{"id":427,"date":"2021-04-14T20:15:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T20:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/2021\/07\/22\/walking-in-the-light-of-jesus-resurrection\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T20:20:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T20:20:11","slug":"walking-in-the-light-of-jesus-resurrection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/walking-in-the-light-of-jesus-resurrection\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking in the Light of Jesus\u2019 Resurrection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The first letter of John<\/a> is insistent on the real physicality of Jesus\u2019 resurrection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life [who is Jesus].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an insistence that stretches the bounds of believability. After all, everyone knows that living beings, at some point, stop living and that the condition of death is irreversible. Despite significant advances in medical science, there comes a point when the breathing stops and the heart, robbed of the life-giving oxygen that it needs to deliver that same wondrous element to the rest of the body, stops beating and there can be no going back. It\u2019s been this way all along. The crucified died of asphyxiation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But John\u2019s letter, written to a community of Christians decades following that first Easter, is asserting something very different:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us\u2014 we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That the crucifixion of Jesus happened is an undeniable fact. John\u2019s letter, however, is asserting that the \u201cword of life\u201d who he, along with others, heard, saw and touched, is eternal. Somehow it came through the brutal experience of crucifixion to stand, audible, visible and touchable, on the other side of death. For centuries, Christians have termed this phenomena \u201cthe resurrection of Jesus Christ,\u201d and as a phenomena, it challenges everything that we think we know about our reality and how it all works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The claim of that first Easter Sunday is not a claim of resuscitation \u2013 a reviving of life back to what it was before. We have stories of resuscitation, heroic efforts that bring a life back from the brink of death (or even the beginning experiences of death) and return that living one to their previous living state. Even Jesus\u2019 miracles, like the raising of Lazarus, that displayed his power over death were all resuscitations like this. They were astonishing, to be sure. Lazarus\u2019 own sisters were sure that decay had already begun to take their brother\u2019s body. When Lazarus appeared in the opening of his own tomb, his revived body was still bound in the tight wrapping of his own mortality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Jesus\u2019 resurrection is different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s this difference that makes it difficult.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If we had hundreds or even dozens of similar examples from human history, we could make sense of it. We could, in displays of human ingenuity, figure out how resurrection worked. Doing so would allow it to become believable by allowing us to fit it into a world and experience that we can describe and maybe even replicate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we don\u2019t have that. We only have what Paul describes in his own letters as a sort of down payment on eternity \u2013 the resurrection of Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The enticement then is to try to fit the accounts of Jesus\u2019 resurrection into the world which we know and inhabit. The draw is to make the resurrection \u201cwork\u201d in a way that makes it sensible. To do that, we can reach for metaphor as a way of getting at a way of understanding, of incorporating that which we don\u2019t know at all into what we do know. There\u2019s plenty of metaphor to be had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life has a persistence to it. We see that persistence in the cycle of the seasons as well as our own resilience. Life often finds a way to push past that which for a time threatens to overpower it. The shoot makes its way through the crack in the concrete. Real people rise up from crushing defeat, find their footing and move on in a new direction. It\u2019s possible to try to understand the resurrection of Jesus in these terms and in doing so, imagine that we actually have a handle on the reality of the resurrection: it\u2019s a hope, a tenacity, a welcoming of the new day, an attending to possibility, a kind of springtime. While metaphors can serve to expand our understanding of things as they are, in this case, the metaphors threaten to constrain the incomprehensible reality of Christ\u2019s resurrection into something we can manage for ourselves in the context of our mortal limitations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his poem, Seven Stanzas at Easter, <\/em>the American author John Updike reveals this potential problem. His fifth stanza reads:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us not mock God with metaphor,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the<\/p>\n\n\n\n

faded credulity of earlier ages:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

let us walk through the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Updike\u2019s poem calls us to be aware that it is possible that, in our efforts to understand and describe what exceeds our grasp, we can actually change the nature of the mystery precisely because the mystery is beyond us. John\u2019s letter puts it this way,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/strong>God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first look, John appears to call us to a correct understanding of the things of God such that we would know what God seeks to teach us or do the things that God would have us do; that\u2019s what we usually mean by \u201cwalking in the light\u201d or \u201cbeing enlightened.\u201d But we cannot do this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few lines later, John\u2019s letter makes the declaration, \u201cIf we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar, and his word is not in us.\u201d So, \u201cwalking in the light\u201d can\u2019t mean having one\u2019s act together or having all of the answers \u2013 in fact it means recognizing our limitations, our mortality, and our time-bound imaginations. It means acknowledging our out-of-stepness with God, our neighbors, and ourselves. It means acknowledging our sinfulness, so we might receive Christ\u2019s forgiveness. It means owning up to what we cannot know \u2013 like how it is possible that Christ was raised from the grave and how it is that his resurrection anticipates our own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peace be with you,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pr. Jim<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can read all seven of Updike\u2019s stanzas here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rev. James A. Wetzstein<\/a> serves as University Pastor at Valparaiso University and takes turns writing weekly devotions.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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