• QESTION : What is the significance of Christ’s Resurrection for the Christian faith and for the world? Do you see any relation between the uprising of the oppressed and the rising of the Crucified? – Jerin Jose
• ANSWER : Jacob Parappally MSFS

Christian faith is based on two foundational experiences: “This Jesus of Nazareth is Lord and God” and “This Jesus was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again” (cf. Rom 10:9). Jesus is confessed to be Lord and God because of his resurrection from the dead and the experience of being a new creation in him. Therefore, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is central to Christian faith. Paul testifies, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Furthermore, he states, “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised” (1 Corinthians 15:14-15). If there was no resurrection of Jesus from the dead, Christian faith would not have been born, and death would be the end of the road for humanity rather than a bend in the road.

“The justice of God, as revealed in the resurrection of Jesus, assures all humanity that their struggle against dehumanization will ultimately prevail. It gives them the confidence that their hope is not in vain but rooted in the expectation of justice’s victory, because God is involved in their fight for freedom and a dignified life. We embody the resurrection of Jesus in our lives when we commit to standing alongside those who resist oppressive systems and structures, following gospel values to transform this world into God’s kingdom of justice, love, equality, communion, and peace!”

Paul emphatically asserts that if there was no resurrection of Jesus, the believers in Jesus Christ are the ones most to be pitied (1 Cor 15:19). The proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection is the most prominent feature of Paul’s gospel (Rom 1:3f; 4:24f; 8:34; 10:9; 1 Cor 15:3-11; 1 Thess 1:10; 2 Tim 2:8). Peter states, “If Jesus did not rise from the dead, we are all wasting our time, believing in vain and spreading fables” (2 Peter 1:16). Both human history and the entire creation enter into a new mode of existence because of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Though this was the heart of the Christian proclamation, from apostolic times onward, there were people who could not accept the truth of the resurrection. They would even ridicule those who believed in it and testified that they had experienced him as alive after his death. The reality of the historical Jesus—his life, death, and resurrection—not only provides the key to interpreting the meaning of human existence here on earth and its ultimate destiny, but also grants access to the reality of God, “in whom we move, live, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The resurrection of Jesus from the dead reveals who God is, what humans are, what the world is, and what the final destiny of humans and their world is.

• Misconceptions about Resurrection

In popular understanding, Jesus’ resurrection is often equated with resuscitation, which needs to be corrected. When someone who is dead is brought back to life, as in the case of Lazarus, it is referred to as resuscitation. Lazarus had to die again, either by natural causes or by being killed. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead means that he is alive after his death, and the disciples experienced him as such. Death has no more power over him; he transcends space and time and is no longer bound by history.

“Just as the cross of Jesus reveals a God
who suffers out of love,
resurrection reveals a God who is just.”

Some New Testament accounts about the reality of Jesus’ resurrection give the impression that it was similar to resuscitation because the disciples claimed they saw his wounds, touched him, ate with him, and so on. For example, when Jesus appeared to them after his resurrection, he proved he was alive by asking them for something to eat: “And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, ‘Do you have anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence” (Luke 24:41-42). In the Gospel according to John, chapter 21, there is a narrative about Jesus preparing breakfast for his disciples. In John 20:19, the resurrected Jesus enters a room with closed doors to meet his disciples: “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” When Jesus asks the disciples for something to eat or eats with them, it suggests that he has a physical body. However, when he enters the room with closed doors, it indicates that he has transcended physical limitations. Are these not contradictions? Or are the evangelists presenting something contrary to the truth of the resurrection? At the first glance it may appear to be so. If a critical reader of the New Testament poses a question about this apparent contradiction, what is the correct answer? To respond to this question, we must ask,” Who is the immediate audience of the gospels?” The evangelists narrate the truth of the resurrection of Jesus according to the audience’s mode of understanding and their worldview. What they aimed to communicate was that Jesus is alive after his death in a way that their listeners could comprehend.

