Let me continue with the story that we were looking at in the last letter. The question that faced the disciples was: what does all this mean, and this is something that we will now try to unpack.

Adam and Eve had failed in their task and now a long process has been undergone by humanity so as to correct and reverse what they had done.  And this is achieved through Christ who, through his Resurrection, ushers in the New Creation.  The coming of Christ had as its goal the overcoming of two important threats to humanity: death and sin. And Christ accomplished this task of overcoming both of these scourges against humanity.  With the Resurrection, a new era begins in the history of the whole cosmos and this is why it is so celebrated by Christians. We can see the impact of the Resurrection if we take a look at the behavior and practices of the early Christians.

The followers of Christ lived as if indeed a new covenant between God and creation had come into effect.  This is easily seen in the catalogue of their changed behaviors: readiness to forgive those who wronged them, ready to die for their faith, a lifestyle in which they shared their possessions. Funerals were seen as occasions for celebration and not of mourning. What was also very striking was the shift from observing the Sabbath (Saturday) to celebrating on Sunday as the first day of the New Creation. They endured martyrdom with peace and faith. They truly believed that the New Creation had begun. They came to see themselves as Resurrection people who witnessed to the presence of Christ in the world and his kingship in this world. This is one of the reasons that Christians were persecuted.  They claimed that there is only one king and all knees were to be bent to him.  They were talking about a new social order where the Roman Emperor was seen as subservient to Christ and of course, this was seen as a threat to the state and the state reacted by persecuting Christians.  Christianity was not some ethereal, spiritual belief but a new world order that challenged the powers that be and the weapons that this state uses – threat of death and torture. The Gnostics – those who believed in a ‘spiritual’ world freed from this corrupt material world posed no threat to the civil powers and as a result were not persecuted.  The orthodox Christians were persecuted and banned in an attempt to kill off the movement which was seen by Rome as a serious threat to the Empire.

The Christians testified to the goodness of the world although, at present, as many Christians could easily see, the transformation of the world was not complete – it had only begun, and it needed to be completed and this was to be done through the followers of Christ. They lived in this new reality and probably one of the most striking illustrations of this reality was the Sermon on the Mount, a puzzling sermon which seems so contrary to the ways of the world.  And it should be this way because it talks about how things will be in the New Creation.  One quickly sees that its demands and promises do not occur in this creation.  They are the constitution of the New Creation which is inaugurated with Christ’s Resurrection.

Another interesting point is the omission from the Gospels of any detailed information about the post-death survival of believers.  Quite frankly, they did not know, initially, what to make of all that was happening. 

In a sense, what I am trying to do is give you a very condensed picture of the story that the Bible depicts.  It is sometimes hard to see this, because of the sheer span of what the Bible covers, but it is possible to see the main outlines of the Grand Story and thereby make sense of it.  The Bible is not, at heart, really a morality story with crime and punishment at its heart.  It is a story of a creation by a caring Creator who sees something going terribly awry. The story is of salvation which is a description of how this story was set aright, finally with Christ’s Incarnation and death and Resurrection.  This opens the last and final chapter in this saga and now the path is there for humanity to be transformed.  Christianity at heart is not a new religion.  It is about the formation of a new humanity, a work that is not completed but has already commenced.

Many cannot accept the Resurrection because it seems to be contrary to everything we know about this world and how it operates. We all know that dead men do not come back alive.  This is not the way the world operates. But you see, this is exactly the point.  It is hard to accept the Resurrection because it comes from another creation – not this fallen and corrupted one – but the New Creation which operates under different demands and laws.  We cannot “prove” the Resurrection, and it would be a disaster if we could, because then the Resurrection would just be another ‘natural’ event, a bit unusual but still within the confines and restrictions of the Old Creation. Here we have something totally new and different and unexpected. And this bewilderment is clearly visible in the Gospel accounts. You can sense the confusion that encompassed the disciples as they did not know what to make of it all.  And even before the events of Good Friday to Easter Sunday, one can see that the apostles were puzzled with no inkling of what was going on.

Yes, we cannot prove the facticity of the Resurrection – because then it would act as a compulsion and people would have no choice but to accept it without any effort on our part – but this does not mean that we cannot discuss it or talk about it. The main thing that we can do is answer the challenges to the reality of the Resurrection and thereby smooth out the road to belief and acceptance.  Remember the words of Wittgenstein: it is only love that accepts and understands the Resurrection.  It is instructive that Christ appears only to the believers because they were ‘primed’ to accept this strange news about the Resurrection.

This raises a very important point, one that you have alluded to.  Weren’t the early Christians wrong in their expectation of the closeness of the end of the world and as a result they were not concerned about the world? The aspersion is cast that the apostles were behaving irrationally and making all kinds of wild claims. This is a common view but it is mistaken.  The early Christians lived in expectation of Christ’s imminent return, but every generation of Christians lives with this expectation. This expectation does not interfere with love for all of creation and continuing to contribute to this world while at the same time, burning with a desire to bring in the New Creation.

All we need to do is to look at the first Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15.  Paul discusses the Resurrection of Christ and this is his longest discussion of this. Yet, look at how the chapter ends; not with a discussion of the post-death state, not with a description of the glory that awaits the believers but a call for them to continue in their efforts.  Why?  Because all their works, from the smallest to the most impressive, will not be wasted since it is done to further the Kingdom of God and will find its eternal value in that Kingdom when it comes into its final state.  Everything that you do now, from the most menial to the most glorious is important and will not disappear or be annihilated but will contribute in some mysterious way to the completion of the Kingdom. So you see that the emphasis is not on some end of the world but in transforming this present world into one that resembles more and more the New Creation.

I understand that all of this is hard to comprehend and to absorb in light of the realities of this present world which we clearly see as faulty. There are not too many choices before us.  Either this whole cosmos is a happenstance with no sense to it, no purpose to it, and it all ends in the final destruction of everything as the universe comes to the death predicted for it by scientists or there is a creator.  The latter seems much more reasonable and not just because of wishful thinking but because of our faith which enables us to see through the fog of pain of this world.

And in spite of all the bad that there is, there is another huge problem to be addressed for those who say that the cosmos has no meaning and that is – why is there so much undeniable good in this fallen world of ours?  And we, as Resurrection people, are called on to add to that “good” and thereby give our testimony that we are truly living in a new creation which is being born.  And we all know that birth is accompanied by pain.

Sincerely,

Bar-Abbas