It is still Easter, the season of resurrection in the liturgical tradition of the church. This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday marking the end of Easter, the day on which we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church. That is the day according to the writer of Luke, that the disciples spoke in various tongues of the gospel vision of Jesus, the implication being that the gospel would be heard and understood by “the nations” of the world. In this narrative Luke claims that the gospel of the Christ and of the people who follow him has universal implications. The writer of John has a different point of view. John has Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to his followers on the day of resurrection; Matthew has no narrative regarding Pentecost, nor does Mark. Mark, in fact, has no resurrection appearance, only a young man at the tomb saying Jesus has risen and will meet them in Galilee as he promised. This is only to make the point that the gospel writers all express their own theological view regarding the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus… sometimes opposing points of view. But certainly in each of the four gospels the writers present the resurrection of Jesus not as having implications about life after death… going to heaven, as it were. These writers are much more concerned with resurrection as a present reality. Modern western Christianity has been obsessed with the former notion. But New Testament literature is concerned with God’s imminent coming…. imminent being.
I would argue that Pentecost and Easter are intimately connected, inseparable. The presence of the Spirit of God is synonymous with the presence of resurrection life. In post exile, restoration Israel, the scribes and theologians of Judaism lamented the perceived absence of the Holy Spirit, and yearned for a day when God’s Spirit would return and give renewed life to the people of Israel; a theology full of social, economic and political implications. The Gospel writers, who were Jews, in answer to the lament, are making the claim that the resurrection of Jesus has begun a new age of the Spirit, a new age in which God is active in the world…. doing the things that God does… raising up the shamed and dispossessed… healing… bringing justice and well-being… Resurrection, the life of the Spirit is not about going to heaven after death, though we have hope for some sort of life after death… Scripture speaks very little about the hereafter. But scripture has everything to say about how we live now, and how we as people of faith have the gift of choice as to whether we live into the present reality of resurrection, which is to live into the life of the Spirit, which is to be about the things that God does… raising up the lost and the least (the word for resurrection in the Koine Greek literally means to “stand with dignity”), caring for the orphan and widow, feeding, healing, visiting those in prison… the gospel message ain’t about me… It’s about bearing God’s raised life to the world in need of kindness and goodness and restoration to what God intends it to be..
If the resurrection of Jesus is merely a fanciful magic trick unique in history, unique to Jesus alone…. only so that we who believe (and which gospel account?) will go to heaven… then our faith is reduced to a sentimental exclusionary platitude. And worse, such a belief, I think leads to an abdication of our own responsibilities as people of faith to bear God’s life to the world. Resurrection life has always been. It is God’s modus operandi. Resurrection motifs in the religious consciousness existed long before Christianity, not only in the Mediterranean basin, but around the world. It is a reality ever-present if we would but pay attention to its presence. And it is more than just paying attention. It is a choice we must make… a way of life. To love our neighbor as ourselves is the doorway into the profundity of the resurrection of Jesus. To stand for God’s goodness, and mercy, and justice… doorways as well… to live in touch with gratitude at being human, made in God’s image… a doorway…. to experience the dynamic of life’s renewal… a doorway.
We cannot know where the doorway leads… but to be sure resurrection life is full of improbable possibility and promise… not for a distant future, but for here… and now.
