General Thoughts on the Resurrection

I feel like the resurrection of Christ and of people in general tends to get shoved to the back of the line in a lot of Christianity, at least in my experience in churches. It doesn't always seem to be mentioned in such a way as to carry the criticality the Apostle Paul put on it in 1 Corinthians 15. With Paul, it appears to be the very hope of our existence. Jesus' resurrection (along with his crucifixion, death, and burial, since they are all are parts of the same story) is where life of humanity is reborn and what accomplishes for Christians the same promise of life after "life after death", as N.T. Wright has put it so clearly. It is not just life after death, in some disembodied angelic cloud world that so much of evangelicalism has mistakenly preached, that the resurrection accomplishes. The resurrection means that our bodies and the whole of creation will be remade and redeemed by the work of Jesus into that of which it was all intended to become by God's initial act of creation. The way I understand it is that through Christ, we who love and trust in him will have the same: all of man, including Adam onward, will be redeemed back into what God created us to be, to be glorifiers of him in all we do. And not only this, but we will continue on into eternity continually becoming that which he created us to become. This was initially disrupted by the Fall in which the whole of humanity collectively participated in rebellion against God and his creation, and in turn this created all acts of death and decay by God's curse on creation. But Christ's resurrection restores all that was lost and puts man back on the intended path of bringing glory to God and of enjoying him in everything forever.

The weight of this hope I don't feel is always stressed in evangelicalism. It's more of a hope of heaven and a vague "being with God" which to me conjures up images of floating on clouds and wearing diapers and playing harps (which sounds more like hell to me), than it is the New Heavens and New Earth, and our Resurrected Bodies, as it were, where our lives carry on in many ways as they do right now, but without sin, without suffering, only with pure joy in being with Jesus who has saved us and with people we love who do also.

I wish the resurrection of Jesus were more explicitly understood as being the core of the hope of the world. Sometimes this hope is only spoken of as being evident in the bloody death of Jesus, and mention is not always made of his resurrection (often only as a period to the sentence). While Jesus' crucifixion and death are the object of hope for the atonement of sin, forgiveness, and reconciliation with God (they are!), the resurrection is also our promise that God is not only forgiving us, but allowing us to actually live life in holiness and glory (instead of sin, pain, and suffering) with him forever! This includes not only being with Jesus forever, but participating in the community of saints, singing, dancing, loving, working, and rejoicing always in the lives that have been given to us, indeed redeemed, by Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection on our behalf.