The Resurrection (5th of Lent, 2026-03-22)

 5th in Lent, 22nd March 2026

W Kirchmeir

The Resurrection

May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.

[Ezekiel 37:1-14; Ps.116:1-8; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:(1-66)17-45]

Dear Friends in Christ,

The Apostle’s creed ends with I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

That statement offends reason. The offense against reason has led the church, along with much of humankind, to believe in a continued life of some part of the self. They usually call this part the soul, and assert that the soul will survive the death of the physical body.

I’m at the age when I read lot of obituaries and death notices. I don’t think this is surprising. According to Statistics Canada, about 97% of Canadians are younger than I am.

Lately I’ve noticed that most obituaries refer to the deceased as reuniting with family and friends. Clearly, most people believe that there’s some kind of existence after death. That somehow the person survives, and will find eternal joy in the company of those that have gone before.

This is probably the most widespread belief about what happens after death.

But it’s not Christian.

Every Sunday we say that we believe in the resurrection of the body.

Just what do we mean when we say these words?

In two weeks we will celebrate what we claim to be the most significant event in the history of the universe: The death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

We claim further that this man was the Son of God.

And we claim that whoever believes this, and calls upon Jesus name, will rise from the dead and live with him forever.

Just what do we mean when we make these claims?

In our funeral service we quote the words of Jesus that we heard in the gospel today: I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. [John 11:25]

We all somehow claim to believe in Jesus, and by so doing, we claim that resurrection and that life.

Just what do we mean when we say we believe?

Belief is not the same as faith. The words of a creed are not the same as the faith that they express. We ought to look at this belief in the resurrection, in a renewed life of the self after death, even though we know we cannot fully explain what we mean when we say we believe in it. This season of Lent, we prepare to celebrate what we claim to be the most important event in the history of the world. It’s a good time to think about these things.

The ancient Israelites had difficulties with a belief in the resurrection, also. At the time of Jesus, many Jews did not believe in eternal life. They believed that life ended with death, and that your circumstances of this life depended on your righteousness, and the righteousness of your ancestors. Did not God say he visited the sins of the fathers upon the children even into the third and fourth generation? So your acts would reap rewards or punishments for you, and for those who came after you. 

Some Jews believed in a kind of half life after death, in another part of the world, much as the Greeks did. Your life in that place of shadows depended on your righteousness in this life. Jesus alluded to this belief in his parable of the rich man and the poor man at his gate.

But by the time of Christ, most Jews believed in the resurrection. They placed it at some distant future time, when this world would come to an end, and God would gather the righteous into the promised land. In the meantime, the dead would sleep. Martha clearly took this belief for granted. I know [Lazarus] will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. [John 11:24] And Jesus' reference to Lazarus being asleep also refers to this belief.

This belief arose in part by rethinking Ezekiel's vision of the valley of the dry bones. In this vision, Ezekiel saw a resurrection. God commanded him to prophesy over the bones, and God made the bones come together, and clothed them in sinew and flesh and skin. Then God commanded Ezekiel to prophesy again, and made the wind, the breath of life, enter into the bodies, and they became a mighty army.

Now we don't have to take these words literally: Ezekiel himself makes plain that what he saw was a vision. It was a vision that revealed to him the power of God. If God wanted, he could make the dry and dusty bones of long-dead people live again. How much more, then, can he do with the spiritual life!

In this vision, the desert represents the despair and hopelessness that the Israelites had wandered into, it represents a spiritual desert. Son of Man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost; we are cut off from our parts. [Ez.8:11]

Ezekiel saw the state of a people who have lost faith. Who have lost their sense of common purpose. Who have lost hope.

And Ezekiel also saw that if and when the people of Israel repented and turned toward the Lord, they would be resurrected from the grave of despair, and would once again become a hopeful people, mighty and unified under the Lord. He saw the regeneration, the resurrection of the whole nation of Israel.

And God promised that that would happen. Ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves. And I shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live." [Ez.8:13-14]

But there's more: God says he will lead the people of Israel into their own land. He promises that he will bring them home. The actual political facts of Jesus’s lifetime made this an unlikely event in the present universe. So Martha like most Jews of her time believed that this would happen on the last day.

Many modern Christians believe this, too. Some of them believe that can see signs of the end times right now, and that the Last Day, the Day of Judgement, will soon be upon us. They exhort us to join them, for only they will be saved, only they will inherit the earth and enjoy it forever. That seems to be what they mean when they say that they believe in the resurrection and the life.

Let’s look at what St. Paul says. He was the first interpreter of the faith, the apostle who began the difficult and ongoing work of devising a creed that truly expresses the faith. He had a more complex idea. In Romans 8:6 & 9, he writes, For to be carnally minded is death ... But ye are not of the flesh, but in the Spirit.

Paul clearly means that the resurrection of the body begins in this life, that by claiming the power of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross, we invite the Spirit to transform our lives here and now. Not that we receive a guarantee of a sinless existence until death transforms us once again, for temptations continue to vex us. But by the power of the Spirit we can recognise and withstand these temptations.

And when in our weakness we do yield, and sin again, by that same power of the Spirit we trust in God's forgiveness, which strengthens us. I think we can easily agree with Paul in this idea. To say that God transforms us does not offend reason.

But hear what else Paul says on this subject: But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. [Rom.8:11]

Our dead bodies will be brought to life, Paul says. This idea does offend reason.

Paul knew that. In 1. Corinthians 15 he spends a good deal of time trying to make the idea sound more reasonable. He points out that the seed must die before it becomes a new plant. What the sower sows in the ground is not what the reaper reaps at harvest time. Just so, our physical body must die before we can become a new person in the spirit.

Paul reminds us that by the power of the Spirit we live again. That the Spirit saves us from the death visited upon us through sin. He accepts the physical death of the body as the just and necessary effect of that sin. But in the Spirit there is life, in the Spirit we are saved from sin. So, when we rise again, we will exist in a spiritual body, says Paul.

These words of Paul's certainly help us give meaning to the statement in our creed, we believe in the resurrection of the body. Similes and metaphors and formulas add content to what would otherwise be mere mouthing of words and  phrases. They give us some idea, some image we can grasp, of that mystery we state so simply in so few words: The mystery that our dead bodies will live again.

But that's all they are, ideas, images. However much truth they contain, there remains something inexpressible and ungraspable. What will that spiritual body be like? How can we, who know that we live because time passes, exist in eternity, where the idea of time passing is meaningless? What will we do when we come into the presence of the one who said of himself, none can see his face and live?

And yet we will live. We will see his face!

The creed expresses the beliefs that we hold. The beliefs that we hold express the faith. The faith we have from God. Our faith enables us to trust that what we believe and what we say we believe is true. And that we will know that truth completely when we come face to face with the Person who is that Truth.

And now to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be all Dominion, Power and Glory, now and forever. Amen.