Christians Believe in Resurrection

Christians believe in the resurrection of the dead.  My 21st century sensibilities are challenged by this.

The first time I considered resurrection was when a friend, Dave died after a battle with brain cancer.  A few of us were sitting around discussing the biblical story about Jesus coming back from the dead.  In this story, he shows up while his friends were having a meal.  They don't recognize him until he did something familiar (in this case he broke bread around the table.)  Then the scriptures say that their "eyes were opened and they recognized him."  (Luke 24)

As we were talking about the text, someone asked, "What would we do if Dave walked in the room right now?"

I've never forgotten that question.  What would I do if someone I loved came back from the dead?  I'd freak out.  How about you? 

The second I considered resurrection was as a pastor while in conversation with another pastor.  She was serving a very small church that was dying.  A few in her congregation were clinging to the life that their farming community had in the 50's and 60's.  The farms had been long sold off and now instead of fields of corn, there were fields of huge homes that housed families who commuted to work and spent their Sundays at soccer games.  The folks in the pews didn't want to face the reality of their death as a community.  In the last 20 years, there had tried programs hoping to resuscitate the life that they had known.  There was even a suggestion that they reintroduce the spaghetti dinners to raise enough funds to pay their bills.   My friend offered what I believe was a prophetic word when she said, "Christians don't believe in resuscitation; we believe in resurrection.  And in order for something to resurrect, something must first die."

I remember watching a group of doctors resuscitate an elderly gentleman while I was a chaplain at a hospital.  Resuscitation is a gruesome act.  It often involves broken bones and blood.  From my perspective, the human body is so complex that the act of continuing life amidst trauma, illness, or brokenness requires objectification.  The physicians were concerned about objective data (blood pressure, breathing, medication) while I was aware of subjective data (family, vulnerability, grief).  As the scene unfolding the physicians were concerned with continuing life.  I, on the other hand, was considering death.

Before I go on, I have many physician friends and I am grateful for the gifts of medicine and for the calling to stabilize and/or provide more quality of life.  We need doctors.  With that said...

We have a fixation with the life that we hold.  We want it to continue at all costs, sometimes exposing it to gruesome acts.  We want the life that we know to be stable.  Our desire for stability does not stop with our physical life.  We want for our mental and spiritual life to continue as we know it.  We try all kinds of things to resuscitate the life that we know.  We fight death; we fight loss. 

What does it mean then for me as a Christian person to affirm resurrection?  When I see that something of my life, my dreams or expectations are dying and/or dead, do I have the courage or imagination to believe that something new will emerge from this death or loss?  Or do I continue to resuscitate what I've known? 

When Pete and I can no longer do certain things or go certain places, can we imagine new life together?  Can I see the adjustments that we have made as resurrection instead of reminders of death?  Can I say to my dreams, do not resuscitate?  Dream another dream.  Live into a new reality? 

I have often thought that dealing with a chronic illness is most difficult when we do not realize that little losses are deaths.  When we don't recognize death, then we won't grieve.  Without a recognition of death, we continue to fixate on the life that we wanted, or had hoped for, or were planning on.  We wake up each day breaking bones and cleaning up the blood from another round of resuscitation.  However, if we can accept that life has forever changed, that the life that we had is no longer available to us, it has died, then we open ourselves to resurrection.