Full-Bodied Resurrection

Full-bodied. That’s a term we normally hear applied to a fine wine or a craft beer. I’ve even heard the term used to describe the quality of the sound of music from a record player as opposed to listening to it digitally. The term full-bodied implies a rich, substantial, satisfying flavor or sound. It is a term that we associate with a sense of wholeness, completeness, and as we gather together in this time between All Saints day and Advent where feelings of anticipation and thoughts of the future and the afterlife might be on our minds, and after hearing today’s lectionary texts that deal directly with the afterlife, I want to also apply this term, full-bodied, to describe the resurrection.

Now when it comes to the afterlife, outside of the resurrection, we have a lot of other competing ideas about what might happen when we die. The Greek philosophers taught about the immortality of the soul, and for many of us who have loved ones who have passed, that is a comforting thought that there is some essence of them that never really dies. Another way the afterlife is portrayed is in the way in which much of westernized Christianity has described it. As a destination. You either go to heaven or hell, or purgatory for some, which may give us comfort if we think we’re going to the good place, or it might bring us fear we have doubts about where we’ll end up.

I’m not here to try and disprove either of these ideas of the afterlife, because the fact that I am standing up here talking in front of you is evidence that I have no direct experience with the afterlife and therefore have no authority to tell you what it is like. I know there are people who have said they’ve died and come back, and there are some who even have the lucrative bestselling book deals to show for it, but I am not one of those people. I confess that I do not know what will happen in the afterlife, but I do also have to be honest and transparent with you that my hope in the afterlife is not rooted in an immortality of the soul, or a heavenly destination, but my hope rests in the resurrection.

And before you think that I am up here to give a lesson in Christian orthodoxy, I want to be perfectly clear that what I’m saying about my hope of the resurrection in the afterlife is not a declaration of certainty, but a statement of faith. My hope rests in the resurrection not only because what it promises me when I die, but also how it affects how I live. The full-bodied hope of the resurrection outpours itself in my life as an embodied love.

You see, when I think of heaven or an immortal soul, those concepts feel disembodied to me. But when I think of the resurrection and the hope that it gives, it is a full-bodied kind of hope because the resurrection promises us that our embodied, whole selves will in some way be united with God. And because of the full-bodied resurrection hope that I have in the afterlife, I live with the conviction that our bodies here and now are also good and holy and we can and should love our bodies because God too loves the wholeness of our bodies and promises a full-bodied resurrection for us. In our first reading Job says in my flesh I shall see God, indicating a bodily life after death, and when pressed with tough questions from the Sadducees, Jesus too affirms the resurrection.

Neither of these stories provide us with some definitive, vivid picture of the afterlife. So in a way I empathize with the Sadducees who desire to know what that resurrection will be like, but the most we get from Jesus is not what the afterlife is going to be like, but a picture of what it won’t be like. And to put it simply, it won’t be like this.

The question that the Sadducees ask Jesus about the woman who married seven brothers and which one will she be with in the resurrection, its an attempt to try and poke a hole in the idea of the resurrection. But the problem with their question is that it is predicated on the assumption that the resurrection will be more of the same of what we have now. And in response Jesus’ answer insists that resurrection life is qualitatively different from life as we know it. Specifically, for this woman in question, who would have been regarded as property of her husband during this time, she will be liberated in the resurrection, no longer property of any man, but restored to full-bodied wholeness. Jesus is not interested in carrying on oppressive norms of ownership and control and that transforms the way we relate to the people, possessions, and creation that surrounds us.

So if that is the case that our relationships are radically transformed in the resurrection, I sense there might be question arising for us now about whether or not we will know our loved ones in the afterlife in the same way that we know them now? Lutheran Pastor David Lose answers that question this way, he says, “Jesus does not say we will not know those who have been dear to us, only that resurrection life will not be marked by the same features as this one”

Pastor Lose goes on to illustrate this point with an example. After he had taught an adult forum on the resurrection, a parishioner came to him afterward very upset. Her husband had died the previous year and her belief in the immortality of the soul had brought her comfort. As gently as Pastor Lose could, he said that he didn’t want to take that comfort away, but rather to make it stronger, more complete. “What I want and hope for you,” he said, “is more than the wispy essence of your husband. I want the whole person for you, the whole person created, loved, and now redeemed by God in and through Christ.”

Over time, it seemed like that affirmation helped this woman reckon with her grief over her husband, not by denying it but by promising that there would be an end to it -- and, indeed, there will be an end to all of our grief, tears, and suffering -- when God creates a new heaven and new earth and invites us all through the resurrection to live there together with God and in the fellowship of the saints.

That is what full-bodied hope in the resurrection looks like to me. Not the continuation of systems and institutions that oppress or bring death, but the resurrection of all things that give life and embody love. For our God is a God not of the dead, but of the living, and through faith we know that our redeemer lives. The resurrection with all of its mystery might not give us the instant gratification of heaven or an immortal soul, but I believe it does more to impact the way we live in our bodies here and now, because we trust and hope that at the last our resurrected whole selves see God. And it’s that full bodied future hope that becomes embodied present love. Amen.