The Resurrection means to me that God, whom Jesus and the Jews called “Father,” raised Jesus from the dead because Jesus had spent his short life “doing good” (Acts 10:38), even though this had cost him his life. Therefore, as St. Paul wrote, God had exalted him and given him a name to be universally recognized and honored (Philippians 2:6-11). For Jesus is still alive in the lives of many who have been stirred by his teachings and inspired by the example of his life.
This is important to me, and not the bodily resurrection of Jesus, which has been an argument to deny his Jewishness, and which has not been able to inspire believers to stop wars, deceit, crimes of pride and greed, and so forth. For as long as Christians have held that all they had to do was believe in a risen Jesus who would save them from eternal damnation when the time came, they did not have to change anything, really, in their own lives. To exclaim, on Easter, “The Lord is risen,” calling forth the reply, “He’s risen, indeed!” does not mean anything to me. But the raising of the spirit and example of Jesus in my own life – this has meaning to me. For, as Crossan wrote, “Bodily resurrection means that the embodied life and death of the historical Jesus continue to be experienced, by believers, as powerfully efficacious and salvifically present in this world. That life continued, as it always had, to form communities of like lives.”
Ignacio Gotz
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