Resurrection Is Our Great Hope, the Only Hope

Amy Beange

Christ’s tomb is empty! What a wonderfully encouraging Easter message! We do not serve a god who watches us dispassionately from a distance but one who incarnated himself, who came down to earth, not to show off or have sex with a mortal or win a kingdom by force, but to be one of us—to live and experience life on earth as a human, to share the trials we face on planet Earth. Think of it! A God who can sympathize with us, not because he saw us from afar but because He knows what it’s like from personal experience. The good, the bad and the ugly.  

In the thick of the COVID-19 crisis, we are reminded all too plainly that life on earth is fragile. When things are working—when our jobs are secure, and our freedoms are intact—it is easy to think we are invincible. But this epidemic tells us that it doesn’t take much to disrupt our way of life and that our health, and even our lives, are highly contingent.

In my work as an online Bible and Theology professor, I have my students engage with this topic—why is life so hard? Why is nature at war with us and we with it? We in Canada live in a climate that would kill us but for our artificial environments. Right now, I am sitting in my shirt sleeves because my apartment is sealed, and the heat is on. But outside the window snowflakes are drifting down and if I went to sit on my balcony, I would be very uncomfortable in about a minute.

I ask my students, if God is the creator, why did he make a world that is out to get us? They quickly refer back to the Garden of Eden where our parents rebelled against God. But quite often they stop there. They can explain how that rebellion disrupted their relationship with God, but we are not talking about personal alienation but rather things like tsunamis and frostbite and parasites and viruses. I have to pointedly ask them to explain how eating a piece of fruit leads to tornados.

“Adam would spend the rest of his life toiling to eat bread from the earth until, ironically, the earth ate him”

In the end we get around to the Curse, God’s pronouncement on Adam that because of his sin the earth itself would be altered. No longer would it be a safe and easy place in which to live. Ever after the knives would be out, Adam would spend the rest of his life toiling to eat bread from the earth until, ironically, the earth ate him. 

Without referring to the Curse and exploring its effects, our faith has an ephemeral quality. “My personal relationship with Jesus” becomes our theme and faith is about thoughts and feelings with little relation to the bodies we have, the earth we inhabit, or the God, under Who’s watchful eye, we live.

We are embodied, and our bodies have a way of slapping us in the face, as it were, reminding us that bodily concerns are not to be taken lightly. Everyone who has found himself barking at a family member because he got no sleep the night before knows how influential our bodies are. The Apostle Paul describes our current state as “bondage to decay,” full of groaning (Romans 8:21-22). As each day of this quarantine passes, we are reminded of our frailty with every increase in the number of active cases and every increase in the death toll. And that is in addition to the “normal” causes of suffering and death that go on regardless.

But we can rejoice when we consider the empty tomb! God came in the flesh and experienced life to the full, including its end in death. Christ died in weakness and shame on a Roman cross as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  What was achieved in his death?  The path to new life opened up.  On the third day death was conquered. Christ discovered that “undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns” and was sent back its new lord. But not within a merely revived flesh, subject to further decay. Christ’s resurrection body was more than a glorious restoration back to Adam’s unfallen state. His was a spiritual body no longer subject to the curse. Christ was free to walk the universe without fear of hunger, disease, injury, suffering or death.

I recently attended the memorial service for an elderly lady for whom I had served as a companion. During the service I listened as her family members painted a word picture of a lady I had never seen. A lady who invested in her nieces and nephews, who inspired them with music and art and who practiced hospitality widely. It was wonderful to get a glimpse of her normal life before I had entered it. In my time her abilities rapidly waned till all that was left was a frail body of bones, tissue-paper skin and a faded mind that remembered very little.

“Death may end life, but it is not part of life. It is the unwelcome intruder that destroys and bereaves; the unnatural and inevitable conclusion of that process of decay that robs us of our health and vitality, makes mourners of us all and gets everyone in the end.”

I cried at the service because contrary to what our atheist or pantheist friends might say, death may end life, but it is not part of life. It is the unwelcome intruder that destroys and bereaves; the unnatural and inevitable conclusion of that process of decay that robs us of our health and vitality, makes mourners of us all and gets everyone in the end. We cause anguish when we enter the world and we cause anguish when we depart and none of it is nice, or fair, or welcome.

What mitigates the anguish of death is the knowledge that although it is abnormal and an enemy, it is also temporary. We know this because Christ was raised and all those who trust in Him will be raised in like fashion: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Christ will “transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). This is the Christian hope in the face of the current pandemic, and in the face of everyday life.

At this point you should be asking, “Are there alternatives to the Christian hope?” Well, no, not really. In light of the resurrection the atheist hope is comparatively pitiful. Atheist materialists must admit that according to their worldview death ends all joy. Their hope, if the word even applies, is that at least there is no more suffering. Pantheism, on the other hand, holds out a hope for life beyond this life, but life according to their worldview is really no better. It posits that when you die you get to come back for another round of the same old, same old. Depending on what kind of karma you build in your current life, your next may be more miserable. Pantheism’s only hope is that eventually you will build up enough positive karma that you lose your individuality, and thus your individual suffering, as you merge with the One that is all.

The Christian hope is that conscious, self-aware, individual life continues in the most literal sense possible. In other words, that I, Amy Beange, will still be around a thousand years from now. The Bible teaches that embodied existence continues and that our existence in our resurrected bodies will be one of fullness and joy, a complete joy such as we only experience dimly in this present cursed world, a world that is only a shadow of what someday will be. In one of his great juvenile novels C. S. Lewis gave a stab at describing the joys of the Christian expectation of life beyond death:

“The Bible teaches that embodied existence continues and that our existence in our resurrected bodies will be one of fullness and joy, a complete joy such as we only experience dimly in this present cursed world, a world that is only a shadow of what someday will be.”

The Bible teaches that embodied existence continues and that our existence in our resurrected bodies will be one of fullness and joy, a complete joy such as we only experience dimly in this present cursed world, a world that is only a shadow of what someday will be.“What was the fruit like? … All I can say is that compared with those fruits, the freshest grapefruit you’ve ever eaten was dull, and the juiciest orange was dry, and the most melting pear was hard and woody and the sweetest wild strawberry was sour.  And there were no seeds or stones or wasps.” (The Last Battle, The Chronicles of Narnia)

The same theme is taken up in the book of Revelation: 

“Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.  Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new” (21:1-5).

And so, the COVID-19 crisis reminds us that life is short and fragile, but “if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11).