Fifth Sunday in Lent

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. (Romans 8:11)

When it comes to our views on death, most Christians I meet are more Greek than biblical. By this I mean they hold to the idea of an immortal soul temporarily inhabiting a material body, from which the soul escapes at death, leaving it's "house" behind.

That is a very unbiblical notion. In Genesis we read of the clay ("matter") breathed upon by the spirit/wind/breath ("spirit") and the mixture of these two becoming the "nephesh chayya" or "living soul" (what we ordinarily think of and experience as the person).

That divine creative act is echoed in the story of the dry bones being clothed in flesh yet still dead until the spirit/wind/breath "quickens" them (makes them alive).

The human person (or soul) is as much matter as spirit. It does not take that much reflection to realize the extent to which our sense of self is shaped by physical experience, nor that much science to recognize thought as a phenomenon arising from neurochemical activity.

A biblical Christian faith is an incarnate faith, a faith that takes creation, matter, and the body very seriously and sees them as central to our understanding of reality and of God's purposes.

I am not going to elaborate at length about this; merely summarize that in the Creed we confess a belief NOT in the immortality of the soul but in the resurrection of the body.

Those of us who understand theology as metaphorical discourse about the ineffable need not turn into wooden-headed literalists and debate how the dust that so many bodies have shared over the millennia can be reconstituted into multiple specific bodies. We don't have to resolve issues of physics to affirm imagery of renewed creation (new heaven and new earth--note: not just heaven without earth) as an expression of a transcendently new reality that, like our current reality, embraces both matter and spirit.

In the meantime, though God alone may be the source of life, we who are co-creators and co-agents of redemption CAN roll stones away and unbind cloths. Let's do our part to help people out of their graves. There is a lot of living to be done.

Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
--the BB