The Resurrection Man

My husband would be shocked to hear me say this but…I made a mistake. I posted this week’s Gospel reflection last week. Never trust Gospel sequences from 3 years ago. What else is there left to do but post last week’s reflection this week? At least I won’t be the only one who’s confused. 

Luke 7: 11-17

Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favorably on his people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

I have been intrigued with resurrection lately. Whenever I look at the world of nature, it feels like God is whispering, “I am the Resurrection.” Everywhere in the natural realm of life something is always dying, dead or being resurrected.

“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains a single grain.”

To us, the prospect of dying is scary and the idea of the death of our physical bodies is frightening. It is the ultimate sign that we are not in control. We may do everything in our power to stave off dying and death but in the end we have no control over the inevitable. Dying, death and resurrection is the rhythm of the universe and it is in our genetic code.

This process is pure gift. If God engineered the whole world to move through this life rhythm over and over from the beginning there must be something phenomenally God-like about it. To God, death is not failure and death is not even the end as we perceive the end to be. Death is a transformative state; it is a necessary bridge to resurrection and to life that is more abundant than it was before.

Our spiritual lives also encompass this natural and super natural rhythm of life. At any given point you are either dying, dead or rising again. You can’t avoid it. But you can prolong the dying part. Though we all agree theoretically with the idea that we are called to die to self in the spiritual life, we generally resist that dying process because when it happens and situations are out of our Wounded Warrior’s control, it feels more like failure. When we are ill, in the moment or chronically, when relationships crumble, when our children make unhealthy choices, when we are deeply disappointed because our plans don’t work out, when life spins out of our hands we resist the dying. It feels more like something is faulty or we are guilty of gross inadequacy than it feels like clean spiritual dying.

While I was writing this reflection a friend of mine sent me this quote: "When God shuts one door, He opens another - but sometimes it is hell in the hallway!" It is absolutely true – sometimes spiritual dying and death feels like hell in the hallway.

To Christ, death, whether it’s physical or spiritual, is not the end of the world or the end of anything. It is the beginning. It is not a process that is outside of him. He is the dying. He is the death. And he is the Resurrection! In his incarnation he completely embraced the whole rhythm of life to death to life and infused it with his own body and blood. He is not only the Master of the process; he is the process. To live in Christ is to be continually soaked in the process of dying and rising again.

In the Gospel, it was on the mother that Jesus had pity – not the dead son. Death is not failure. In fact, the son may have been a little upset to be brought back to life. He had been on his way to major transformation but Jesus beheld the widow, took pity on her and said to the son, “Not yet. I know you’d love to go but I’m calling you back for a little while.” Then he resurrected the son. Even before Jesus died on the cross and rose again, he was the Resurrection. The whole world existed within him and was dependent on the rhythmic heartbeat of his love. In Christ, dying is transformation. There is no other way to get to the Resurrection.

You go to Mass and you partake in the Eucharist. Among other things, your reception of the Body and Blood is an “Amen!” to being absorbed into the dying, death and resurrection process of your life and the life of the whole world. You are not just ingesting the Body and Blood in the way you put gas in your car. You are saying, “My Lord…Yes!” to being one with the universal mystery of dying, death and resurrection. To the world, dying and loss is failure but Christ came to show that dying and loss is part of a full abundant life. He saved us from the sting of dying and loss by showing us that he is the Master of resurrection. In his lifeblood, no pain is useless and no loss represents failure. It is all his Body and Blood.

The Word breathes into the universe, “I am the Resurrection.”

We must breathe with him.