Waiting

that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.  Philippians 3:10-11  NASB

Resurrection from the dead – About a week ago we looked at Paul’s expression concerning resurrection in Romans 1 (see August 12). We discovered that deliberate mistranslation was theologically incorporated in order to avoid certain uncomfortable implications about the first century message.  But now we see that Paul embraces the same idea here, that is, the general resurrection from the dead.  In fact, he is looking forward to it.  He expects to be included in this apocalyptic, cosmic event.  It’s the reason why he is willing to suffer so much now. The end is coming and when it arrives everything will at last be straightened out.  Yeshua’s return is the proof necessary to ensure divine justice.

We are inclined to think that this resurrection will exonerate the good and punish the bad.  Perhaps it will. But there’s something else implied here that we often overlook.  The resurrection from the dead means that all the darkness of the world will at last be brought into the light.  That might be terrifying, even for those of us who think we will be rewarded.  But maybe it shouldn’t be, and not because our “sins have been forgiven” but because the darkness is much more than our moral failures.  The darkness is our own experiences of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, being alone, misunderstood, abandoned.  The darkness is what frightens us when we realize that we aren’t safe, that there’s no real sense of home for us, that we don’t really belong. “ . . . whatever it is that is truly home for us, we know in our hearts that we have somehow lost it and gotten lost.  Something is missing from our lives that we cannot even name—something we know best from the empty place inside us all where it belongs.”[1]  The resurrection from the dead isn’t just about us coming back from the grave. It’s about returning whole. It’s about filling that emptiness that made us weep silently inside all those years that we traveled, looking for where we needed to be and knowing we didn’t find it.  Resurrection from the dead is coming to life, not just being reanimated so we can stand before the Great White Throne and be reminded of our failures.  Resurrection from the dead is giving life to what we longed for when we were once alive, to fill the pain and suffering with higher purpose, with meaning rather than confusion, to know that all those tears held back for fear of humiliation can now be released because they will heal us.  Resurrection from the dead is the chance to remember differently.  Remember, it’s resurrection from what is dead, and there’s a lot in each of us that is already in the casket. “To have faith is to remember and wait, and to wait in hope is to have what we hope for already begin to come true in us through our hoping.”[2]

Paul longs for it, perhaps because he knew his own darkness so well.  Me too.

Topical Index:  resurrection from the dead, Philippians 3:10-11

[1]Frederick Buechner  Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons(HarperOne, 2006), p. 76.

[2]Ibid., p. 64.