Lectionary Reflection for Epiphany 7C on 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50

AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY

The resurrection of Jesus is one of the most fundamental foundations of the Christian faith, but in my experience, it is one of the least explored, questioned, and nuanced doctrines for the average Christian. Suggest that Jesus may not have walked physically out of the tomb, or that his body was essentially different after his resurrection than before he died, and you’ll be attacked as a heretic and deceiver.

I find this unwillingness to engage with resurrection disturbing. We assume that, apart from the healing of (most of) his crucifixion scars, the lack of pain, and the possibility of dying again, Jesus’ post-resurrection body was just an upgraded version of his pre-death physicality. It is common for people to speak of Jesus’ resurrection with reference to other biblical corpses that were revived: the widow of Zarepath’s son (1 Kings 17:17-24), the widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7:11-17), Jairus’ daughter (Luke 8:41-42a, 49-56), and Lazarus (John 11:1-46). But, whatever the facts about what happened to these people may be, they all died again in the end.

It doesn’t take an in-depth reading of the New Testament to recognise that Jesus’ resurrection is a completely different thing. He seemed to appear and disappear at will, sometimes possibly moving through locked doors (see John 20:19 and Luke 24:31). He was not easily recognisable (see John 20:14 and Luke 24:16). He could not die again, which is why the biblical narrative of Luke/Acts includes the ascension (Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:1-11). And, as we saw last week, Paul viewed his post-ascension encounter with Jesus as the same in importance and nature as the others on his list of resurrection appearances (1 Corinthians 15:8).

Of course, none of these references tell us anything concrete about the resurrection. But that is not their purpose. All they offer is the assurance that Jesus’ resurrection is not the start of a “Zombie apocalypse” (as one commentator put it).¹

It would have been helpful if the Lectionary had added just one more verse to the reading this week. In verse 51, Paul acknowledges that, even for him, resurrection is a mystery, a secret that’s not obvious or easy to understand. It is something we grasp at until we have experienced it for ourselves. It is a call not to get hung up on the practical, scientific, literal facts of the event, but to open ourselves to a new way of knowing and a new way of being—and this is where, I believe, the focus of our thinking and experience of resurrection should be.

TRANSFORMATION

The first thing we can note from this week’s reading is that for Paul, resurrection is a transformative reality. The focus of this part of his resurrection discourse is on the transformation of a seed into a tree which illustrates the transformation of a physical body into a spiritual one. What dies and what is raised are two different things, or to put it in the words of singer-songwriter, Carrie Newcomer:

A tree is what a seed contains…²

In a similar way, says Paul, a resurrection body is contained in our physical body. But the ‘spiritual’ body is not just an upgraded version of the physical body—it is a whole new class of being, a whole new manifestation of aliveness.

Donghyun Jeong points out that we need to be careful with these words.

It should be noted that Paul does not view the difference between the current body and the resurrection body as one between physicality/materiality and immateriality.³

Matthew Fox agrees that, in the Western world, we generally define the spiritual as immaterial or non-material.⁴ But this is not the Jewish understanding and would not have been Paul’s view. Rather, as Fox argues, the best way to define spirit, from a biblical perspective, is Life. A spiritual body, then, is one that is fully, eternally alive, while a physical body is one that is dying or dead. The spiritual body is, in some glorified way, still ‘physical’—but more alive, more real perhaps, than our current physical bodies.

At this point, it is helpful to remember that Paul’s discourse is about trying to engage with and experience (not just understand) a mystery beyond words, and that Jesus’ enigmatic resurrection appearances are our best window into what resurrection means.⁵