The Jewish people cannot conceive of humans as composed of body and soul in the same way that Greek or Hellenistic philosophies and cultures do. For them, the human body represents the entire person. Even today, in the English language, when we say “everybody,” “somebody,” or “nobody,” we mean human persons, not bodies as “every-body,” “some-body,” or “no-body.” Similarly, when one refers to another as a “good soul,” it means a good person. For the Jewish people, human bodies are the images of God. According to Talmudic tradition, bodies are to be buried, not cremated, because they believe in the resurrection of the physical body. To communicate the experience of Jesus as alive after his death and burial, the evangelists narrate about it in those expressions that reflect the physical resurrection of the body, as understood by their audience. In contrast, for the Greeks, humans are composed of body, soul or body, soul and spirit. In Paul’s writings, we find the Greek understanding of human beings. For Greeks, when someone dies, only the soul or spirit remains, which can appear in any form and transcends space and time. Thus, it is understandable that the resurrected Jesus as a spirit could enter through closed doors. The disciples saw his form.  To both the Jews and the Greeks what the apostles, the early church, and the evangelists wanted to convey was the truth of their experience of the resurrection of Jesus: that the resurrection simply means that Jesus is alive. This truth is the foundation of Christian faith.

• Resurrection Reveals God

John Sobrino, a Latin American theologian, offers a critical appraisal of some contemporary theological positions on resurrection and proposes his own understanding. He affirms that resurrection is the event that reveals God. Just as the cross of Jesus reveals a God who suffers out of love, resurrection reveals a God who is just. In the Old Testament, God is known not through his attributes but through his actions in liberating his people from slavery. In the New Testament, God is revealed through his action of raising Jesus from the dead. God’s fidelity is expressed in the resurrection of Jesus. The disciples who encountered Jesus alive after his death understood the reality of resurrection through the lens of eschatological hope, believing that God would ultimately vindicate the just and raise them from the dead. Those who recognized Jesus as a prophet with a unique message committed themselves to follow him, affirming that God raised Jesus, who was unjustly condemned to a shameful death. In their encounter with the risen Jesus, they realized that their entire lives were transformed, as they experienced their oneness with the risen Jesus and the entire universe. Thus, they began to believe and proclaim that his resurrection is the beginning of universal resurrection: “He is the firstborn from the dead.” “If he is risen, we will also rise,” and so on.

I propose an understanding of resurrection that hopefully addresses the question of the God who is involved in human history because I believe that all aspects of the Christ-event must reveal who God is. If we believe in the radical relationship and absolute interconnectedness of God, humans, and the world, the resurrection of Jesus reveals that this interconnectedness of all reality is both historical and transhistorical. One could affirm that the resurrection of Jesus is not merely a historical event like his crucifixion, but it did happen to the historical reality of Jesus. It is a trans-historical event.  In their encounters with Jesus after his resurrection, the disciples recognized a continuity and discontinuity between Jesus’ historical existence and his transhistorical existence. He is alive, but not in the same way he was alive before his death. Recognizing him was not easy. It is clear from the narration about the experience of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The disciples’ encounters with Jesus during his earthly life and after his death were partly the same and partly different. Nevertheless, they boldly proclaimed that he is alive and expressed these using concepts and language understandable to both Jews and Greeks.

Paul, while comparing our new existence in Christ with our old existence in the flesh, speaks of the transition of Jesus from his historical existence to his transhistorical existence: distinct but not separate, not one mode of existence but also not two. This transition affects our judgment about Jesus as people regarded him from a human perspective during his historical existence: “Even if we once knew Christ in the flesh, that is not how we know him now” (II Cor 5:16, trans. Jerusalem Bible). The evangelists integrate both Hebrew and Hellenistic worldviews to convey the truth of their encounter with Jesus after his death and burial: that Jesus is alive. They proclaimed that anyone who is open to him can encounter and experience him as the absolute meaning of their lives and indeed as the Lord and God of the universe, “the alpha and the omega” of all creation, with everything created “through him and for him” (Col 1:16).

• Rising of the Crucified Jesus and the Uprising of Crucified People

The resurrection of Jesus gives hope to all oppressed people around the world. In the early Christian centuries, when Christians were persecuted by Roman emperors, they fearlessly confessed , “Jesus Christ is Lord.” This was both a declaration of their faith and a cry of protest, indirectly telling their oppressors that they were not their lords. Since then, whenever and wherever oppressed people recognize their condition and summon the courage to rise against it, it signals that God, who raised Jesus from the dead, stands with the poor and the oppressed, offering them hope for victory. The resurrection of Jesus reveals the justice of God and provides hope in a world suffering from injustice, oppression, and dehumanization.

The justice of God, as revealed in the resurrection of Jesus, assures all humanity that their struggle against dehumanization will ultimately prevail. It gives them the confidence that their hope is not in vain but rooted in the expectation of justice’s victory, because God is involved in their fight for freedom and a dignified life. We embody the resurrection of Jesus in our lives when we commit to standing alongside those who resist oppressive systems and structures, following gospel values to transform this world into God’s kingdom of justice, love, equality, communion, and peace!