was a lynchpin of evangelism. In other words, since the church couldn’t honestly make the promise that peoples’ lives would improve by becoming believers, they emphasized the reality of the resurrection. One could argue that the resurrection was the engine behind the almost reckless witness of people like Ignatius, first century bishop of Antioch:
I write to the Churches, and impress on them all, that I shall willingly die for God, unless ye hinder me. I beseech of you not to show an unseasonable good-will towards me. Suffer me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather entice the wild beasts, that they may become my tomb, and may leave nothing of my body; so that when I have fallen asleep [in death], I may be no trouble to any one. Then shall I truly be a disciple of Christ, when the world shall not see so much as my body….
- from my devotional @ Pioneers, Tuesday, April 15
Summary only...
