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Author: Kevin Pettit
“The news of God’s resurrection, first encountered through perplexity and dismissed as an idle tale, ultimately gives way to a life-giving power unleashed among the disciples themselves and that’s as true for us as it is for the disciples.” — Rev. Chris Broadaway-Bowman
Only a few days ago, Easter was celebrated in churches following the liturgical calendar of Western Christianity. At our Easter service at the First Congregational Church of Boulder on this day our Pastor, Rev. Chris Broadaway-Bowman, in her sermon discussed the resurrection of Jesus and its importance. It is about the notion of resurrection that I wish to address in this devotional.
As noted by our pastor in her Easter sermon, each of the four gospels tell the Easter story a bit differently. In fact, the earliest copies of any of the Gospels included in our Bible, the one that we call ‘Mark,’ ends in verse 16:8 with the women fleeing in fear from the empty tomb. The majority of recent scholars believe this to be the original ending. Verses 9 – 20 appear to have been added to the earlier text sometime during the 4th or 5th centuries BCE. This addendum drives this question to our minds: Was the resurrection of Jesus a public, physical event, or is it better understood as a spiritual continuation of the life and efforts of Jesus of Nazareth to his followers and on to us today?
Clearly, the other Gospels of our Bible make it clear that many followers of Jesus understood him to have arisen physically. In Matthew, Jesus appears to his disciples after his resurrection to give them the Great Commissioning. The Gospel of Luke has more extended tales that tell of an encounter with someone on the road to Emmaus about which it says “And their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he vanished out of their sight.” While the Gospel of John says that, after his resurrection, Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene and then the disciples and the Gospel of John concludes with this statement: “But there are also many other things which Jesus did, were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
My first response to this question posed earlier about the factuality of the resurrection is this: “Does it even matter?” To me it seems that the difference between the belief in a physical reanimation of the body of Jesus of Nazareth and the belief that the spirit of Jesus and his efforts began to energize his followers sometime after his death has no practical effect on the way that we Christians enact our understanding of the way of Jesus, his life, and his leadership 2,000 years ago and now. To me at least, the difference between the belief in either of these different understandings of the resurrection of Jesus is of no practical effect.
During all our current struggles and efforts, I believe that we are led by a ‘divine call’ that can be understood as the voice of God. This call was termed élan vital by French philosopher Henri Bergon, words that can be translated as “vital impetus.” I understand it to be the driving force for more vitality that animates everything in its struggle against the driving force of entropy, which always leads to irrationality, chaos, and irrelevance. This élan vital can also be understood as an effect of God which is in all things and always all around us. This is a way to conceptualize panentheism. In panentheism, God is viewed as a creator and/or animating force behind the universe, and the source of universal truth. I believe that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in the stories of Easter is evidence of the panentheistic nature of our God that transcends all time, space, culture, and religious animation. It is a luring force which can lead us to a more vital and beneficial existence.