This is my body: thoughts on the resurrection

For many years I shared a common liberal skepticism about the physical resurrection of Jesus. There were reasonable grounds for this, I thought. The gospel accounts of what happened on the first Easter morning were different from one another. The gospels themselves are theological accounts, interpretations honed and edited many years after the events.

I was also swayed by arguments that the resurrection was not a mere historical event, something that could have been recorded on camera by a time traveler with an iPhone. It was not, as Bishop David Jenkins of Durham famously said, a ‘conjuring trick with bones’. It was an event for faith, an event within the faith of the first believers – not the resuscitation of a corpse.

At the core of this position there was an underlying claim: that God does not ‘supernaturally intervene’ in the world in ways which contradict the natural, created order. More positively, there was an implicit affirmation of the value of this world, a call to transform this life. The bodily resurrection seemed an embarrassing leftover of a superstitious worldview and an obsession with life after death.

The more I have rediscovered a sacramental faith, the more I’ve found these arguments wanting.

They seem to be driven by a peculiarly modern dualism. That dualism puts God in a supernatural realm, somehow separate from the natural order. It is happy to talk about symbols and inner spiritual realities, but gets queasy when such things are embodied in the messy, carnal world of our senses. And so, oddly, it actually separates the sacred and the profane more decisively than any ancient ‘three-tier’ worldview ever did. It abandons the flesh, the body and the earth to profanity.

If the heart of Christian faith is the Word of God bodily assuming the flesh of the world and a human nature, then it is through and through a carnal spirituality. It does – or should not – separate what belongs together. The ‘supernatural’ – a word associated in the modern mind with ghosts and magic – is better known as grace. And grace is neither separate to nor opposed to nature, but its indwelling life and its fulfilment.

The bodily resurrection is not, then, a ‘contradiction’ of nature, but its realisation: the first fruits of creation’s liberation. For creation is made to bear the divine life.

The resurrection is also not just an event for faith. It is an event for despair, for those who have lost faith, for blocked paths and longings turned to ash. It is not a symbol of what the in-group already possess, but an insurrection of hope, a hope which still bears the wounds of the world.

So when Jesus offers us his body, when he says ‘This is my body’, we should take this utterly seriously. Yes, it is a memorial of his death and self-offering; but it only makes any sense as a living, physical participation in his resurrection. Sacraments do not happen in our heads, but in our hands, in our senses, in the tactile gifts of nature. In wounded, broken bodies.

None of this resolves the legitimate historical questions about the gospel stories. But we do not answer those questions by abandoning the real embodiment of God in history: incarnate, risen, present. That incarnate grace touches and accepts us wholly, and so is able to touch and transform every aspect of our longing creation.

‘For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.’ (Colossians 1.19-23)