The Dead Rising

For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. --1Cor. 15: 16-19


This passage from today's morning prayer daily office has been nagging at me all day. Probably because it is one of those Paul statements that reads like a riddle or something. The kind that I tuned out routinely while sitting in church as a child with a shrug and a "Whatever!"

But I think what Paul is saying here, in defense of the resurrection (and, no doubt, to correct for whatever theology he's heard has been pulling the Corinthians astray)is a key element to what I think happens in this time of Easter. Namely, whoever we were before Easter Sunday, we are not the same person after the resurrection. We are changed, just in the same way that Jesus has changed from the man everyone saw before to the man who has been raised from the dead. I mean, he keeps showing up to people and at first they don't recognize him until he says or does something that is reminiscent of Jesus.

Now, before you accuse me of blogging while intoxicated, there is a logic to what I'm saying. Think about Paul. Paul never met Jesus Christ, wasn't there on the day of the crucifixion, but was a self-described "persecutor of the church." When he had the big encounter on the road to Damascus, he was meeting the resurrected Christ. And when he met that level of incarnation... the old Paul, named Saul, underwent a sea change... beginning with blindness, regaining his sight, and now having new eyes, he is no longer the person he was. The old "Saul" has died and has risen as "Paul", the biggest contributor to our New Testament writings.

I think this same dying and rising again is true for many people today. I think there are many who, at one time, might be characterized as persecutors of the Church, who are now incorporated and re-membered with Body of Christ. Certainly, from the outside, one might have thought me one of those types.

I think it's true, too, of what happens when a gay person finally comes to accept their sexual orientation. So many of us spend years and years struggling to "fit in" by pretending to be straight, and surpressing our God-given sexuality. We deny it, we hide it, we try to kill it through drugs or alcohol, we pack it down so hard that we become walking powder kegs ready to blow. But the day does come when we can no longer keep up the act. And-shazam-when we finally accept our queerness, and die to the "pretender", a new self, a more authentic self, rises from the ashes. And it is good! Good for the self, and good for God, who has known all along the true heart of the queer, and has been waiting for the real child of God to come alive!

So, during this Easter Week, think about who you are now as opposed to who you were. How have you grown and changed? Where are you now in your relationship to yourself and to others? Your relationship to God? What has died and become new?