Possibly, the greatest enigma of the Resurrection of Christ appears in Romans 8.11. The Romans passage reads, “If the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead lives within you, the One who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies (now) through His (or, Her) Spirit who lives within you." What is this life? This must mean other than merely biological life, life identified with the self as a person among other persons, separate and, therefore, alone among others alone, regardless of what experiences are accumulated to deny it. This life must be more than mere continuance, more than mere existence.
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Odd, we could say, this we call Easter. Possibly, only God could dream up a Story like we have this Season. God watching God being crucified, God tasting God's blood, God praying to God on a tree, God letting God die, God buried in a tomb while God watched, God resurrecting God. Then, later, we get to God ascending to God. This does not make sense, and that is part of the Wonder of it. So, maybe this is a good starting point for us moving toward Easter, again: again, this does not make sense.
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This is where the Trinity teaching intimates an enigma. Within God, God being infinite and eternal, encompassing all, God encompasses life and death, death and life. Nothing happens outside God, apart from God. In this, what we speak of corresponds well with the nonduality of Advaita, as taught in the East. And, in this, sadly, it appears much Christian teaching does not appreciate this Mystery. Often, in Western, historical consciousness, Christians harness Easter to such a literal, historical format, that it appears more like merely a memory to celebrate than a living, breathing Experience to undergo, and daily, not merely once yearly.
There are no dualities in God-as-God; God simplifies opposites into a singularity of Union. The Good, True, and Beautiful is what It is, not as opposite a Bad, False, and Ugly. In duality, therefore, God can die, yet be living; God can live, yet die. To say one, is to say the other; to say both, is to say each one. God can be One and Three, while the Three is One and Not-One: for One to make sense, Two must be. So, in some way, even to say One is nonsensical, ultimately. However, Easter is revelation, and as revelation, is within duality, while not making sense apart from God-as-God prior to Easter. And, this in some way, reflects the Dance we wrote of yesterday. Easter is another part of the Dance of Grace, of Life. God seems to enjoy making Stories.
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The Resurrection, then, challenges perceptions of Reality. Tied in with the enigma of union in God-as-God is a practical implication. God enters into our life and death, also, at once, for “the One who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies (now) through His (or, Her) Spirit who lives within you.” When does this occur? This occurs now, and each succeeding now, as we perceive time. Process is Story; Life creates Plot out of Itself.
This Story entails Spirit transforming flesh into a receptacle of Life, into Life, and through simple openness to Grace. The beginning of Resurrection is happening now, for those aligned with the Spirit. Flesh is being translated into a more subtle manifestation, or means, of inspirited matter. Matter is and is becoming Sacrament. God, or Goddess, is and is becoming in us persons and community-of-persons.
Therefore, even in us, in you and me, death and life coexists, for the transformation is a process, not a mere event - though there are potentially many events of salvation, or awakening, along the way. God enters into the coinherence of death and life that exists in a unity within our bodies. The mystery, the enigma, of the Resurrection of Jesus is being reenacted in the life of the person and community living in Love toward God and neighbor. Resurrection is the being and becoming of Love: it is what the Eastern Church has called deification, or theosis - becoming God: which is becoming Love.
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Now, as to the historicity of the Resurrection as described in the Gospels of the Christian Bible. There are slight differences in details, but the general outline is consistent. This is to be expected in an oral tradition: recall, these stories were collected and transcription was likely decades after the happenings. Also, potentially these events were shaped by the remembrance and worship of the early Christians, who were not likely as concerned with historical preciseness as many of us, but were more concerned with Meaning, with tradition as a living process, as celebration of Resurrection as happening in the process of the development of Community and its sense of identity in contrast to others. Memory was storified in community as living process, and in Oneness with the living, cosmic Christ. So, Story and community are not merely separate, but are growing together as an organic, Christic process.
I can celebrate Easter and enjoy the Meaning, the Story, the Revelation, without focus on historicity. Easter is an inward event Now to me, as Grace makes possible. I choose to enjoy Easter, and celebrating it is not out of a sense of need, but desire from Love to love. Also, a Christic Advaitism - Nonduality based on the Christ - does not necessitate that the Resurrection happened as historical event, for Resurrection to be true or the ongoing Christ Event to be true. This includes Easter as descriptive of a vital, living process within ongoing Revelation within us and outside us in the renewing of Life among us. Regardless of our conclusions about the nature of the Easter stories in the Gospels of the Christian Bible, we can each, of differing faiths, say "Yes" to the Meaning, as Grace makes it real within us, and daily. Let us enjoy Easter.
