The risen body of Christ

Dearly Beloved,


Grace and Peace to you.

“We believe in the resurrection of the body,”
says our creed. What, exactly, does that mean?
How, exactly, did Jesus rise from the grave?


We don’t know, and we should never pretend to.
It doesn’t matter. It is not for us to know,
any more than we shall know how God created light.


It doesn’t matter in what form or manner:
got up, maybe, breathed a deep one,
stretched and walked out of the tomb,
careful not to bump his head…
Or maybe rose from his old body,
(moldering unused now)
like mist from a lake, or light from a fire,
or laughter from a child,
and took on a new one.


Don’t bother trying to cram something
so mystifying, so incomprehensible
into a few molecules or metaphors.
It shall remain stunning.


After all, even the eyewitnesses missed it at first—
Mary in the Garden, Cleopas on the road to Emmaus,
the fishermen in the boat:
unrecognizable in any one form or flesh, yet flesh:
real, changed and undying.


Know this: that the Beloved will come, always
costumed, oblique,
athwart our expectations and belief,
yet still, undeniably, flesh,
changing before our eyes from life
into life;
until we are convinced that nothing less
than all of us, and all Creation—and even you—
constitute his real, risen, loving, breathing body.






Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve


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Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
unfoldinglight(at)hotmail.com