Suffering With Hopeنموونە

Resurrection Hope

Christian affirmation of resurrection is not chiefly about escaping this world but righting it. Resurrection is not about denying this world but rather enabling believers to have an honest assessment of their experience and yet to have a real hope for restoration beyond it. Pain is real, but not the only reality.

The incarnation and cross were never meant merely to indicate divine empathy but also to be divine provision. Jesus lives with a purpose: as the firstborn from the dead, he renews creation and promises a future of shalom. None of this holds true, however, if the physical resurrection and ascension of Jesus the Messiah didn’t happen. His bodily resurrection is key: the hope for humanity and for the world is a material hope for a re-created world.

We must never forget that God is not embarrassed by his creation, but he is renewing it from the inside out. Redemption does not merely right us psychologically, bringing some kind of emotional calm to our stormy dispositions. Some psychological models of Christian spirituality fall short when they focus all of their attention on a person’s internal landscape, failing to fully appreciate that the Christian life is one of embodied relationships. What is happening and will happen with our bodies is crucial to who we are and what God is doing.

The crucified and risen Christ is our only avenue to renewed love for God and neighbor. His resurrection was not merely a blip on a historical timeline but rather an in-breaking of the future, in which the infinite God took to himself the brokenness and sin of this world, and then crushed it, demonstrating a promised future of shalom for those who are now connected to the risen Christ (Galatians 2:20). Our current pain and anticipated death do not define us. Christ does.

From Embodied Hope by Kelly M. Kapic.