Misconceptions

I met a woman over the weekend who has been away from mainstream Christianity for 30 years. It seems that she had problems with some of the doctrine. One of the issues she struggled with was the resurrection of the body. "I believe that the spirit moves on to something better," she said. "You've just described the resurrection of the body," my husband, Paul, replied.

In her childhood understanding of the faith, she had never grasped that the bodies we dwell in on earth are not the bodies that we live in when we die. The resurrected Jesus passed through walls and appeared and disappeared at will; our bodies will be something different as well. St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians. "the body that is sown...in weakness ...is raised in power."

The vision of the mortal seed giving birth to some kind of glorious immortality passed this lady by when she was a teenager. How sad that she has lived so long with a misunderstanding of what Christianity actually teaches.

I think we all probably live with misconceptions about how to live out the gospel. It's gone through many emphases over the years as people focused on one aspect or another. What is clear at the moment is that what was birthed in a vision of freedom and glory has wound up in a focus on "this vale of tears" and the need for us to "take up our cross" in order to follow Jesus.

What if the cross we take up is the one to which was nailed, as St. Paul says in Colossians 2:14, the law, "obliterating" its charges against us for all time?  Then, the cross Jesus offers is the victorious one, not the one of suffering, because He already bore that one for us.

I think that Jesus envisioned a far more powerful life for us than we believe we can live and therefore, we settle for far less than He wished. Our prayers and our hymns beg and plead for grace, mercy and forgiveness. What more can God do to demonstrate that we already have it? The God who does not live in time saved us from despair in the first century, is saving us today and will save us tomorrow. It is one ongoing "obliterating" experience.

If we don't believe in our own capacity in Christ to bring love to all and to experience God's peace, then we certainly can't achieve it. We've been given the ticket for the cruise, but it's up to us to say thank you and get on the boat.

Golfer Rory McIlroy, after having had a disastrous final round at the Master's, quoted Muhammad Ali: repetitive affirmations are the key to victory. McIlroy must have repeated "I will win the US Open" 100 times a day in the two months between the tournaments because that is exactly what he did. Not only did he win, but he won spectacularly, setting 12 records in the process. Belief in ourselves can be that powerful. Belief in our God and His provision for us can be even more so.

Our victory over sin and death has already been won; most of us, however, get stuck at the foot of the cross instead of in front of the empty tomb. We get caught up in the pre-Jesus picture of the human race instead of the cleansed and freed people who live the "abundant life" He came to give.

Perhaps we should be repeating 100 times a day the opening to the Letter to the Ephesians: "We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavens." Then we might be able to live as if we meant it.